Why is Mike Zunino Struggling Offensively?

It’s no secret that Mike Zunino has been struggling at the plate this year. In 30 at-bats, he’s hit .100/.206/.439 (AVG/OBP/SLG). To be fair, the rest of the team hasn’t been hitting their best either. Zunino has some offensive potential, but something isn’t quite clicking this season. Let’s see what’s going on with him.

Zunino’s Career Offensive Ability

Zunino was a Mariner for the first six years of his major league career. He joined the Rays via trade in November of 2018.

Zunino has never been the best hitter, but for a catcher his career numbers are not that bad. He had his best year at the plate in 2017, with an OPS of .840.

Looking at the graph of his OPS by year, we can see that his numbers rose after 2015, and then started declining after the 2017 season. Ironically, during his best season he also had one of the worst strikeout rates in the league, at 37%. League average strikeout rate is 20%. He’s always been above 30% in terms of strikeout rate in his career. So far there is no sign of improvement, but hopefully he can turn things around soon.

Zunino Made Changes to His Swing

During the offseason and quarantine, Zunino spoke to Juan Toribio from MLB.com about how he spent most of 2019 adjusting to the Rays organization. Formally with the Mariners for 6 seasons, he needed to get caught up with lingo and build relationships with the Rays pitching staff. With his focus on the defensive aspects of his position, he recorded the worst year at the plate of his career.

Looking forward to the 2020 season, Zunino spoke about some new swing changes that he is hoping will improve him offensively.

“We have some knowledge on some new swing changes and some new thoughts that were coming, and I’m confident that these are going to be something that really help me,” Zunino said. “The ultimate goal is to get better every day and feeling good here, and being able to put it into competition this spring has been fun.”

Courtesy of Juan Toribio, MLB.com

Some of these swing changes included shortening his swing and working on his body positioning, focusing on his lower half. Check out the comparison to spot the differences yourself. Here are the things I noticed:

• Zunino’s stance is lower this season, knees are more bent
• His stance is open this year, last year it was more straight
• His left arm and shoulder are positioned lower

Are the swing changes working vs left handed pitchers?

As a righty bat, I would expect Zunino to perform better against left handed pitchers than right handed pitchers. Even though the sample size is small, let’s look at his splits for this season:

Yikes. So it looks like Zunino is not doing better against left handed pitchers so far. He has no hits or walks against lefties this year.

Digging a little more into this, I found out that according to his career splits, Zunino actually performs better against right handed pitchers. And looking back to his splits for this season, all of his hits and walks came against righties.

That being said, we are still only looking at three hits and three walks against righties so far this year. And even though he bats better against righties, he should be putting up better numbers against lefties. At the very least, he should be getting on base against a lefty soon.

Is Zunino being pitched differently?

If a hitter is doing well, or other teams pick up trends for certain hitters, pitchers will make adjustments accordingly. It’s possible that opposing pitchers switched up what they are throwing to Zunino. If that’s the case, it may provide some insight on why Zunino is struggling. Let’s see.

For this analysis, I used pitch data from Brooks Baseball and compared Zunino’s time with the Mariners (2013-2018) to his time with the Rays (2019). I did not want to isolate data from this year to make comparisons because the sample size is not large enough at this point to pull any conclusions.

Against Left Handed Pitchers

First, let’s start by looking at how Zunino is pitched against left handed pitchers. Later on we will look at how he is pitched against right handed pitchers.

First Pitch Against LHP

When facing left handed pitchers, Zunino is seeing more four seam fastballs, sliders, cutters, and changeups with the Rays than he was with the Mariners. He is seeing significantly fewer two seam fastballs and curveballs.

The decrease in sinkers and curveballs thrown by left handed pitchers can be attributed to Zunino’s success against the pitch. Out of every pitch Zunino sees for the first pitch of the at-bat, he performs best against the two seam and the curveball. His career SLG against first pitch two seams is 1.080, and against first pitch curveballs is 2.000.

For the first pitch of the at-bat, lefty pitchers are avoiding what Zunino hits best, making it harder for him to get a hit. This is especially a big deal for Zunino, because he swings at the first pitch 60% of the time.

Two Strikes Against LHP

With two strikes, Zunino is still seeing the sinker and the curveball a lot less than when he was with the Mariners. He is also seeing the changeup less.

Zunino’s best SLG with two strikes comes against the changeup, at .333. So, it makes sense that pitchers are throwing it less when Zunino has two strikes. Pitchers don’t want to throw the pitch he hits the best.

However, his SLG against the sinker and the curveball is .169 and .167 respectively. That doesn’t seem like a big threat to me. So why use those less against him?

Another reason lefty pitchers may be avoiding the sinker is because Zunino is a righty. It is discouraged for lefty pitchers to throw a sinker against righty batters because the movement of the pitch often aligns with swing path, allowing hitters to cause damage.

In terms of the decreased curveball usage, it seems as if pitchers are opting to throw harder/faster pitches against Zunino with two strikes. While I am not sure for certain why pitchers wouldn’t throw a curveball to him, it might just be that they don’t have a curveball or they have a better go-to put away pitch for a two strike count.

Against left handed pitchers, it definitely seems like since joining the Rays, pitchers are switching up the pitch mix to Zunino to capitalize on his weakness. This may be a contributing factor for Zunino struggling against left handed pitchers.

Against Right Handed Pitchers

Now, let’s take a look at how he is being pitched against right handed pitchers.

First Pitch Against RHP

When facing right handed pitchers, Zunino is seeing less sinkers, cutters, and changeups.

Zunino is pretty consistent in terms of career SLG against all first pitches faced. His SLG against first pitch changeups is the highest, at 2.000. Against other pitches, his SLG ranges from .600-.673, with the exception of the sinker. His SLG against the sinker is the lowest, at .455.

If his SLG is the worst against the sinker, why are righties throwing it less against him for the first pitch? It may have to do with the arsenals of pitchers he is facing. When Zunino switched teams, he was exposed to a number of new pitchers, each with a different arsenal.

Even though the pitch mix for Zunino’s first pitch changed after he joined the Rays, it should have been to his advantage. He is seeing more pitches that he hits well.

Two Strikes Against RHP

With two strikes, Zunino is seeing the slider more, and seeing every other pitch less.

It turns out that Zunino hits best against the slider, compared to other pitches, when down two strikes. His SLG against two strike sliders is .338.
So why did the use of the slider increase so much?

Zunino swings and misses against the slider the most out of all pitches in a two strike count, with a whiff percentage of 28%. I think this also goes back to arsenal and put away pitches. If a pitcher has a great slider, they might want to see if they could get Zunino to chase. This data is for all counts with two strikes, so if pitchers have some leeway, they are more likely to throw breaking pitches out of the zone.

When down two strikes, Zunino is seeing more pitches that he can hit well, but also pitches that he is most likely to swing and miss.

Overall, the changes in pitch mix may be a contributing factor to Zunino’s struggles. It is concerning, however, because he is being thrown some pitches that he has good career numbers against. And, he is being thrown those pitches more frequently.

This is particularly concerning against right handed pitchers because Zunino has better career numbers against righties. So, if they are throwing him pitches he can hit more frequently, he should be able to capitalize. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the story so far.

How is he hitting the ball?

The harder you hit the ball, the more likely you are to get a hit. A ball is considered hard hit when the exit velocity is greater than 95 mph. League average hard hit percentage is about 35%.

Let’s look at the hard hit trend for Zunino.

Zunino’s highest hard hit percentage came in 2017, his best offensive year. To see just how important hard hit percentage is, let’s compare it to Zunino’s career SLG. If we put the two graphs next to each other, we see a really strong correlation between SLG and hard hit percentage.

In years that Zunino’s SLG was high, his hard hit percentage was also high. The same goes for years that he had offensive struggles. When he wasn’t hitting the ball hard frequently, his SLG decreased.

In 2019 (and so far in 2020), Zunino did not hit the ball hard as frequently as in previous years, and his SLG suffered as a result.

Is there Any Hope for Zunino Going Forward?

Unfortunately, Zunino’s stats are trending downward. Based on his at-bats so far this year, it does not look like any significant improvements have been made. Keys to success for Zunino include:

• Finding a way to start hitting the ball hard more consistently
• Trying to find a way to get on base (by any means) more frequently

The season is still new, and the circumstances this year are definitely weird. A lot of players are still adjusting to being back in the majors and facing major league competition. Hopefully, Zunino can find a way to breakthrough and start hitting a little more consistently than he has been so far.

While we all want Zunino to be successful and a great hitter, we need to make sure we have realistic expectations. Hitting has never been the strongest part of his game. He’s never seen the ball that well, with a high strikeout rate and low walk rate year to year. So, Zunino is not just going to turn into an amazing hitter overnight. What he can do is just focus on finding a way to get on base, avoid an out, and hit the ball hard.

Hopefully by the end of this season, we’ll see Zunino’s swing changes pay off, and I’ll be writing about how great he did at the plate this year.

What do you think the future holds for Mike Zunino?