Breakout Breakdown: Isaac Paredes

There were 29 players last season to reach the 30-homer plateau. Isaac Paredes was one of them with his 31 long balls, and of the 28 hitters who went deep more often, only five of them had fewer than the Rays infielder's 571 plate appearances. The soon-to-be 25-year-old received American League MVP votes as he broke out in what was his first full major-league season.

So why does Statcast hate him?

Simply put, Paredes' quality of contact was quite poor.

His hard-hit rate came in at a meager 28.5 percent in 2023, which ranked in the sixth percentile. His 86.9 mph average exit velocity ranked in the 13th percentile.

Paredes' expected stats also don't paint a pretty picture. The 47-point gap between his xwOBA (.315) and actual wOBA (.365) was the third-highest out of 258 qualifiers. His 119-point gap between his xSLG (.369) and actual slugging percentage (.488) was the second highest. Paredes had easily the biggest gap between his xHR (24.4) total and actual home run total (31) at 6.6.

The average home run distance on Paredes' 31 taters was just 378 feet. That was the sixth-lowest mark among the aforementioned 258 qualifiers. Only 19.4 percent of Paredes' home runs were considered "no-doubters" by Statcast. Of the 29 players to hit 30 home runs, only two of them had a no-doubter rate lower than 30.3 percent.

Baseball Savant has a "Similar Batters" section which finds the closest match of a player's batted-ball profile to a recent season of another player. Paredes' five most similar batters were 2022 Kolten Wong, 2022 Austin Barnes, 2023 Alex Call, 2022 Dylan Carlson and 2023 Andruw Monasterio. Not exactly Murderers' Row.

All of the nausea-inducing numbers above beg the question: how did he do it?

There are a couple factors.

For one, Paredes has a good eye at the plate and an innate ability to put the bat on the ball. His 89.2 percent zone contact rate in 2023 was well above the league average of 82 percent. He also had an aptitude for making contact on balls out of the zone, sporting a 67 percent chase contact rate, which sat well above the league's 58 percent rate.

Among 133 qualifiers, only 17 had a walk rate of at least 10 percent and a strikeout rate below 20 percent. Paredes was one of them, having collected walks at a 10.2 percent rate while striking out at just an 18.2 percent clip.

What propelled Paredes to a better-than-expected home run output was a mastery of pulling the ball in the air. Check out his spray chart from Fangraphs.The guy just peppered the first three rows over the left field wall relentlessly.

Paredes' 47 percent flyball rate was the 11th-highest in baseball among qualifiers and his 54.5 percent pull rate was the second highest. The path to being a power hitter in spite of unimpressive batted-ball data is pulled fly balls, and no one did it better than Paredes. Guys like Marcus Semien and Nolan Arenado have shown that it's possible to sustain this over multiple years.

The difference between Paredes and those two guys, though, is that the quality of contact from Semien and Arenado has been more average-ish, whereas Paredes' has been downright lackluster. Semien had a 37 percent hard-hit rate and 88.4 mph average exit velocity in 2023, while Arenado had a 38.1 percent hard-hit rate and 88.8 mph average exit velocity. As already mentioned, Paredes sported just a 28.5 percent hard-hit rate and 86.9 mph average exit velocity.

Now, it should be noted that Tropicana Field is geared pretty well to Paredes' swing. It's just 315 feet down the left-field line, which is the same distance as Minute Maid Park where the Crawford Boxes reside. Paredes slugged 18 of his 31 home runs at home and did so in 39 fewer plate appearances.

It's a much more reasonable 370 feet in the left-field center power alley at Tropicana Field, though, or just eight fewer feet than Paredes' average home run distance in 2023. Maybe Paredes will be able to continue attacking that left-field line, but it's a difficult needle to thread, especially with opposing pitchers now knowing that's what he's trying to do.

The major problem with modestly-hit fly balls, of course, is that the ones that don't find the seats are usually easy outs. Paredes had a .257 BABIP in 2023 and has a career BABIP of just .236. That's not bad luck, either. It's simply a batted-ball profile that's going to run low BABIPs. Paredes' xBA of .230 might be closer to the kind of average we should expect from him in 2024.

In regards to speed, Paredes has none. He has attempted all of two stolen bases over 311 games at the major-league level, and a sprint speed in the 20th percentile doesn't point to a guy who is going to up the aggressiveness on the basepaths anytime soon.

We can't rule out Paredes improving how well he impacts the ball, of course. He had a much better 38.7 percent hard-hit rate and 87.4 mph average exit velocity in 2022, when he clubbed 20 homers over just 381 plate appearances. He's also still very young. However, as his profile currently stands, he looks like a good bet to regress in the home run department and probably with his average, too. If Paredes drops to the 20-25 home run range in 2024, he'll suddenly be a pretty borderline mixed-league roto option given his lack of impact in other categories.

Early NFBC drafters also share a healthy dose of skepticism. He's going off the board at 180, which is a good 100 picks lower than he finished in 2023. A scan of RotoWire's Roundtable rankings finds Paredes at 196, with a high ranking of 182 and a low ranking of 202.