Collette Calls: Breaking Down Mike Zunino

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Updated on June 21, 2017 5:53PM EST

I am fresh back from a vacation in the beautiful Fort Myers/Sanibel area. I took in a minor league game with my kids at Century Link Park, which serves as the spring training home for the Minnesota Twins and the Florida State League home for the Fort Myers Miracle. It is a great place to take in a game, when the weather cooperates. I spent the rest of the time maximizing fun time in the sun, because I learned just before we left I had to have yet another shoulder surgery on July 10.

Somehow, I have a SLAP tear and rotator cuff damage in my non-throwing left shoulder, which means my dreams of reinventing myself as a LOOGY at age 44 is over. Worse yet, I won't be able to join the other staff writers in Las Vegas as I had planned to that week for the annual RotoWire trip. It will be hotter in Vegas than it was in south Florida last week, but neither place is as hot as Mike Zunino these days.

I have been a long-time critic of Zunino in both print and audio formats, dating to May 2015 when I said he was heading down the J.P. Arencibia path to retirement in his career. He has been sent to Triple-A each of the last three seasons and has had season batting averages of .199, .174 and .207 entering this season. At the time of his demotion last month, he was batting .167/.250/.236. Since his

Has the third overall pick in the 2012 draft finally started to realize the potential the Mariners saw in him when they took him over the likes of Corey Seager, David Dahl, Marcus Stroman and Lucas Giolito?

These are Zunino's numbers pre and post-demotion:

SPLIT	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	BB%	K%
Pre-demotion	80	.167	.250	.236	8	38
Post-Recall	92	.333	.380	.714	6	40

In essence, Zunino is the same guy in terms of how frequently he is walking and striking out. Yet, his batted ball outcomes have dramatically changed during this recent surprising run of success. While he was at Triple-A Tacoma, he did see similar success with a .293/.356/.707 line in just 45 plate appearances with five home runs, but, more important, just five strikeouts. That said, the production changes have been night and day. The overall approach at the plate, not so much.

SPLIT	PA	SWING%	CONTACT%	0-SWING%	SwStr%
Pre-demotion	80	47	67	22	16
Post-Recall	92	50	61	31	20

Zunino is getting better results this time around despite taking his normal aggressiveness at the plate up a notch. He is swinging more frequently, coming up empty more frequently and expanding his strike zone even more frequently than he had in the past. Normally, all those things would get a batter into trouble, but Zunino is somehow avoiding the pitfalls, punishing a good number of the pitches he is making contact with.

Prior to his demotion, when Zunino did make contact, it was not going very far. His spray chart shows quite the collection of cans of corn, and his launch angle spray chart shows more pitches going straight up or down rather than straight out.

Since his recall, those two images look a lot different:

He is getting better loft to the baseball and generating the number of easy outs he was prior to his demotion to Tacoma. His average flyball distance pre-demotion was 250 feet and is up to 317 feet since his recall. If we reference the xwOBA-wOBA topic of last week's article, Zunino's wOBA during this hot streak is a terrific .454 while his xwOBA is .390. A .390 wOBA is still a great figure, especially at catcher, but that is one of the larger xwOBA-wOBA differences the last month. Other players in that range in that time include Avisail Garcia, David Peralta, Aaron Hicks, Melky Cabrera, Jay Bruce and Marcell Ozuna.

If you have previously owned Zunino, you know it can be a bit of a rollercoaster. If it feels like you have seen a hot streak like this from him in the past, it is because you have. Note his hot start to the 2016 last year:

From the moment he came up in early July last year until late August, he hit .280/.396/.707 over his first 91 plate appearances with an 11 percent walk rate and a 24 percent strikeout rate. After the home run he hit Aug. 22, he went on to hit .146/.248/.270 the rest of the way with the same 11 percent walk rate but with a 43 percent strikeout rate in 101 plate appearances. If we combine that with the start of his 2017 season, we get a .155/.249/.255 slash line in 181 plate appearances with a 41 percent strikeout rate.

That dotted line across the middle of the graph above shows a league-wide average and Zunino has a lot more time below it than he does above it. If we compare the hot start to last year to the run he is on, it looks like this:

SPLIT	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	BB%	K%
Early 16	91	.280	.396	.707	11	24
Post-Recall 17	92	.333	.380	0.714	5	40

SPLIT	PA	SWING%	CONTACT%	0-SWING%	SwStr%
Early 16	91	46	66	26	16
Post-Recall 17	92	50	61	31	20

This recent run of success feels much like what he did last year, but with more risks involved. Zunino is expanding his zone more, making less contact and is striking out at an incredibly high rate in spite of his success. Last year, things went south in a hurry and stayed there until his recent reset in Tacoma.

Simply put, the wise move here is to cash in the chips he has helped generate for you and trade him to a believer and look to pick up the next guy who might hit a hot streak. Travis d'Arnaud and Tucker Barnhart are two names that come to mind. Do not get caught in Zunino's next trough because you think this time the amazing run of success is his true talent level — because it is not.