BRADENTON, Fla. -- There's still plenty about Jack Suwinski's 2022 season that can not be properly explained.
The drastic hand splits? Well, that comes with the territory of being a rookie left-handed hitter? His home-road splits might always be a mystery (.982 OPS at home, .395 on the road). The best answer hitting coach Andy Haines said the team came up with was his July slump which got him demoted back to the minors happened to be on a road trip. In a word, it was coincidental. Making the jump from Class AA to the majors and holding his own? There aren't too many players who can claim that.
It was a rookie year with notable highs -- including a three home run game on Father's Day -- and lows, like his 0-for-28 streak that got him demoted to the minors in mid-July. And while his major-league career got off to a strong start overall, finishing with 19 home runs, 1.8 fWAR and a 100 wRC+ over 106 games, there were plenty of times last year where he just didn't feel like himself.
“I’m gonna feel more like myself as time goes on, and as the player I know I can be," Suwinski told me. "I always feel like there’s that untapped potential that can come out at any time.”
“It just became crystal clear of what the major-league game is going to demand of Jack," Haines said. "What he did really well, what problems major-league pitching presented him… He has toughness to him, he has aptitude, he has adaptability. He [was on] a mission all winter.”
That mission? To make himself feel like himself in the box more often. How he did it? He tweaked his mechanics.
There are a handful of changes in Suwinski's swing and stance this spring compared to last season. The first is the hands are higher. He's also more upright in the batter's box. That helps his swing fall in line with what is going on with the lower half.
“The hands will work into a normal slot," Suwinski said. "I don’t want to manipulate them a lot or else I’ll get too handsy, and I want my lower half to do what it needs to do.”
The big change for him is he opened up his stance more. Not so much to the point that he feels he is compromising any power, but enough that it is noticeable. You can see those changes when you look at video from the end of last season to the spring opener on Saturday:
His movements and stance were a bit more exaggerated at Pirate City, but here's a side view to show the other parts of the lower half mechanics, like stride length, are basically the same:
Mitch Keller vs. Jack Suwinski. Suwinski gets a solid rip. pic.twitter.com/MRkNikpQvr
— Alex Stumpf (@AlexJStumpf) February 18, 2023
This is something Suwinski really wanted to work on this winter. Mechanically, his swing is always going to be from the "ground up." From the feet to the hip to the torso to the hands. They all got tweaked, but it was that footwork and how he opened up on his swing that made him feel like he wasn't controlling his attack zones.
“My internal rotation would be greater in games," Suwinski explained. "Adrenaline’s pumping, the speed. I would just cut off part of that zone, my head would come down a little bit. Starting open, sometimes it will bring me back to [being] square, sometimes it will leave me open. Just gives me a better direction, a better hand path.”
Taking a look at Suwinski's heat maps, he definitely had much more success on pitches on the inner-third of the plate compared to the outer third. Here is what his slugging percentage was based on where the pitch was located last year:
FANGRAPHS
This more or less confirms what Suwinski said. He could still pull inside pitches when he turned in too much, but he had difficulty covering the outer third of the plate in the process. And when you look at that 0-for-28 stretch that caused him to be demoted back down to the minors, pitchers threw him outside more:
To echo Haines' words, the game asked Suwinski to make an adjustment. He has with the open stance, which should help him be more square in the box rather than closed off.
Suwinski's rookie campaign was unquestionably a plus for the Pirates last year, but there's room to grow. Being able to avoid some of prolonged cold spells is one of those areas, and being able to control all parts of the zone is a good way to do that. An open stance, plus the other changes he made to make sure it is a tweak from the ground up, is a good start.
