The Numbers Underneath Esmerlyn Valdez’s Breakout

Against all fastballs, Valdez is hitting .361 and slugging .836. Among the 225 hitters to face at least 250 fastballs since his debut day, he ranks 10th in AVG and first in slugging. He also ranks in the top five in RV/100 (3.449) and average exit velocity (95.6 mph). The natural counter to this would be to blitz Valdez with breaking balls. Unfortunately for pitchers, he has those covered too.

Valdez has faced 61 sliders and has had 15 plate appearances end against them. He’s hitting .429 and slugging 1.143 against them. His 7.3 RV/100 against sliders is the third highest among the 264 hitters with at least hitters to face at least 50 of them since May 22.

With the three most commonly thrown pitches all off the table, the only pitches Valdez has seemed to struggle against (albeit in small samples) have been sweepers and changeups.

The benefit of being a new face in the big leagues is a relative lack of an opposing scouting report. To this point, teams have yet to find an answer to Valdez’s premier power. While they seek a strategy, Valdez has taken advantage, and he is crushing everything in sight. At least, he is when he makes contact.

The Whiffs

Like many breakout players with show-stopping power, it’s the swings and misses that do Valdez in. His 38.7% whiff rate is the second highest among qualifying hitters since his debut. This isn’t unusual, but the pitches he’s missing are cause for concern.

This year, Valdez has a 33.5% whiff rate on pitches in the strike zone, trailing only Munetaka Murakami for the highest rate in the league. Although he makes the most of his contact, he has a hard time hitting the pitches that are supposed to be hittable.

This issue is somewhat alleviated by Valdez’s below-league-average 24.4% chase rate, limiting his swing-and-miss on the harder-to-hit pitches. But that can only take you so far when you’re whiffing at one-third of your swings in-zone.

For Valdez to continue serving as a vital bat in Pittsburgh’s lineup, more consistent in-zone contact is the most essential improvement for him to make. The slug numbers will inevitably go down, and the best way to balance that out is making more contact.

From Rhys Hoskins to Aristides Aquino, we’ve seen elite power bats burst out onto the scene out of nowhere before. Some go on to have lengthy careers while others flame out shortly thereafter. So, where does Valdez fall on the spectrum? The recent precedent reveals his future could be promising.

Since the start of the Statcast era, there have been 13 players that have hit 10 home runs in the first 30 games of their career. The list includes household names like Yordan Alvarez and Austin Riley, but it also includes guys who didn’t pan out like Michael Chavis and Christian Villanueva.

Valdez is the third youngest player to have accomplished this feat in the last 11 years, trailing only Alvarez and Riley. Over the first 30 games for everyone on this list, no one had a higher barrel/PA rate than the Pirates rookie. In fact, no one is within 4% of him. He’s also tied for the third highest barrel rate (barrels per batted ball) on the list.

Given his age and barrel rate, this chart seems encouraging for Valdez. It also helps that Riley and Trey Mancini, who also had exceedingly high whiff rates in their first months, went on to have several successful years in the big leagues.

Valdez was 11 years old the last time the Pirates made it to the playoffs. For him to continue putting the Pirates in a position to make it back, he will need to keep maximizing his fly balls while finding his way into more consistent in-zone contact. Regardless, his talent can clearly set him up for success down the road.