Yasmany Tomas Still Looks Like Yasmany Tomas

Look, Yasmany Tomas is still a very young player with very limited professional experience in Major League Baseball. Calling him a “finished product” is irresponsible and inaccurate. Odds are, he changes his game in some facet, at some point in time. This spring, the club has gone to great lengths to remind the public that Tomas has technically hit well. Case in point:

Yasmany Tomás upped his #DbacksSpring average to .455 in today’s win over the Padres: https://t.co/rhKkQ78jyxpic.twitter.com/qcQo8KXhgI

— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) March 25, 2016

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. Tomas has racked up a nice average and showcasing his achievement, or any other player’s for that matter, is just good marketing by a club that runs a very good business.

The offseason talk around Tomas centered on his conditioning program. Over the winter and into the spring, Tomas worked to get his body into better shape as he arrived in camp last spring a bit heavier than most expected. This spring, well, it’s not like the change has been exactly striking. Chip Hale seemed to sort of walk back the idea that Tomas had lost any weight at all by instead saying that the idea was to “redistribute” his weight, presumably shifting some extra weight to muscle mass. Technically, that means that Tomas is truly in “better shape,” but as one scout sees it this spring, not a lot has changed. From Nick Piecoro’s recent work at AZ Central:

“I’m not a fan. What’s weird about him is I thought he’d have more power production. He hit better than I thought he would, but the power wasn’t there. I think he has big raw power, I’ll tell you that, but I want to see him make more adjustments. I still think he’s in the same shape; I don’t think he’s lost any weight. He’s still got huge legs. In left field I think he’s a liability. ”

I can’t tell you how many games this unnamed scout has seen, but clearly he hasn’t seen any kind of physical transformation. After spending nearly a week around the team, day-in and day-out, I can tell you that I didn’t see any kind of dramatic change in his profile, but as Hale noted, the changes might be hard to recognize unless you’re in the weight room with the guy. I wasn’t invited to lift with the team. Their loss. It would have been hilarious.

The other part of that scout’s comment refers to “adjustments.” Those are things I’ve written about here in the past when it comes to Tomas and Ryan and I recently discussed them on The Pool Shot. It’s not Tomas’ body that has me concerned. It’s his plate discipline and plan of attack at the plate. Tomas made contact at the dish last year, it’s just that a lot of it was bad contact. Even the highlight clip attached to his offseason workout article shows him driving in a run, albeit in less-than-textbook fashion:

That works, as Bob Brenly points out, but it’s certainly not how anyone would have drawn it up. But even if it worked that one time, it won’t usually work. That’s partly because you can’t always play the Brewers, but also partly because this just isn’t something you can really repeat, nor would you want to. Instead, you’d rather see Tomas driving baseballs gap-to-gap or over the fence. For that to happen regularly, Tomas is going to need to make adjustments.

Reexamining Tomas’ approach a year ago, a couple of things become very clear. First, he was hunting inside pitches, presumably in an effort to showcase his power. Second, he was susceptible to swing and missing at pitches low-and-away, which are often of the off-speed variety.

Here’s where pitchers most-often threw to Tomas:

And here’s where he most often swung:

Because he didn’t do particular damage on the hard inside stuff, it would serve him well to lay off those pitches unless he’s fully committed to them and them alone. It’s nearly impossible for most hitters to get around on these pitches while also maintaining coverage of the rest of the plate. The low-and-away stuff was often soft and thrown by righties trying to get him to chase. He did chase, often. But he also learned to flip these pitches to right field or punch them up the middle to get on base.

Any way you slice it, there was a disconnect between what pitchers wanted to do (top heat map) and what Tomas wanted to do (bottom heat map), and for him to really move forward there’s going to need to be some kind of resolution. A change in approach. A change in what pitches are worthy of his swings and those that aren’t. These are the “adjustments” that the scout quoted is almost surely talking about. And, hey, Tomas is hitting well this spring (as defined by batting average). So, has something changed? Is he doing something differently since returning from a minor knee injury? Let’s have a look and see if there’s anything that stands out.

Now, I didn’t want to examine Yasmany Tomas as he faced a AA pitcher in the 7th inning of a Spring Training game, so I focused on his three at-bats against a guy you might have heard of, but someone he, to my knowledge, has never seen: Corey Kluber. Here Tomas would be tested by quality stuff and could not rely on previous experience to carry him. Here’s what happened:

Hard in, soft away. We’ve heard this before and it’s exactly what Kluber did with Tomas to start with. He let the hard stuff inside go for balls (good) and swung over the top of the breaking stuff on the outside part of the plate (bad). Then Kluber back-doored Tomas with a two-seamer that ran back over the outside corner for a called strike three.

Kluber went hard inside with pitch one and, despite the fact Tomas had let a few pass in the previous at-bat, Tomas hacked and missed. Kluber back-doored another two-seamer for strike two, then Tomas took a very close slider for ball one just off the outside corner. Tomas fouled off a curveball down and away on pitch four. On pitch five, Kluber came up and in with a fastball that Tomas swung at and somehow made contact with, shooting the ball down the first base line, which deflected off of the first baseman and the pitcher didn’t cover first base in time, allowing Tomas to cross the bag for a single.

I called this one, albeit to myself sitting alone in the living room. After two separate five-pitch at-bats, I figured Tomas would go up hacking. Kluber had a terrible inning going and missed his spot, hanging a slider thigh-high and inside. Tomas didn’t pick up the pitch well and swung late, lofting the ball into shallow right field for an easy out.

Recapping the three at-bats, I’m not sure we learned anything new. The most obvious reason for that is the fact that this is a very narrow examination. The second reason is that while Tomas laid off the hard stuff inside in the first at-bat, he willingly went after it in the second. He still chased low and away, and even though a couple of the pitches were in the zone, he swung and missed. His base hit was partly due to chance and not all that dissimilar from the video embedded above, albeit to a different part of the field. The BABIP Gods do in fact smile upon everyone on occasion.

In watching Tomas before and after the game on Friday against Kluber, I certainly haven’t noticed much different. Small sample issues still apply, but it’s disconcerting that there isn’t an obvious change in tactics. Maybe it’s just too early in the spring. Maybe his knee is still bothering him a little. Or maybe he just hasn’t changed and won’t. If the latter is true, he’ll be out of a job in no time. Socrates Brito has earned a job irrespective of A.J. Pollock‘s Opening Day status. The team may not give it to him, but he’s certainly earned it. If they do give it to him, Tomas will be sitting quite a bit more than we expected. Substantial growth as a bench player is not something I’d project.

If he wants to avoid losing his job, Yasmany Tomas is going to need to make better contact more frequently. He’s going to need to prove that he can work a count and get pitches thrown in the locations he wants. When mistakes are thrown, he’s going to need to pounce on them and punish pitchers. He can do all of this. He’s capable of all of this. But these things need to happen consistently against quality pitching or he’s going to find himself watching from a distance. The team is simply better off if he does turn the proverbial corner, and there’s still time for him to do so. It’s just that his leash is getting shorter and shorter.