A quick look at Michael Conforto’s debut

Michael Conforto has more than held his own in his first exposure to major league pitching. After 61 PA, he has a .751 OPS and a 112 wRC+. Compare those numbers to the .668 OPS and 89 wRC+ that big free agent signing Michael Cuddyer has produced this season. To be fair, Conforto has seen overwhelmingly RHP while Cuddyer, until recently, was playing against both righties and lefties. Still, few can complain with the production Conforto’s given since his promotion.

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of Conforto so far is his strikeout rate. His 27.9 K% is the fourth-highest mark on the team among non-pitchers with at least 50 PA. Yet Conforto has a pretty good idea of the strike zone and doesn’t have nearly as many swing-and-a-miss outcomes as you might think. According to FanGraphs, Conforto swings at a pitch outside of the strike zone just 23.1% of the time. Nine Mets have marks over 30%, including Juan Uribe, whose O-Swing% checks in at a 40.9 rate.

Meanwhile, Conforto’s swinging strike percentage is in single digits, with a 9.7% mark, the ninth-best mark on the team. Daniel Murphy has the best SwStr% with a 3.8 mark while Anthony Recker is by far the worst, with a 17.1 rate.

So, what’s left to explain Conforto’s high K%? He has an elevated percentage of called third strike punchouts. According to Baseball-Reference, the average strikeout looking percentage is 23.6% yet Conforto checks in with a 35.3 rate, as six of his 17 Ks were called by the umpire.

Let’s look at his swing and take charts, courtesy of Texas Leaguers, to see if we can notice any patterns. First with the swings:

Nothing too outlandish here, except maybe that one pitch he swung at that appeared to be right at his head. Now for the takes:

Conforto doesn’t take many pitches in the middle third of the plate, even if they’re outside of the strike zone high or low. Perhaps more importantly, he doesn’t swing at much hard stuff on the inside third of the plate. Perhaps he’s looking for breaking balls away and pitchers are catching him off guard with hard stuff inside.

Texas Leaguers also breaks down Whiff% by pitch types. As you would expect, he has a higher whiff percentage on breaking balls than he does on fastballs. In a bit of a surprise, he fans on a higher percentage of changeups (18.8%) than either sliders (16.7) or curves (7.7%).

It will be interesting to see if once Conforto gains more experience, if he’ll do better against changeups. Pitchers like using the change when they don’t have the platoon advantage against a batter, as typically this pitch will break away from those hitters. My theory is that it’ll be easier to recognize this pitch and make contact than it would be for someone to correct Ike Davis disease of constantly swinging at breaking balls a foot or more out of the strike zone.