He had a career-low average but career-high walk rate — we dig in to see which parts of that are sustainable and which might change.

Photo: Kathy Willens/AP

By Brian Mangan

Setting aside all discussion of price, or fit, or overall payroll, the Mets acquisition of Todd Frazier undoubtedly makes their 2018 team better.

What is interesting, though, is how the local kid from Toms River, New Jersey (or from Point Pleasant, NJ, if Baseball Reference is to be believed) has taken an almost completely different route to being an above-average player each of the last few seasons.

According to Fangraphs, Frazier has posted 4.8, 4.5, 2.5 and 3.0 WAR over the last four seasons for the Reds, White Sox, and Yankees. Each year, he’s posted average to above-average defense, but his offensive profile has changed somewhat drastically.

In 2015, Frazier hit 35 home runs and slugged .495, but his on-base percentage left a lot to be desired at a mere .309. The next year, Frazier went long-ball even more, swatting 40 home runs for the White Sox as his overall slugging percentage went down to .464.

In his career, to that point, Frazier owned a career walk percentage of 7.9%, a figure which is perfectly adequate. However, coupled with his low batting average (career .250 average entering 2017), his on-base percentage has always left something to be desired. Coupled with the power, however, he’s been an above above-average offensive player by wRC+ (weighted runs created).

In 2017, Frazier underwent a complete renaissance. Frazier walked 14.4% of the time last year, ending up with a career-high on-base percentage of .344, but coupled it with a career-low batting average of .213. Frazier still hit 27 home runs and ended the year with a decent 108 wRC+, but he did so in almost a completely different way. In fact, last season was the first season in Frazier’s career that he wasn’t a bona fide slugger relative to the league:

Asked about the walk-spike on Good Fundies, I initially speculated that it was one of those late-career mirages we often see from players, who coupled with a low batting average, are right at the end of their careers as productive offensive players. Frazier is 32 after all, with “old player” skills. But digging into the numbers has painted a different story. As it turns out, it looks like Frazier did something last season that I can’t recall ever seeing before: a radical improvement in plate discipline, out of nowhere, late in his career.

Frazier’s swinging strike rate plummeted from 12.5% in 2016 (which is fairly high) to just 9.3% in 2017, making contact nearly 25% more often. How did he do this? It appears that he did it by exercising better pitch selection: his O-Swing% — which is the percentage of times he swings at balls outside the zone — went from 32.6% down to just 25.0%, Meanwhile, he stayed almost as aggressive as always on strikes, with that percentage decreasing just slightly from 65.6% to 60.2%. He was more disciplined, more patient, and continued to make contact in the zone at the same rate he always has (82.2% of the time in 2017, 83.1% career).