Buy or Sell: Scouting Gunnar Henderson, Josh Jung, Isaac Paredes, Amed Rosario

Andrea Arcadipane is a former member of the Yankees’ baseball operations department. She’ll be contributing a monthly scouting/fantasy piece for The Athletic, but if you want to read her with more frequency, you can visit her site (ScoutGirlReport.com) and/or join her Patreon. Enjoy!

In this buy or sell column, we’ll take a closer look at four infielders whose results for the remainder of the season can go either way. Should you buy or sell Gunnar Henderson, Josh Jung, Isaac Paredes, and Amed Rosario for both your fantasy teams (with a stats spin)?

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Each player will include something I’ve noticed about their approach and/or tendencies at the plate over the past couple of months that I think will be integral to their expectations going forward.

1. Gunnar Henderson, BAL, 3B/SS

Henderson’s strikeout rate falls in the bottom 7 percent of the league, at 31 percent. This is not uncommon for Henderson, as he has below average bat to ball skills and had consistently high strikeout rates throughout his minor league career. I believe his strikeout issues this season are stemming from two things:

• Whiffing against high fastballs
• Looking inner-half for pitches and not protecting the outer third

Below is a heat map from the 2022 season to date for Henderson’s swinging strikes against fastballs (fourseams, sinkers, cutters). They are almost all in the upper third of the zone.

While Henderson is doing well limiting ground balls this year (which has been an issue for him in the past), his increased launch angle is coming at the expense of not being able to reach fastballs at the top of the zone.

Henderson has a good eye, but seems to only be looking to do damage on the inner half, and this might be what is hurting him. The outer third is exposed for pitchers to take advantage. The following heat maps show Henderson’s called strikes from the 2022 season to date, most of which fall in the outer third.

Henderson’s passiveness on pitches to the outer third is hurting his offensive production because of how much he is limiting the zone. Between this passivity and his struggles against fastballs to the upper third, Henderson is exposing two major zones for opposing pitchers to target. Almost all of Henderson’s hits for extra bases are coming off pitches on the inner-half and down in the zone.

This is not surprising — most hitters are hunting pitches inner-half and down in the zone. However, Henderson has the skillset to be able to effectively protect against the outer third and hit the ball the other way if needed. It may be in his best interest to start swinging at any pitch in-zone, because even if it leads to only a few more hits over the season, this outcome is better than falling behind in the count and striking out due to only looking in one area.

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While it’s fine to wait for your pitch, having such a narrow area of focus allows opposing pitchers plenty of other options to work with.

Decision Time: Sell. Henderson’s biggest strength has always been his contact quality and power. The upside is there, but right now it seems as if Henderson is still in the process of improving his swing decisions so he can translate that raw power to game power consistently at the Major League level.

2. Josh Jung, TEX, 3B

Former top prospect Josh Jung is breaking out this season and flashing his elite power, with an .861 OPS and 12 home runs through 236 PA. Contact quality is Jung’s biggest strength. While he has average raw power, he does a great job of maximizing it. His elite .518 actual SLG is in line with his .526 xSLG (based on contact quality) and his hard-hit rate of 50 percent puts him in the top 11 percent of the league.

Jung is putting up these numbers with an extremely aggressive first pitch approach. While there is sometimes a negative connotation to aggressive approaches, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, Jung is dominating against first pitch breaking pitches, with a .929 SLG against them.

He’s actually doing very well against all pitch types, regardless of count:

But those first pitch breaking balls aren’t all mistake pitches middle-middle that he is taking advantage of. In the clip below, Jung is taking a slider thrown to the outer third deep with an exit velocity of only 81-mph:

Jung seems to be looking for and is attacking first pitches thrown in-zone (especially if they are off-speed or breaking pitches) and then relaxes his approach for the remainder of an at-bat.

This is important because while his strikeout rate and walk rate are both below average, they are not abysmal. Sometimes we see players with extremely aggressive approaches who then fall behind in the count and become automatic outs.

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That being said, I don’t expect Jung to be the type of player who hits for average. While he did have consistently high batting averages in the minor leagues, I don’t think this will translate to the majors because of how long his swing is. Typically, you see players who hit for average have shorter swings, which allows them to reach more balls in-zone. So far this season in the majors, Jung has a high whiff rate, especially on pitches in-zone (5 percent worse than MLB average).

Decision Time: Buy. If you are looking for some pop in your lineup, Jung is a great fit.

3. Isaac Paredes, TB, 1B/2B/3B

Isaac Paredes is different from Henderson and Jung in the sense that he has a lower ceiling, but his everyday output is a bit more predictable. Paredes is very aware of his capabilities and works to his strengths.

Paredes is not going to be a major power threat in the lineup. He has historically below average contact quality and raw power. So far this season, while his actual SLG is .458, his xSLG is only .330. This low xSLG is consistent with his career. His hard-hit rate is also down 12 percent from 2022 and is consistent with his career prior to joining the Rays.

The drop-off in hard hit rate is in part because Paredes is showing a more aggressive plate approach this season. He is putting the ball in play more frequently by swinging in-zone 6 percent more and swinging at the first pitch 7 percent more than in 2022.

This change in approach isn’t affecting his whiff rate or his strikeout rate. In fact, he is making contact on pitches in-zone an elite 92 percent of the time. Despite walking less, this more aggressive approach has contributed to a higher on-base percentage than 2022.

The look of Paredes’ swing reinforces the idea that he is trying to make more contact, but I would not start considering Paredes to be a pure contact hitter. Unlike a traditional contact hitter, Paredes is limited in what he can do because of his extreme pull side tendencies. He is not using the whole field and never has.

He does not have the uppercut swing that we see from power hitters who are looking to pull and launch. Paredes’ swing is flatter through the zone to ensure contact:

So where does that leave us? Paredes is one of those players who knows what he needs to do to produce consistently. He is not going to strike out much, which gives him more opportunity to put the ball in play, get on base, and get some RBIs. However, considering his below average contact quality, he is not going to be a consistent power threat.

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Decision Time: Buy. If you are looking for a safe bet who won’t hurt your team, Paredes is a nice pickup.

4. Amed Rosario, CLE, SS/OF

Amed Rosario is having a slower season compared to his 2022 campaign, with a .584 OPS through 226 PA. The problem lies here: bat to balls skills is his biggest offensive strength, but he is whiffing and striking out more than in years past. This is significantly hurting his offensive production.

I believe this regression is in part due to pitchers adjusting their game plan when facing Rosario.

Rosario has historically struggled against breaking pitches to the lower-outer third of the zone, especially sliders. He’s seeing breaking pitches a career high 38 percent of the time.

Below is a heat map of his swinging strikes the last three seasons, most of which are on pitches lower-outer third.

While this is not an uncommon area for hitters to swing and miss, Rosario’s struggles in this region go beyond reasonable expectation as a glaring weakness of his. The strike-zone region where a lot of these pitches fall is referred to as the “shadow zone.” This zone extends from about one baseball width inside of the strike-zone to one baseball width away from the strike-zone. Per the graphic below from Baseball Savant, we can see that Rosario has an extremely poor run value of -21 off pitches thrown to the shadow zone this season:

This performance off breaking pitches is vastly different from last season. In 2022, Rosario had a much better season against breaking pitches and had a career best whiff rate and xSLG against them. However, this was an outlier to his career performance versus these pitch types.

Two positive signs here are that Rosario has a career low BABIP (batting average on balls in play) that is bound to improve closer to his career BABIP at some point, and that Rosario is an established player with clear-cut offensive strengths and expectations. However, due to what seems to be an intentional change in attack for Rosario to target his biggest weaknesses, I’m not sold his eventual improvement back to expectation will happen quickly enough to have him as a buy right now.

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Decision Time: Sell. Rosario doesn’t need to start dominating against those pitches low and outside, but he does have to find a way to protect against them. Unfortunately, due to Rosario’s career struggles against these breaking pitches, I don’t think this is something he will be able to overcome quickly.

(Top photo of Henderson: G Fiume/Getty Images)

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