In my final Statcast post on hitters, it’s the prospect that is generating most excitement and buzz Colt Keith. If you thought and liked that I was kind to Parker Meadows (read it here if you’d like: https://tigersmlreport.com/2023/01/05/parker-meadows-statcast-edition/), you’ll enjoy this one as well.\
Season stats and quick overview
Colt Keith
2022 AFL season stats: 80 PA, .344/.463/.541, 3 HRs, 16BB:16K, 1.004 OPS, 2 years younger than average with rest of league
What’s to say about Colt Keith that hasn’t been said yet this year? In the AFL his 1.004 OPS ranked 10th out of 100 players and his 16 walks were 4th. All while being the 19th youngest player in the league.
Batted Balls
He saw 3.9 pitches per PA. Only Dinger was better, but Dingler also accumulated a third of the PA Keith did. Tops for Tigers were his 12 BIP at 95 MPH or higher as well as his 91.8 average EV. One not so great thing: most of his BIP were ground balls.
Looking at this plot, lets break down his BIP. The numbers are figued based on what MLB is designating (found here: https://www.mlb.com/glossary/statcast/launch-angle#:~:text=As%20a%20guideline%2C%20here%20are,Fly%20ball%3A%2025%2D50%20degrees)
GB: 14, 58.3%
LD: 3, 12.5%
FB: 7, 29.2%
First time I’ve found anything that wasn’t exciting is that 58.3% GB%. It would be more ideal to see that number at roughly 40%. But with this information we must also keep in mind this was some of his first action since going down on 6/9 with a shoulder injury and it’s a tiny 24 sample size. The second half to he season did have Statcast data available where he added a 4 XBH (a double and three home runs) vs 2 XBH (two doubles) in the data I could see. That sure seems like an adjustment was made to either hit it harder or launch it better. My guess is the launch angle given his average EV and 7 BIP being over 100 MPH already.
He did a great job, like Meadows, of spreading the ball across all fields.
Plate discipline
Working more with the patience here, let’s look at his PA that ended with pitches outside of the zone.
3 Ks, two swinging and one looking, to go with 6 BBs. That’s a really nice ratio. and some of the balls he took were mid-90s pitches. It’s really nice to see him not chasing pitches. And as a matter of fact, only 8 pitches outside of the borderline did he swing at:
I also really like that of the 43 pitches he saw at the heart of the plate, 14 were put into play while 6 of them were hits. 32.6% went for a .429 BA. Not missing when the pitchers do is always a good thing. Hitters will struggle if they miss those pitches more often than note (e.g. Torkelson), so getting in on it early and learning this skill will be extremely beneficial later on.
And lastly, there is my favorite graph. Swing and missed when facing sliders:
Yes. That’s correct — he swung and missed at zero sliders in the Statcast data. Zero, zilch, nada. That is by far the most impressive part for me.
Conclusion
There really is not a whole lot that can be said about Colt Keith that hasn’t already been said. Like with Meadows, I have excitement and positivity. Even the issue of the high GB% can be explained and seemingly corrected.
He’s likely to start the season in Erie. I would imagine he quickly could move to Toledo if this continues. It won’t be much longer after that when we will see him on the big league team.
Rogelio Castillo