TORONTO — Since the end of last season, Andy Pages has been playing his favorite video game on the ‘expert’ setting.
“I think I spent every single day in the offseason and during spring training working off the Trajekt machine,” Pages said in Spanish, referring to the virtual reality simulator that replicates the pitching motion of any pitcher in MLB on a video screen with the ball emerging from that pitcher’s release point and arm angle with the unique characteristics and movement profile of his actual pitches.
Pages said he spends 30 minutes to an hour not just hitting off the Trajekt machine but using it to better hone his swing decisions. He would choose “pitches that move a lot” and no one in baseball has more of those than reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes.
“I focused a lot on the pitches that Paul Skenes was throwing, just because his ball moves so much,” Pages said. “I start with him (on game days), but then I zone in on the starting pitcher for that evening.”
Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said Pages has become one of the team’s most regular users of the Trajekt machine – and Skenes is a frequent visitor.
“He’s faced Skenes a lot – the splinker,” Van Scoyoc said of Skenes’ trademark pitch. “It’s basically a tumbling sinker that has outlier-type movement. He’s identifying ‘Ball’ and ‘Strike’ on that.
“I’m sure Andy’s logic is … if I can do it on the hardest pitch, it’ll be easier on pitches that aren’t as good.”
The work has been a driving force behind Pages’ hot start. Last season, he swung at 33% of the pitches he saw outside the strike zone, making for a chase rate of 27% – the classic formula for getting yourself out that big-league pitchers make a living exploiting.
This year after all of those hours facing Skenes, Pages is swinging at just 30.8% of the pitches he has seen out of the zone and his chase rate has dropped to 18.6%. He has “squared up” the ball (by Statcast standards) on 48% of his swings this year compared to 33% last year.
Swinging at better pitches has led to better results. Pages started the season on a tear. He had multiple hits in seven of the Dodgers’ first 10 games, three home runs in the first eight. Even with things slowing down recently – and crashing to a halt with a four-strikeout game on Wednesday – Pages leads the majors with a .413 batting average thanks to an MLB-high 19 hits through Wednesday.
“I think he’s gotten more of an understanding of the value of when you swing at strikes, the results,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And when you swing at balls and you chase, understanding count leverage, what pitchers are trying to do to you, all that stuff. And he’s worked really hard on understanding his strike zone. And when you do that, how much better of a hitter you can become. And so I think he gets a lot of credit, along with the hitting guys, of valuing controlling the strike zone.”
That is not a novel discovery. Pages admits that coaches had preached the value of plate discipline to him for awhile.
“They always tell me that when you’re taking a lot of swings and you’re swinging at really bad pitches outside the zone, it’s really hard to make an impact on balls in the zone, or have a good approach and good at-bats,” Pages said through an interpreter. “I saw that in myself, but they also pounded that in my head as well.”
What might have finally convinced Pages to do something about it were two stretches of last season. Overall, he had a breakout season with 27 home runs and a .772 OPS. But he started the season hitting just .159 after 20 games with 22 strikeouts in his first 63 at-bats. It didn’t help that he struggled with his role batting at the bottom of the Dodgers’ order – something he had never done before.
He finished it even more poorly, going 4 for 51 (.078) in the postseason and getting benched during the World Series.
“I noticed that last year when I went on my bad runs, I just saw that I was undisciplined at the plate, taking bad swings, and then that tended to get (me) in negative thoughts, and being able to kind of go in that bad headspace,” Pages said.
Van Scoyoc said the big difference in Pages is that he has “a lot of clarity” at the plate now that he understands the value of making good swing decisions – and is working to hone the skills needed to make them.
“There’s a lot of conversations we’ve had with him that I think made it important to him,” Van Scoyoc said. “It’s something that we always harp on with guys. For him, it was something that over time he thought about it, he values it and he’s driving it.”
Pages calls himself an aggressive hitter and he doesn’t want to lose that and Van Scoyoc acknowledges plate discipline comes more naturally to some hitters. But Pages’ willingness to put in the work is a positive sign.
“I definitely think there’s innate skill sets,” the hitting coach said. “But I think for guys that don’t have that, it can improve if you make it valuable to you. That’s something he’s done.”