ANAHEIM — In an era when pitchers are throwing nastier and nastier stuff and strikeout rates continue to climb, Hunter Renfroe has gone the other direction.
The Angels outfielder has struck out in 18.1% of his plate appearances heading into Monday’s game, which is the lowest rate of any of his full seasons in the majors.
While that could be dismissed as a product of the relatively small sample size of 94 plate appearances, it continues the pattern of the large sample size of his past several seasons.
Renfroe’s strikeout rate was 31.2% in 2019, and in the subsequent seasons it’s gone to 26.6%, 22.7% and 23.2%.
“Obviously, just experience,” Renfroe said. “I think that’s kind of the biggest thing. Knowing how people are going to pitch me. Knowing what happened in the past. Every failure I do I try to learn from and try to make changes and try to better myself.”
Renfroe’s rates of swinging at pitches, both inside and outside of the zone, have been fairly constant. This season, though, he’s done a better job of getting the bat on the ball. He has whiffed on 23.5% of his swings, his lowest rate in the last five seasons.
With two strikes, he’s whiffed on just 9% of his swings, also the lowest rate of the last five years.
All of that is combined with a walk rate of 10.6%, which is also the highest of his career.
“That’s kind of the biggest thing is trying to swing at good pitches in the zone and try to make sure I put the bat on the ball when I need to put the bat on the ball,” Renfroe said. “The biggest key is hitting the pitches I need to hit. Obviously, there’s times where it’s tough, shadows and tough sunlight, and things that like. You have to mitigate those things and try to put the ball in play. Sometimes good things happen.”
When he has put the ball in play, it’s mostly worked out well for him. His hard-hit percentage of 47.8% is the best of his career. It’s all led to a .274 batting average with six home runs…
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