Every day, it seems like Seiya Suzuki is doing something that makes me go, “Ooh, that’s notable!”
Obviously there was his homer yesterday, paired with multiple walks (should’ve been three if not for a strike that was called six inches off the plate). The Rockies were giving him the superstar treatment this weekend, afraid to go anywhere near the strike zone in big moments, and it’ll be really interesting to see if other teams are already in that mode, too, or if they’ll quickly realize he’s simply not going to chase.
Of course, if they come into the zone too much, they might have a problem:
When he puts the ball in play, no player in baseball is making better contact than Seiya Suzuki. pic.twitter.com/FF1k6Dipit
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) April 18, 2022
That is not a small lead on barrels per batted ball! Even by barrels per plate appearance, Suzuki trails only Giancarlo Stanton, which, well, no shame there. (I don’t really know why that’s a preferred metric, though, because a guy like Suzuki gets dinged for taking so many walks. You can’t barrel a pitch if you are walked, and it’s not like a walk is a bad outcome?)
Truly, Suzuki is doing something special here in the early going, and this kinda tracks with how it’s felt when watching his plate appearances:
Seiya Suzuki: 40 swings so far this year…
4 homers, 2 doubles, 4 singles!
Best ratio of total bases to swings in all of MLB!pic.twitter.com/fMb7MhA9yu— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) April 17, 2022
Already with four homers on the season, Suzuki is just one behind the league leaders in C.J. Cron (who feasted on the Cubs) and Vlad Guerrero Jr. As for wRC+, Suzuki’s 282 is 5th highest in baseball. His OPS is over 1.500, which makes me chuckle.
Also on Suzuki, he’s the only Cubs player to start his MLB career with eight-game hitting streak, since 1945:
Unfazed. pic.twitter.com/FZgMcRn94Y
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) April 18, 2022
Tonight he’ll go for the Japanese player record set by Akinori Iwamura (9 games) back in 2007. If you were wondering, Iwamura hit .318/.417/.492 (145 wRC+) over his first two months in MLB, and then hit .263/.338/.364 (91) over the next three and a half years before he was out of MLB. But that was a long time ago in baseball years, and he also wasn’t the hitter in Japan that Suzuki was.