Jeff McNeil has had a truly odd career. McNeil, a 13th round pick in 2013 who didn’t even play high school baseball, struggled with injuries for most of his minor league career before finally keeping healthy in 2018 and breaking out. So it seems appropriate that McNeil would have an equally unique approach at the plate, one that is truly rare among MLB players.



To get a sense of the oddity of McNeil’s approach, look at this plot of zone-contact% versus zone-swing% among players from 2018 with at least 90 plate appearances (McNeil had 95 PA entering Monday).



There usually exists a slight trade-off in terms of Z-Swing% versus Z-Contact%: swinging at everything in the zone generally results in more whiffs, while swinging at fewer zone pitches allows hitters to be more selective, resulting in higher contact. But McNeil has completely bucked that trend, swinging at more zone pitches than anyone in baseball in 2018 while making contact at the rate of more...