Pittsburgh Pirates: Three Players Who Have Made Dramatic Improvements

Jack Suwinski

Young outfielder Jack Suwinski has been nothing but awesome to start the 2023 season. After a solid but worrisome rookie campaign, there were questions as to how Suwinski would fare in his sophomore season. So far, there's almost no part of his game he hasn't improved upon, based on the first few weeks of the 2023 campaign.

In 65 plate appearances, Suwinski has an MVP-like .269/.385/.635 triple-slash. He currently has a wOBA above .400 at .422 and a wRC+ well above 160 at 166. Suwinski has cut his strikeout rate down from 30.6% to 26.2% and has upped his walk rate to 16.9%. The icing on the cake is he's been an outstanding defensive outfielder with +3 defensive runs saved and +1 out above average in just 143 innings. More importantly, is that 86 of those frames have come in center field.

Suwinski has upped his hard-hit rate to 56.3% and his exit velocity to 95.2 MPH. The former is in the 95th percentile, while the latter is in the 97th percentile. Now sure, it's early into the year, but one could argue that Suwinski has actually been underperforming based on the expected statistics. xSLG pins his slugging percentage at .687 (compared to .645) while his xwOBA comes in at .457 (compared to .421). Both are in the 98th percentile as of writing this.

However, the biggest improvement he's made has been to his chase rate. Last season, Suwinski had a 24.5% chase rate. That was still above average and in the top 75th percentile, but he's cut that down to a minuscule 14.2% rate. That puts him in the 99th percentile. He currently has the 4th best chase rate, tied with Jon Berti.

Now granted, Suwinski's whiff rate is 33%, putting him in the 15th percentile. His 72.6% zone contact rate is way below the league average rate of 82%. But overall, he's not being fooled by pitches outside the zone nearly as much as last season. It's helped him improve both his walk and strikeout rate, and on top of all that, he is also hitting the ball much harder.

Andrew McCutchen

Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks? The Pirates bought long-time fan favorite and former all-star MVP outfielder Andrew McCutchen as a veteran anchor to the line-up. Nobody expected McCutchen to produce as he did in his prime. In the three years prior to 2023, Cutch had only been about a league-average batter, slashing .234/.325/.417 with a .323 wOBA and 103 wRC+. He still had an above-average 11.5% walk rate, 21.8% strikeout rate, and .183 isolated slugging percentage, but a far cry from the 140-170 wRC+ seasons Cutch had back in 2012-2015.

But so far this season, McCutchen has returned with a vengeance. It's only been 89 plate appearances, but he's batting .270/.371/.527 with a .384 wOBA and 141 wRC+. Cutch has walked at a 13.5% rate but is striking out just 16.9% of the time, which would be the best strikeout rate he has posted since his 2013 MVP season. Now some might attribute this to a small sample size fluke, but Cutch does have a .389 expected wOBA, meaning that so far, he really hasn't outperformed himself. Heck, you might even be able to make the argument he could get better. Cutch has a .268 batting average on balls in play compared to his career .315 mark and an expected BA of .297.

So where has McCutchen improved? Well, for one, this is an unprecedented start for the season for Cutch. The only season in which he posted a better wRC+ in April is 2014, arguably the best offensive season of his long-storied career. Even then, Cutch's OPS is just ten points shy of his 2014 OPS.

McCutchen is also being more selective at the plate, with an out-of-zone swing rate of just 22.7%. That would be the best O-zone swing rate he's had since 2019. During his first handful of seasons in Pittsburgh, Cutch had an O-zone swing rate of 24.1%, for comparison. He's also hitting the ball hard more often than almost ever before. His 44.3% hard-hit rate is the second best of his Statcast-era statistics (post-2015). The only year he was hitting the ball hard more frequently was in 2015, at just 44.6%. According to Baseball Savant, the only statistic McCutchen is below average in is max exit velocity, which you should take with a grain of salt since it focuses on just one singular batted ball event.

Connor Joe

Connor Joe is playing like the first-round pick the Pirates likely expected him to play like back when they drafted him in 2014. Last season with Colorado, Joe was a below-average hitter, only slashing .238/.338/.359 with a .314 wOBA and 88 wRC+. Joe showed off plus plate discipline with an 11.8% walk rate, 20.8% strikeout rate, and above-average remarks in both whiff and chase rates, but that's about all the positives that Joe brought.

But so far this year, Joe is batting .328/.423/.590 with a .434 wOBA and 174 wRC+. Joe is still walking at a respectable 11.3% rate with a 21.1% strikeout rate, but he has upped his isolated slugging percentage from a meager .121 to .262 this year. Now granted, Joe is overperforming to a degree. He has a .409 batting average on balls in play, which will likely flatten out as he gets more playing time.

But the expected statistics still paint a very good picture. Joe still has an expected .282/.383/.481 batting line and .379 wOBA. That would be comparable production to Bryce Harper's last season. So what has Joe improved this year compared to last season to make him so effective out of the gate?

Well, for one, Joe has upped his exit velocity from just 85.3 MPH (bottom 5th percentile) to 91.5 MPH (top 79th percentile). His hard-hit rate has skyrocketed from 33.8% to 54.3% (top 92nd percentile). Joe has also become much more selective at the plate. The outfielder/first baseman has always shown off a patient approach, but his swing rate is just 34.4%, which is nearly 10% lower compared to last season. He's only swung outside the strike zone 14.3% of the time, a 7.4% decrease from 2022.

Joe has been a nice surprise for the Pirates. Even if he plays to his expected statistics, he'll still be an extremely valuable hitter. The overall improvements he's made should help him in the long run. Hitting the ball hard was where Joe struggled, but he's improved in that department while becoming a more patient batter.