Duvall’s plate patience at odds with production

CINCINNATI — In the span of 46 games, Adam Duvall has fundamentally changed his identity as a hitter.

The Reds outfielder burst onto the scene in his first 59 games, batting .258 with 18 homers and a .589 slugging percentage, enough to earn him a National League All-Star bid in his first full season.

But underlying those numbers was an anomaly — Duvall walked in just 3.2 percent of his at-bats. In the modern era, no qualifying hitter has ever posted a walk rate that low while posting a slugging percentage as high as Duvall’s — only Dante Bichette in 1995 and Joe DiMaggio in his rookie season in ’36 had a walk rate below 4 percent and a slugging percentage above .570.

“You’d like everybody in your lineup to be able to be high on-base, high slugging, and that would be a perfect world,” Reds hitting coach Don Long said. “I think it’s more a matter of finding what guys’ strengths are, and then whatever their challenges are, trying to make those a little bit better.”

Naturally, it raised the question of whether or not Duvall could sustain an unprecedented pace — neither DiMaggio nor Bichette ever walked below 4 percent again, and DiMaggio became a 10-percent-or-higher walk guy.

Duvall has seemingly answered that question over his past 46 games, walking 10.6 percent of the time to raise his season walk rate to 6.7 percent, more than twice what it was after 59 games. Duvall said it hasn’t been intentional, though.

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve been more patient. I’ve just happened to get more walks,” Duvall said. “I feel like I’ve done a better job with two strikes, and I think that’s helped getting a couple more walks.”

Theoretically, getting on base more often would …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com