Naylor\u2019s penchant<\/a> for swinging high and away after Naylor\u2019s three-hit ALCS Game 2. In that piece, Ryan pointed to Dan Wilson\u2019s thinking on why Naylor can get away with this where others can\u2019t: \u201cHis swing is so adjustable. When he sees a pitch up in the zone, he\u2019s able to stay really short and get on top of it, and that\u2019s the key.\u201d<\/p>\nBy nature, Naylor\u2019s a bat control hitter. He\u2019s got the raw power you\u2019d expect for a first baseman, and he could use that to chase dingers. But rather than selling out for launch angle, he uses his skills to square up the ball at the 89th percentile, peppering hits all over the field, with enough power to keep pitchers honest. Given his baseball IQ, you trust that choice.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that ability to get the most out of his swing that allows him to fearlessly go after pitches most guys would only flail at. In the Mariners\u2019 biggest regular season series of the year, he went after another high pitch to help bury the Astros.<\/p>\n
The conventional wisdom is to elevate and celebrate. Naylor knows he\u2019s better this way, and he\u2019s brave enough to go against the grain.<\/p>\n
While it comes through in his hitting, when you think of Josh Naylor\u2019s fearlessness, it\u2019s probably his baserunning that comes to mind first. And in this department, his fearlessness is actually underrated.<\/p>\n
Naylor\u2019s a big-bodied first baseman with a sprint speed in the third percentile, 12th lowest in MLB. And yet he stole 30 bases this year, including going a perfect 19 for 19 with Seattle. When he first started his spree, you could say it was just pitchers ignoring a big guy, but he didn\u2019t get any less daring after the word got out.<\/p>\n
So when people talk about his stolen bases, they usually talk about how he\u2019s able to do it because of his baseball IQ. He can spot tendencies and timing in pitchers at an apparently elite level, enough to compensate for his concrete shoes. But consider the 27 other players with sprint speeds under 25 feet\/second. 17 of them are catchers; it\u2019s not exactly a low-baseball-IQ group. Yet those other 27 players combined for just 15 stolen base attempts. Naylor\u2019s 32 attempts are a testament to his willingness to take risks. His 94% success rate proves he knows what he\u2019s doing and that his baseball IQ is, in fact, elite.<\/p>\n
This all came together in one of the biggest games in Mariners franchise history: Game 5 of the ALDS. If ever there was a time for caution, this would have been it. A slow guy getting caught stealing, wasting a precious base runner against Tarik Skubal, could easily have ended up being the story of how the Mariners were eliminated from the playoffs. But Josh Naylor wasn\u2019t afraid to try, and in a game that went 15 innings, you can bet the run mattered.<\/p>\n
He plays defense the same way. As he daringly plays farther toward second than any other first baseman. Others play a bit farther from the bag, but they do it safely, playing back rather than shading towards second as Naylor does. His confidence that he can still cover the bag means he\u2019s not sacrificing outs to play with optimized positioning. In other words, it\u2019s not reckless. Aren\u2019t you glad he wasn\u2019t closer to the bag in ALCS Game 3? Lots of teams would like to position thier first baseman here against Alejandro Kirk. Only Naylor\u2019s can actually do it.<\/p>\n
Naylor employs a style of play that seems crazy. But he\u2019s not being reckless, just fearless. And beyond merely being good, this is what made him an instant fan favorite and a player the Mariners and their fans felt they couldn\u2019t live without. It\u2019s no wonder he was ready for the big moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s the location of a 99 mile per hour fastball. I wouldn\u2019t advise swinging at this pitch. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,619,65,38419,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-546322","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mariners","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-mariners","13":"tag-seattle-mariners-previews","14":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115985638567394410","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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