This week we are all, if we're wise, unsurprised.
Oh, maybe I'm "surprised" J.T. Realmuto is leading the league with a .500 batting average, but I'm not actually surprised that somebody like J.T. Realmuto is leading the league in something like batting average by hitting something like .500. I'm surprised, but not really, that Sal Perez leads the majors in home runs. I know those statements, after only a week, are close to random. I'm surprised the same way I'd be surprised to find out that my unexceptional neighbor won the lottery but not surprised that somebody's unexceptional neighbor won it.
But there's one leaderboard in which I retain the ability to be genuinely surprised after one week: The swing rate leaderboard. No basic stat stabilizes as quickly, according to research by Baseball Prospectus' Russell Carleton, than swing rate. In just a few dozen plate appearances, we can be reasonably sure that a player's swing rate is a result of the player and his approach, not to noise or circumstances. We're not to a few dozen yet (through Sunday, nobody had batted more than 33 times) but we're to the point at which I'm capable of being surprised -- not just that a weird name is at the top of a leaderboard, but by the weird name itself.
Because the name at the top of the leaderboard right now is Joey Votto.
Over the previous three years, Votto had swung at just 61 percent of pitches in the strike zone, which puts him in the 30th percentile of all batters. He had swung at 39 percent of all pitches he has seen, putting him in the fifth percentile. This is where he had swung at pitches (or, mostly, didn't) last year:
But through Sunday, Votto had batted 23 times, and he had swung at every pitch he had seen in the strike zone*. Seventeen strikes, and he'd swung at all of them. No other batter with more than 10 plate appearances could say that.
He'd also swung at 36 percent of pitches outside the zone. He's been more aggressive than any hitter in baseball on pitches in the zone; he's been more aggressive than three-quarters of hitters on pitches outside the zone. This is, apparently, Joey Votto:
If this turns out to be real, it'll be an outlandish development. Votto has been one of the most famously patient hitters in baseball for most of his career. This skill has made him rich and has made the Reds better than they would otherwise be, and some people hate him for it. His patience has frustrated his critics in the media, the Reds fan base, even the Reds front office, who see in his extreme patience an unwillingness to carry an offense and embrace an archetype. Their criticism has frustrated many of the rest of us.
"You can extol the virtues of the almighty walk all you like," Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty wrote. "You can tell me how wonderful it is that Votto makes fewer outs than anyone. I understand all that, and it is all good. Especially if you're leading off or batting 2nd. If you are batting 3rd, your responsibilities are different."
So, consider his third-inning plate appearance against Clay Buchholz in the fourth game of the season. Runners are at the corners, and Votto represents the tying run. "Votto in his career is a .332 hitter with runners in scoring position -- that's career," Reds announcer Thom Brennaman says. "You go back to all players since 1974 and only three players have been better than that number of Votto's."
You might hear subtext in the reading of that stat. Thom's dad, Marty, the Reds' radio broadcaster, has been one of the harshest critics of Votto's approach. Votto's average with runners in scoring position might be phenomenal, but the careful listener has probably also heard (perhaps even on Reds broadcasts) that Votto's RBI totals are relatively low in spite of it. And it's true: They are!
Despite Votto being the game's third-best overall hitter (by OPS+) since 2011, and despite that .332 batting average with RISP, he has driven in a relatively low percentage of baserunners. His rank on the RBI percentage leaderboard each year since 2011 (minimum 300 plate appearances):
2016: 19th
2015: 127th
2014: 163rd
2013: 213th
2012: 76th
2011: 33rd
Of course, he drives in fewer runs because he draws so many walks in those situations. It's hard to get an RBI with a walk. It's also hard -- almost impossible, in fact -- to lower your team's chances of winning by drawing a walk, and since 2011 Votto has added more win probability, per opportunity, with runners in scoring position than Miguel Cabrera or Mike Trout:
It's also hard to have the fourth-best batting average with runners in scoring position since 1974 if you're expanding the strike zone. It's also hard to change one's well-trained strike zone judgment just because a runner happens to be on third. "It's the tens of thousands of balls I've seen over my years of playing that have given me the database in my brain to react to certain pitches," Votto has said.
Votto has said a lot, actually. He's called this criticism of him silly. "I'm not going to use the word ignorant, but 'ignorant.' I also think that there is some validity to it because it is coming from a perspective that is being nostalgic." He has trolled his critics, saying after the 2015 offseason that he had "practiced walking a lot" over the winter. He has said his goal is not only to take a ton of pitches out of the zone, but also to take more pitches in the zone.
So if his approach is different, it would really be something. Maybe he finally buckled to the critics! That seems incredibly unlikely, but everything about this article was unlikely. Maybe he's decided on his own that being more aggressive will make him better. That seems unlikely. Or maybe this is one weird statistical fluke, in a week of weird statistical flukes. That seems unlikely, but the most likely.
It's impossible to know, in part because it's impossible to point to one or five specific swings and say those, those are the ones he wouldn't have swung at last year. That's what we're talking about here. Swinging at a pitch in the zone is the least exceptional act in baseball; it's only in the aggregate, over time, in the blurs of a heat map, that the exceptional starts to get color. Against Buchholz, after Brennaman brought up Votto's average with runners in scoring position, he got a 1-1 cutter at the corner of the zone low and in.
He swung. He grounded hard into a double play. The rally ended. Maybe that's the one he wouldn't have swung at last year.
The next day, he batted in the sixth inning against Mike Leake. Billy Hamilton was on second base in a scoreless tie. Votto got a first-pitch changeup, probably below the bottom of the zone.
He lashed a double into right field and the run scored. The Reds took the lead and went on to win 2-0. Maybe that's the one he wouldn't have swung at last year.
The most surprising thing Joey Votto could do this year is be bad at hitting. The second most surprising thing he could do is be super aggressive, or even moderately aggressive, at the plate. He probably won't be either, but danged if he didn't convince us in just one week that it's something to start watching out for.
*The strike zone is defined differently depending on site and methodology. We used Baseball Prospectus' leaderboard, based on PITCHf/x's strike zone top and bottom. This is different than saying, for instance, that he hasn't taken a called strike.