Here is my second update on how Jarred’s swing decisions are trending down in AAA. Jarred had a very strong week at the plate both in terms of plate discipline and swing decisions against the Reno Aces. He even had a home run off a slider! This update shows continued progress on his improvements and the ability to bounce back after his rolling CSW% climbed a bit last week. He also started walking a little bit again, which I take as a positive sign. I am purely speculating, but I think he was getting coached to just try to get the bat on everything he saw at first and now he is back to a more normal approach.

My writeup on Jarred’s first 30 games in AAA is available

here.

Update 1 is available

here.

A bit on my process from the first article: I made an Excel spreadsheet and filled a few notebook pages with tallies going through every pitch he has seen in a Rainiers uniform. I am just a human tallying pitches up and though I was being careful, it is totally possible I made some mistakes. Basically, build some error bars into these numbers and don’t take them as exact, but we are here to do trend analysis anyway. Additionally, I put splitters in the fastball bucket, whereas I believe a lot of sources count the split finger fastball as an offspeed pitch, so probably a systemic error on my part (he didn’t see too many splitters anyway). For the sake of total clarity, my buckets are:

Fastballs – four seam, cutter, sinker, and splitter

Breaking – Curve, knuckle curve, slider

Offspeed – Breaking and changeups

The numbers in the tables below are up to date through the 10th of July. He has played a grand total of 41 games in AAA, with 190 plate appearances, and 726 total pitches. Of those pitches 47.5% were offspeed (345 total).

I broke the results in to two chunks to try and increase the sample size. With 41 games down in AAA, I did the first 20 games as ‘first half’ and the next 21 games as ‘second half’. I also included his most recent 10 games, which is just to show you what he has done lately with a very small sample size. I would recommend focusing mostly on the second half numbers to get an idea of how he is doing!

Plate Discipline (%)

	First half	Second Half	Last 10	Overall	League Avg.
Swing%	49.1	45.8	44.8	47.5	47.4
O-Swing%	32.3	28.0	31.1	30.2	32.3
Z-Swing%	71.6	68.2	66.7	69.9	69.0
Contact%	67.7	75.5	77.9	71.6	76.6
O-Contact%	48.6	55.6	57.6	52.4	63.6
Z-Contact%	79.3	85.7	93.2	82.4	85.3

CSW% + Whiff%

	First half	Second Half	Last 10	Overall	League Avg.
CSW%	30.6	28.8	29.1	29.8	27.5
CSW%Break	45.4	33.6	37.5	39.5	X
CSW%Off	42.7	34.8	39.2	38.6	X
Whiff%	31.7	26.4	27.3	29.3	X
Whiff%Break	54.2	42.5	40.0	48.9	X
Whiff%Off	57.4	43.8	43.8	52.8	X

And here is a 10-game rolling CSW% graph, for the visual learners:

As predicted from last week, he was able to quickly turn around his rolling CSW% because of his improved process at the plate. As always, small sample size caveats apply, but these numbers do tend to stabilize fairly quickly. I think it is safe to say his approach has improved, his plate discipline has also improved, and his results have followed quickly behind. Probably still too soon to say he is fixed forever, but he is seemingly getting better every couple weeks he spends down there. Hope to see the Z-Swing% tick back up, but look at the Contact% and Z-Contact%! It’s so beautiful.

I will update this again on the next Rainiers off day! Let me know what you think. If there are other pieces of data you would like to see or a better way I can meaningfully present this data, let me know!