I know. It’s tough to watch guys like Gleyber Torres and Ozzie Albies set the league on fire while Amed Rosario is dealing with growing pains.
Remember when Mets fans were extremely excited last season when Amed Rosario was called up?
Well, other than a couple of games, he hasn’t given Mets fans much to be excited about in his short Mets career to date.
So far in his career he is slashing .251/.273/.379/.652 with a 76 wRC+. But lets consider he’s only 22 and in his first full season in the big leagues. During his short stint in 2017 through the start of his 2018 campaign, he has made strong strides, the overall results just haven’t shown yet.
In 2017 a huge issue for Rosario was K’s and plate discipline, he looked over matched at times; his K% was almost 30%. However, this season he has made improvements in these areas, and because of that his contact rate has gone up, hard hit rate has gone up and strikeouts have gone down. Here’s a deeper comparison:
2017 O-Swing%: 45.5% 2018 O-Swing%: 39.1%
2017 Swing%: 55.3% 2018 Swing%: 52.1%
2017 SwStr%: 18.1% 2018 SwStr%: 13.6%
2017 O-Contact%: 56.4% 2018 O-Contact%: 63%
2017 Z-Contact%: 75.9% 2018 Z-Contact%: 81%
2017 Contact%: 67.3% 2018 Contact%: 73.8%
2017 K%: 28.8% 2018 K%: 22.2%
2017 Hard%: 24.1% 2018 Hard%: 30.5%
In a nutshell, he’s laying off bad pitches and looking for balls he can drive. And when he squares up a ball he can do damage, as we saw last night.
Clearly Amed has been more selective this season and it is paying off, he’s striking out less, making more contact and hitting baseballs harder. Now, when will the results start to come? Well, they’ve started to come lately. He’s hit his first three homerums of the season this past week. In his past 18 games he’s hitting .300 with a .795 OPS and 117 wRC+.
There’s still a major flaw to Amed’s game, and that is stolen bases. Amed Rosario is one of the fastest players in baseball but he gets some terrible jumps when trying to steal. In five atempts this season he has been caught four times. This is something he’ll have to improve on.
Overall there is still more work to do, but the progress he has already made is a great sign. Be patient Mets fans.