Forget leadership, Todd Frazier is hitting the ball with authority

One of the big differences here in the early going for the Mets has been the play of their third baseman. Last year, Jose Reyes seemingly started out 0-for-April (it was actually 15-86) and his fielding wasn’t very good. This year, new acquisition Todd Frazier is the best hitter in the everyday lineup with a .968 OPS and fans no longer cringe when a ball is hit to the left side of the diamond, as Frazier has been a marked improvement over the fielders the Mets have trotted out at third base since David Wright retired without telling anyone.

There’s been a ton of virtual ink spent on extolling the virtues of Frazier’s leadership. He may not know your name, the story goes, but he’ll make you feel so good about yourself that you’ll push yourself to greater heights than you ever though imaginable. We’ve heard how even Yoenis Cespedes has embraced Frazier’s leadership. Of course, Cespedes is struggling to stay off the interstate, so maybe he should glower at Frazier, instead. Whatever.

We figured that Frazier would give the team a solid, dependable infield anchor. He was noted for his durability and his defensive work at third base and he offered the promise of 40 homers, too. As long as you didn’t fixate on his batting average, he’d look like a really good player. Of course, too many fans saw that he hit .213 last year and .225 the year before and wondered what all the fuss was about.

But here in the early going, Frazier is delivering all of the things we expected and he’s hitting for a strong average, too. Here after 18 games, he sits with a .293 AVG. His strikeouts are about the same as previous seasons but his BABIP is up a lot. After two years of seemingly not being able to buy a hit, Frazier has a .359 BABIP in games through April 19.

So, we should expect some massive regression, right? Well, some, yes, but perhaps not as much as you might initially think.

For whatever reason, Frazier has struggled mightily in his home park the past two years. We should have expected some drop in production in home games once he was traded away from the good hitter’s park in Cincinnati but what we witnessed was way beyond what we should have reasonably anticipated. In the past two seasons, Frazier posted a .717 and a .611 OPS in his home parks. His last two years with the Reds, he notched OPS marks of .883 and .873 in 2015 and 2014, respectively.

In 47 PA in Citi Field this year, Frazier has a .333/.468/.583 line.

It’s safe to say he’s not going to keep up that kind of pace all year long. But Frazier doesn’t need to hit like an MVP candidate in his home park to improve over the past two seasons – he just needs to hit better than a replacement player. And while it’s true that the hits are falling in here in the early going, there’s also a lot to like when we look deeper into the numbers.

Perhaps the best thing that Frazier has going for him is a steadily improving idea of the strike zone. He’s set career highs in BB% the past two years and here in 2018, he’s on pace to do it a third straight season, as he sits with a 19.7 rate that sits among the team’s best. After swinging at 37.1% of pitches outside of the strike zone in 2015, Frazier has swung at just 21.7% of those pitches here in 2018. While his contact rate is essentially what it’s always been, the result is he’s trading weak contact for both more walks and more power.

Frazier has a lifetime .214 ISO and this year he sits with a .241 mark. But even more impressive is his batted ball contact percentage breakdown. His career rates are: 18.3 Soft Contact; 48.5 Medium Contact and 33.2 Hard Contact. Those numbers are right around what you would expect from any hitter in the league. Here in 2018 those numbers are:

Soft – 7.1%
Medium – 47.6%
Hard – 45.2%

Last year, the top two hitters in Hard Contact Percentage were Joey Gallo (46.4) and Aaron Judge (45.3) and those two players combined to hit 93 home runs. Frazier already has a 35 and 40-HR season under his belt so the potential for a big homer season is there. If he combines that raw strength with laying off pitches out of the zone and barreling up more balls – well, we could see something special.

Thursday night when Matt Wisler was making everyone on the Mets look incompetent, Frazier hit a homer to center field that traveled 412 feet.

Right now this is nothing more than a hot start for a veteran player. But keep an eye out on that plate discipline and see if he’s able to consistently lay off those pitches outside of the zone. A guy with Frazier’s power who doesn’t chase bad pitches could be the key to a big year.