When do we start talking about Mike Zunino?

[seahawksfan234]

I should preface this by acknowledging the obvious. Yes, Zunino is young. Yes, Zunino has placed a large role in Felix's success through the fact that he is an excellent pitch framer. And yes, I know that Zunino has shown that he has great raw natural power.

That being said, his approach at the plate is nauseating to say the least and has not improved even the slightest since coming to the majors. It's like he's up there swinging the bat as hard as he can with his eyes closed.

Last year he hit .199 with an abysmal .254 OBP that was clearly boosted by the fact that he was hit by 17 pitches. He walked 17 times despite striking out 158 times in 438 ABs. This year his plate discipline is looking even worse, he's hitting .140 with 24 strikeouts in 50 AB. That's 210 strikeouts in 428 ABs. His walk rate has improved, but he's getting on base less and not making as much contact.

After a certain point, the "youth" and "being rushed to the majors" and "potential" arguments have to stop proving valid. It would be one thing if Zunino was showing progress, because he is not showing progress whatsoever.

I don't care about his K rate if he was at least hitting the same amount of home runs and getting on base at even a .300 rate with a .240 or so average, but .199/.245 is terrible, and his .140/.214 rate so far is even worse.

Every time I see him at the plate, he's hacking at the ball to go deep. He needs to simply change his approach to making contact, if you focus on that, the home runs will come with his raw strength. Focus on hitting line drives, and his BA will go up and the amount of homers may go up as well as he will put the bat on the ball more frequently.

 

[cezero]

We've been talking about Zunino on here for awhile.

 

[tnerb57]

Before I respond, please, who the fuck is Mike Zunino?

 

[cezero]

Before I respond, please, who the fuck is Mike Zunino?

He's a guy who's costing us $67 million less than your team will be paying Hamilton to play exactly 0 games for you over the next 3 seasons.

 

[tnerb57]

He's a guy who's costing us $67 million less than your team will be paying Hamilton to play exactly 0 games for you over the next 3 seasons.

Meeeeow! Well done!

 

[WizardHawk]

Everyone is talking about Zunino. The question is what can you do about it? Sucre isn't exactly a great option to take over more days and they don't have anything in the farm system to bring up. If there is a decent defensive catcher with a live bat on the trade wire then by all means the team should at least target them. I'd imagine that line of GM's looking to get in on that kind of player would be long.

Mike was brought up way too early out of desperation at that position and it clearly shows. The best way to work out hitting off speed pitches is to do it against pitchers that are also still learning how to actually throw them.

Talk away, but answers to how to fix it are going to be elusive.