At the moment, the Pirates have three Rule 5 players under their control. Their No. 1 pick from that draft, Jose Soriano, is about to embark on a rehab assignment and could make his Pirates debut a few weeks from now. Luis Oviedo has a handful of outings under his belt already, and has already been the subject to his own Mound Visit this season. Both pitchers have very good stuff. It’s a question of if they can develop and control it at the major-league level.
Then there is Ka’ai Tom.
The Athletics gave the outfielder his first shot in the majors after picking him with the 16th and final pick of the first round, but cut ties after just 16 plate appearances where he managed only one hit. Looking for outfield help, the Pirates picked him up off waivers and have been giving him somewhat consistent playing time in left field since joining.
Tom has only two dozen games under his belt, so it would be difficult to make any serious conclusions about him, even if his results weren’t such a weird mixed bag.
He’s hitting .170 with a .245 slugging percentage in the majors. Since joining the Pirates, he has a .385 on-base percentage.
He has a good feel for the zone, offering at the lowest rate of pitches out of the zone out of any Pirate since joining the team (23.9%, just behind of Jacob Stallings). He comes up empty a lot though, making contact less often than any other Pirates hitter still on the team at only 70%.
His xWOBA entering play Sunday was .324, a little above league average. His xwOBA when making contact was just .353, putting in the bottom-third of hitters with at least 30 batted balls.
He gets a free frogurt. The frogurt is cursed. Is this guy having a good season or not? It’s hard to tell.
I could keep going, but I think the point has been made. Depending on what you want to focus on, Tom has either been a solid pickup with a potential leadoff hitter profile, or a bottom of the order bum who is on the edge of being cut. It’s not even an old-school vs. analytical debate. Both camps could potentially love or hate him.
There is one thing Tom is doing unquestionably well, though: He’s seeing a lot of pitches.
I say this, of course, one day after Tom saw five pitches over four plate appearances against the Giants Sunday. Baseball is funny like that. Those short at-bats were productive though: A base hit, a sacrifice fly and a hit by pitch. A solid day at the plate, no doubt, but out of character for him.
On the season, Tom is seeing 4.16 pitches per plate appearance, barely behind Gregory Polanco (4.18) for the most on the team. Polanco’s figure is a bit inflated because of his high strikeout rate, while Tom fans significantly less (19.2% compared to 29.4%).
To give us a better frame of reference, here is a group of hitters who qualify for the batting title and see about as many pitches per time at-bat as Tom:
BASEBALL-REFERENCE
Don’t put too much stock into that. Just because you see as many pitches as Mookie Betts doesn’t make you Mookie Betts. But if Tom did qualify for the batting title, he would be in the top 20% of the league in pitches seen each time up.
“It was one of the things we liked: Control of the zone, being able to swing at strikes, ability to work counts,” Derek Shelton said about Tom. “We just have to continue to work on consistently hard contact, but we’ve seen glimpses of that. That’s something that’s been encouraging, is how he’s controlled his at-bats.”
But what do those long at-bats mean? Obviously it taxes a starter and can get their pitch count up faster, so it can be good for the team. But what about the individual?
“I think there is a way to quantify what pitches seen means,” Ben Cherington said. “If you do one at-bat of 10 pitches, I'm not sure that single event is hugely impactful, but if you keep doing that over the course of a season, yeah, we think it adds up to value.”
A couple years ago, godfather to the Mound Visit, Jason Rollison, took a dive into what we can take away from batters who saw a lot of pitches. He found that the actual number of pitches isn’t as impactful as the consequence: Pitchers have to go right after these hitters to try to prevent those long battles. Over time, batters who traditionally saw a lot of pitches ended up seeing more pitches in the zone.
Good hitters will take advantage of that.
While it’s been a small sample size, there has been a trend with Tom that when he does see more pitches in the zone, he performs better:
FANGRAPHS
If you are willing to omit those first couple games where he was getting his footing in the majors, Tom has done pretty well since coming to Pittsburgh, assuming he’s actually getting thrown strikes. That might be a bit surprising for someone who has always had a good walk rate, but that’s only part of his game. He slashed .298/.370/.564 in Class AAA in 2019. He doesn’t have to rely on just his OBP to be productive.
If Tom can fully catch up to big league pitcher (of course that is a very big “if”) and make more consistent hard contact, like Shelton said, then he could stick. It’s going to take reps to accomplish that, and with Polanco getting the majority of reps in right and five outfielders on the roster, that’s going to be tricky. But if the Pirates choose to continue to give Tom opportunities, he should see more than his fair share of pitches in the zone.
If that happens, we should finally figure out if Tom is having a good rookie year or not.
