Mariners: Is Jean Segura’s Breakout 2016 Sustainable?

Plate Discipline

As a recovering fantasy baseball-aholic, I have appreciation for a few stats that others in my various leagues didn’t value as much. One of those things was walks. In my first few seasons of head-to-head, one point per category leagues, Bases on Balls were countable stats, and they led me to two league championships.

I found that walks and walk rates took discipline and good pitch recognition skills that were difficult to learn but also difficult to unlearn. Once hitters like Joey Votto–the king of ‘controlling the zone’–learned how to take pitches and take walks, they rarely regressed in that area. It was something I could count on when taking the necessary risks every fantasy baseball manager takes every season.

I find it hard to believe that Jean Segura, whose plate discipline statistics jumped by every metric I’ve seen last year, would suddenly unlearn how to not swing at junk this year with the Mariners. And he’s sure to see plenty of junk from American League pitchers who haven’t faced him but know he led the National League in hits last year.

Comparing any of Segura’s 2015 numbers with Milwaukee and his 2016 numbers with Arizona is night-and-day. But perhaps the most significant jump in advanced metrics was his Bases on Balls numbers.

(SwStr%=percentage of strikes against the hitter produced by swings-and-misses or foul balls)

As you can see, by almost every metric, including his outside-the-zone swing percentage (down 7.3 in 2016) and overall swing percentage (down almost seven in 2016), Jean Segura showed improved plate discipline last season, leading to more walks and more pitches over the plate since he didn’t chase near as many pitches outside the zone.

Jean Segura saw more pitches and laid off more unhittable balls in 2016 than 2015. Combined with a better ability to square the ball up more consistently, he had a career year. I think he can sustain that in 2017.