Justyn-Henry Malloy and the Art of Patience

Justyn-Henry Malloy has quickly become a fan favorite for the Tigers. And he brought exactly what we thought and hoped. High walk rates, some power, good average. He was above average in all categories we keep track of even. No one will be upset with a guy who has an 18.0% BB%, 38.9% hard hit%, and 36.7% sweet spot%. All of this has been met with the chants from the fans to finally give him his shot.

The patience is a welcome sight. The Tigers have been in the bottom 5 of walk rates as a whole more often than not the last few seasons. But what if he’s too patient?

Patience at the plate

I would like to bring up the inspiration for this post. First there is this Baseball Prospectus article:

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/87395/best-of-bp-quantifying-the-corey-seager-approach/

Then let’s take a look at this tweet/post by TigersTorkmoil:

Justyn-Henry Malloy batter card in AAA courtesy of @TJStats pic.twitter.com/l5xCOyX8ri

— Tigers Torkmoil (@bythewaybro) December 24, 2023

It’s those last four boxes that concern me the most. More specifically, the in-zone and out of zone swing and contact rates. We can see here that he certainly does not swing the bat. If the walk rates weren’t some sort of indicator, the 18.9% O-swing% and 58.4% Z-swing% certainly are. Then we also have the contact rates, 51.9% O-contact% and 79.0% Z-contact%. So how do those stack up?

Looking at Savant data from 2015-2023, here’s a plot showing batters who had a minimum of 50 PA in a given year and what their Z-swing% and Z-Contact% are:

Again for O-swing% and O-Contact%:

The orange dot there represents Malloy’s rates in Toledo last season while the blue are the MLB hitters over the time frame.

Outside of the zone swinging

Let’s begin with the good.

The lack of swinging out of the strike zone is fantastic. There really isn’t much to complain about there. There are 5927 different seasons on each of these plots. And we can see that if Malloy was in the majors, very few would swing less outside of the zone than he does. And while in the lower portion of the contact rate, it’s less concerning since he doesn’t swing.

Of the 4810, only 30 separate season have seen swingers with a O-swing% and O-Contact% equal to or lower than Malloy. Just so happens one friendly face appears there 7 of those: Alex Avila. His 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 seasons all appear on here. His low BB% in that time span? 15.8%. Combined in these season he had a .345 OBP despite a .213 BA. Despite his pedestrian .320 wOBA in that time, he had a much better looking .351 xwOBA.

Inside the zone swinging

This is where it gets to be less rosy. Similar to out of the zone swinging, he’s in the lower portion of swinging and contact inside the zone. So much so that there are only a handful of the 4810 that are lower than him again — 115 to be exact. However, a vast majority of those players happen to be pitchers. Yes. It could be said that Justyn-Henry Malloy’s in-zone swing profile aligns with more pitchers that are batting than actual batters. Again with a few friendly faces like… Anibal Sanchez, Derek Holland, Max Scherzer. Even friendly new faces like Shelby Miller. But let’s look at some of the hitters in here:

Other than Giancarlo Stanton, not a lot of good in there. Not even a lot of average in there. Fans will sour quickly seeing this type of start or season from him.

Conclusion

None of this is to say he will struggle to this point or that he will continue to have such a low contact rate in the zone. And fortunately, when he does make contact, he was above average for the International League in a number of metrics. But it’s something to look at and think about. It’s not super familiar territory for non-pitching hitters… and that territory is littered with well below average hitters. For a player who will likely end up as DH only, he really needs to excel with his bat.

Justyn-Henry Malloy has the ability to be a great hitter with that patience. Especially factoring in the aforementioned hard hit rates and sweet spot rates. But he must be more aggressive on balls that are inside the zone and/or connect with more of them to truly be the hitter the team needs him to be on the big league roster — even if it means he sacrifices some of the walks he draws in the long run. 18.4% BB% looks amazing on paper, but there will be no complaints if a few more of them turn into XBH. 2024 will be an interesting year for Malloy as he continues to fight for his spot.

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