Kuzul

Just as Travis Snider was on his way to an outstanding month of May at the plate he’s now on his way down to Dunedin, Florida for an MRI and rehab. Snider injured his wrist in Friday night’s game, a game in which he went deep for the second consecutive night. It’s not clear yet how long he will be out and wrist injuries can be a tricky injury to recover from.

Edwin Encarnacion , coming back from his own trip to the disabled list, will take Snider’s spot on the 25 man roster and take over the everyday duties at third base. Encarnacion played in just nine games this season before being hurt and hit .219/.270/.406 across 37 plate appearances. The Jays would like to see a quick return to his career averages at the dish. They didn’t see that last season after coming over in a trade from the Cincinnati Reds, Edwin hit just .240 with a paltry .306 OBP although he did show good power with a .202 ISO .

He’s never been much of a defender, making his offensive contributions crucial if he wants to provide the Jays with any real value. It’s not that long ago that Encarnacion was an above average hitter, in 2006 and again in ’08 he had an OPS+ of 108. In 2008 he had a good combination of power with 26 homers and patience walking in 10.5 percent of his plate appearances.

Edwin is still just 27 years old leaving some reason to think he can be that hitter again. But he did put up those numbers in the NL Central, which doesn’t often get mistaken for the AL East. He certainly had his troubles in his first American League go around. Fifty-one games and a couple hundred plate appearances with the Jays isn’t enough to write him off just yet.

Taking over in right field for Snider will be Jose Bautista who, like several Blue Jays, has been pounding the ball so far in 2010. Playing regularly at third base, Bautista has collected 10 home runs already in just 141 at-bats. His batting average(.241) and OBP(.347) are slightly better than his numbers over the last couple of seasons. He established a career high walk rate in 2009, 13.9 percent of his plate appearances, and has maintained it this year walking in 13.2 percent of his PAs.

He’s flashed some pop before in his career, but not like this. Between ’08 and ’09 he hit 28 homers in 706 at-bats, a homer in every 25.2 at-bats. Not bad, but nothing compared to this year’s 14.1 at-bats per home run. His ISO is also through the roof currently sitting at .291, .120 better than his career average of .171.

The best case scenario, of course, is a quick trip to the DL for Snider and a healthy return to the lineup. In the meantime, we’ll get to see how long Bautista can keep up the homer barrage, and hopefully get a better feel for the type of offensive player the Jays have in Edwin Encarnacion. The Jays can get by for a little while without Snider, but the sooner he gets back the better, long term and short term.

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In yesterday’s 3-2 win over the Red Sox all the Blue Jays runs came courtesy of Travis Snider . Both of his hits, a double and home run, came off Sox starter Tim Wakefield. However, a couple of hits off Wakefield, a knuckleballer, tells us absolutely nothing about Snider’s development as a hitter this season. Just in the same way a hitless day against Wakefield would tell us nothing. 

But Snider is showing plenty of other signs that the 22-year-old is progressing quite nicely into a professional hitter. A quick look at his batting average and on-base percentage won’t show the progress either, as he’s hitting only .232 with a .317 on-base percentage, compared to last year’s .241/.328.

Where then are the signs coming from? To find them we’ll have to travel a little farther down his stats page on FanGraphs .

Right off the bat the only part of his triple-slash line that has increased this year compared to ’09 is his slugging percentage. A rise in slugging coupled with a slight decline in batting average is a clear indicator that Snider has upped his power output. Indeed, his ISO has risen to .223, up from .178 a season ago, and it’s better than his mark from 2008 as well. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as Travis showed above average power in the minors but it’s good to see it showing up in the show.

Even more promising than that, his plate discipline is coming along too. After striking out in 31.5 percent of his at-bats in ’08, that number increased to 32.4 percent last year. This year, though, we’ve seen Snider push it in the other direction, as he currently has just a 25-percent strikeout rate. While unprecedented in the majors he did have a strikeout rate around 26 percent in 60 games at the Triple-A level.

His walk rate has also increased slightly this season, up to 11.1 percent of his plate appearances. Not as drastic as his jump from 6.3 percent in ’08 to 10.5 percent in ’09, but clearly showing no signs of regression. His establishing of an above-average walk rate at such a young age is an excellent development and a sustainable skill moving forward.

Moving further down his FanGraphs’s page we get a better picture of how Snider is walking more and striking out less. First off, Snider is swinging at less pitches outside the strike zone than seasons past. He’s offered at 23.8 percent of pitches outside the zone, down from 33.3 and 27.1 in ’08 and ’09. He’s begun to swing at more pitches inside the zone at the same time, up to 74.5 percent from last year’s 71.8, while swinging less overall.

And when he does decide to bring the bat around he is making more contact as a whole, whether it be out of or inside the strike zone. His contact rate in 2010 has increased 3.6 percent from last season to 74.9 percent. His outside contact is up 5.6 percent to 52.6 and his inside swing percentage has climbed to 83.6 percent over 2009’s 81.7.

This is a big step for Snider, as he is giving every indication of improved knowledge of the strike zone. At the same time, his increase in contact both in and out of the zone shows us he is learning more about himself in terms of what he can hit and what he needs to layoff. He isn’t just being more patient for the sake of being more patient, which would actually be a step in the wrong direction.

Perhaps quickly becoming the most overused excuse for struggling hitters is pointing out a player’s BABIP and how it almost has to improve from where it currently stands. Snider’s BABIP currently sits at .266, and yes here it comes, it’s is almost certain to increase back closer to his career mark of .317.

But wait, not just because it has to, Snider has never, at any level of his career, had a BABIP below .316. Even in 2008 at Double-A when he hit .262 his BABIP was still .333.

There’s already evidence of this, after posting a BABIP of just .157 in April, his mark so far for May is .464. And the hits are coming too, he’s collected 15 in 41 at-bats in May after an ugly 11 hits in 71 at-bats last month.  

The hardest part about looking over Snider’s numbers it that he is so young we don’t know if this season’s small sample size is indicative of a new level of performance or if there will be regression to his past major league performance. And of course his past major league experience is just 356 plate appearances anyways so we can’t draw much conclusion from that either.

But this is a player who performed extremely well in the minors at a young age for every level he was at. Couple his minor league track record with his steady progression as a hitter in the show and you’ve got plenty of reasons to suspect the improvements will continue.

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