Adolis is having an interesting start to the year. His average hasn’t been the most impressive, but his underlying metrics have been very quietly elite. He came into this year with a much healthier knee and a new swing. Bochy described it as “quieter,” comparing it to Corey’s swing that’s very direct to the ball. “He’s not trying to lift it so much. That’s what I’ve noticed in the early part of spring. He’s so strong, he doesn’t have to get long [and] try to hit home runs. I’m sure he wants to hit those home runs — that’s who he is — but it’s all about hitting it hard. If he hits it hard, it’s going to go out.”

Now let’s see if the numbers so far back this up:

7 comments

  1. As we can see, Adolis is 68th percentile in launch angle sweet-spot%. Sweet-spot on Statcast is defined as having a launch angle between 8 and 32 degrees.

    https://preview.redd.it/lqb2qb8ou8we1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=373715d0e2e9f9179f846db2dee44a7b3b5aa64d

    This is useful because we can use it together with a players hard hit% (ball hit over 95 mph) to determine the quality of contact a player is getting on the ball, which is what then equates to barrel%. Barrels are defined as “batted-ball events whose comparable hit types (in terms of exit velocity and launch angle) have led to a minimum .500 batting average and 1.500 slugging percentage.” A ball that’s hit at 98 mph with a launch angle between 26 and 30 degrees will always be classified as a barrel, and for every mph over 98 the launch angle range expands.

    Now that we have that information out of the way I provided his savant page above so we can see just how well he’s doing to start the year.

    **94th percentile in xSLG**
    **96th percentile in average exit velocity**
    **98th percentile in barrel%**
    **96th percentile in hard-hit%**

    It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, however. Adolis is *1st percentile* in chase rate, *21st percentile* in whiff rate, and 26th percentile in walk rate. That’s not great. So what’s saving him? His strikeout rate is only 19.3% this year which is good for 63rd percentile in the league. Yes he’s chasing a lot, but when he gets to 2 strikes he’s done a much better job this year of being more selective and forcing pitchers to throw something in the zone to try and get him out.

    Now none of this is exactly hard hitting analysis. I’m just providing stats and some definitions. So once and for all what is the biggest difference this year compared to last year that has led to Adolis’s quietly impressive start to the year? It’s his **Squared-Up%.** He’s in the 82nd percentile in the league in squared-up% with a rate of 30.5%. Each swing has a maximum attainable exit velocity based on each pitch. If a swing is able to obtain 80% of that maximum attainable exit velocity it is categorized as a “squared-up swing.” So this means that 30.5% of the time, Adolis is getting at least 80% of the maximum exit velocity someone can get on that particular pitch he makes contact on. How does this compare to last year? Well, last year his squared-up rate was 24th percentile.

    Now this isn’t to say he didn’t hit the ball hard last year too. He was still 78th percentile in avg exit velocity, 85th percentile in barrel rate, and 87th percentile in hard-hit rate. However, his launch angle sweet-spot rate was much lower at 42nd percentile and his strikeout rate was a disgusting 16th percentile at 27.8%. The changes that he’s made this offseason to shorten up his swing and be more direct to the ball have resulted in much better quality of contact on the ball. The chase is still there. It will always be there. However, I’d argue that people are putting a little too much attention onto how much chase rate matters compared to strikeout rate in the grand scheme of things.

    Last year it seemed that far too often he was willing to compromise his ability to hit the fastball to try and get to more breaking and offspeed pitches. It didn’t really help much as he still produced a 17th percentile chase rate, but it also resulted in a career low fastball slug rate last year of .367. This year, not only is he back to his usual numbers vs the fastball, he is **destroying** breaking pitches. He’s slugging .625 on breaking pitches in 2025 with an xSLG of .771. For reference, Bryce Harper leads the league in breaking pitches thrown to him and is slugging .559 with an xSLG of .477.

    So what were the exact changes in his swing that led to this improvement? For starters his swing is definitely shorter. In 2023 and 2024 he had a swing length of 7.9 feet, whereas this year it’s shortened up to 7.7 feet. That may not seem like a big difference, but think about the difference in swings between guys like Salvador Perez and Paul Goldschmidt. 2 drastically different swing profiles visually, but the only difference numerically between them is .2 mph in bat speed and .2 feet in swing length. Adolis and Salvador Perez have the exact same bat speed, but Adolis has a squared-up% of 30.5% to Salvy’s 23.5%. Adolis and Paul Goldschmidt have the exact same swing *length* and we can see much more comparable strikeout rates and squared-up rates at 18.5% and 28.7% respectively. This is where swing length comes into play in regard to the quality of contact you’re able to get on the ball and how even minuscule measurement changes can have drastic impacts on contact numbers.

  2. Chase rate is shocking, but it’s nice to that what the eye test has told us (he’s looked much better than his slash line) is reinforced by numbers.

  6. Nice effort post man. Looks like a classic El Bombi line. Lots of pop and swing and miss.

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