Chris Owings and Yasmany Tomas: Similar Processes, Different Outcomes

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. At least that’s the saying – I’ve never tried (and neither should you). But the sentiment rings true. There are a lot of ways to accomplish a given task. On the mound, there are guys with fastball-heavy arsenals and others who rely on offspeed or breaking stuff to get the job done. At the plate it’s much the same and it really begins and ends with a player’s skill set. Some make their living by hitting for power, others by making a bunch of contact. If you’re lucky or Mike Trout, you do a little bit of both.

I bring this up because, as you’ve also probably heard, Chris Owings is not doing so well. If fact, he’s doing really poorly. Some of this is likely due to his recovery from shoulder surgery from an injury sustained last season. He’s changed his swing some, perhaps to compensate, but it’s not working. And the real issue in my mind is this: he’s swings at everything. In the zone? Swing. Out of the zone but somewhat close? Swing. Out of the zone and maybe way out of the zone? Often, swing. When you’re a punchless, 5’10” middle infielder, that’s not the best strategy. Sure, Giancarlo Stanton can do it but when he does make contact, well, you know the rest of the story. Owings doesn’t have that luxury.

Take a look at the plate discipline numbers of Owings and the rest of the D-backs with at least 250 plate appearances. You’ll see what I mean.

Owings is swinging at 55% of all pitches thrown his way. That’s 20th-most in the majors (out of over 200 players). He’s in the 91st percentile when it comes to likelihood of swinging. He’s swinging at 71% of pitches in the zone (Z-swing%), good for 66th-most in the majors. That’s not a huge concern. He’s swinging at nearly 40% of pitches out of the zone (O-Swing%), however, good for 16th-most in the majors. He chases pitches out of the zone more than almost any other player. That’s a huge concern. He’s never been a guy to take a walk and that’s part of why he was never a more highly-regarded prospect. Scouts tend to notice this stuff well before guys reach the majors.

But hey, if you were looking closely at the table above, you may have noticed something. Check out Yasmany Tomas. Tomas is making contact at virtually the same rate. In fact, Owings is making slightly more while swinging slightly less often. Yes, Tomas is swinging even more than Owings, 9th-most in the majors. When it comes to types of swings, Tomas is swinging at over 76% of pitches in the zone (more than 5% more than Owings) and over 43% of pitches out of the zone (nearly 4.5% more than Owings). By standard measure, Yasmany Tomas has worse plate discipline than Chris Owings. Neither is good at all – both are quite bad – but Tomas is surely a more terrible judge of the strike zone. Either that or he just doesn’t care.

The results between the two players with nearly identical approaches couldn’t be more different. Whereas Tomas has found some level of success, Owings has floundered. How? The two are doing the same things and you could very well argue that the issues effecting Owings are on a more blatant display when Tomas comes to the plate. Shoot, the two even have nearly identical walk and strike out numbers. So what gives?

The main difference is revealed between the two players’ BABIPs. When they put the ball in play, the two players are experiencing drastically different outcomes. Owings has a nearly league average BABIP of .308, meaning that when he puts the ball in play, it results in a hit 30.8% of the time (not including homers because, well, they’re out of play in a good way). Tomas, on the other hand, has the 5th-highest BABIP in the majors of .378, registering a hit nearly 38% of the time he puts the ball in play. Over the couse of a season, let’s call it 500 at-bats, that adds up to nearly 40 extra hits and a big difference in batting average.

But as we know, BABIP is prone to fluctuation and that leaves us with a question that ultimately points to each player’s value. Are their current BABIPs sustainable? Here we turn to batted ball data. Owings and Tomas are registering soft-hit balls at nearly the same rate. Owings sits at 17.4% while Tomas hits balls softly at a 16.8% clip. In medium-hit balls, Owing has a lead of 53.8% compared to Tomas at 48.8%. But in hard-hit balls, Tomas has a decisive advantage with a 34.9% rate to Owings’ 28.8%. As we know, hard-hit balls go for hits more often than any other type of batted ball, giving Tomas the edge. Fly balls go for hits the least often when measuring by launch angle, and here Owings hits 13% more fly balls than Tomas. These two things – a lack of hard hit balls and more fly balls – are the deciding factor between Chris Owings’ output and Yasmany Tomas’.

Should we project any changes? Yes, we should. There’s no way that Tomas will keep his .378 BABIP up. Yes, he’s hitting the ball harder than Owings, but he’s nowhere near the league lead. When that number falls, so will his average and he hasn’t shown Giancarlo Stanton’s power to carry him. That’s not to say that he won’t be useful, I just wouldn’t expect to see what we’ve seen. He should probably start laying off some pitches before the bottom falls out.

Chris Owings, on the other hand, has already seen the bottom fall out, and while I’d argue that Tomas possesses the stronger hit tool, perhaps he should learn from his teammate. Owings needs to hit the ball on the ground more and swing less often. There have been comments on television and twitter that “it always seems like CO is down 0-2.” That’s because he is. He’s either fouling off the first pitch, swinging and missing or, rarely, taking strike one. Being more selective could go a long way for him.

It’s odd. We see the same tendencies, but some small nuances that drastically effect outcomes. Both players have flaws and the sustainability of their approaches are different. But there are common warning signs that don’t bode well for either player, no matter what we’re seeing at the moment. For Chris Owings, it could be the difference in keeping his job. For Yasmany Tomas, it could be the difference in tapping into the power that he has and becoming the more impactful hitter we know he can be. For both, learning some plate discipline can’t hurt their odds for success at the very least.