Tuesday: Jarrod Saltalamacchia

One of the cornerstones of the Mark Teixeira trade, Jarrod Saltalamacchia was (and still is) expected to be a star. As we all know, however, he's had his share of growing pains and has yet to really produce a "breakout" season. His struggles are demonstrated in Baseball Prospectus' scouting reports:

2008: "Ignore the sub-par showing. Saltalamacchia is still a future star."

2009: "Salty might have not blossomed like the fully-finished prospect you might wish he was, be he's still relatively young . . . "

If you take a look at it, Saltalamacchia is a bizarre hitter. Why?

**He has been able to sustain a ridiculously high BABIP throughout most of his career: .388 in 2008 and .352 so far this year. How does he do it?

**His line drive rate is also quite impressive: 27.2% of his batted balls in 2008 were line drives, quite similar to 27.6% so far this year. Now, the question is, why is he batting .252 with his high BABIP and LD%? Read on . . .

**His strikeout totals are staggering. Not quite Chris Davis staggering, but still somewhat troublesome. In 2008 he struck out in 37.4% of his plate appearances, and 36.1% this year. When he does make contact, he's likely to hammer the ball, but he doesn't make contact often enough to do much damage.

**Last year, Salty's OBP was a respectable .352, largely due to his high walk total. However, he (along with every Rangers hitter) seems to disdain walking in 2009, as demonstrated by his .305 OBP so far. This makes a little more sense when examining his contact rates: in 2009, he has swung at 35.4% of the pitches he's seen outside the strike zone (up from 26.2% in 2008). In other words, he's swinging at bad pitches more often.

Overall, I think it's important to keep in mind that Salty has only had 687 career plate appearances (roughly 1.5 seasons worth for a catcher), and he's still only 24 years old. His improved defense has been well noted this year and gives the Rangers more reasons to be optimistic and hang on to him. Perhaps all he needs is some more time . . . .