Low Three Quarter Media

By Josh Bookbinder

Vinnie Pasquantino made a quick splash in 2022, playing an outstanding half-season in the post-trade absence of Carlos Santana and the virtual absence of Nick Pratto, touted 1st-round prospect who looked far from ready for the big leagues in his call-up that same year. Vinnie made the best of his opportunity and seized the first base job, slashing .295/.383/.450/.832 in 72 games. He followed it up with a step back in 2023, but was still a solid producer through 61 games (.247/.324/.437/.762) before shoulder surgery ended his sophomore campaign. Pasquantino is difficult to project thanks to a relatively unique profile and the amount of games he’s played (153 through 2 years), but those things are also what make him one of the most interesting power hitters in baseball.

This is one of the interesting parts of baseball and prospect projection. Sure, there would have been legitimate concerns about Pasquantino as a prospect: he’s slow, locked to first base, and is a poor fielder even there; all of his value comes from his bat, and even that didn’t show up at the college level until his final year at Old Dominion. However, when a player plays well, especially as well as Pasquantino did, it deserves a little bit of coverage. Baseball is a results-based game, and he put up results. Why wasn’t that given any attention? Hindsight is 20-20, I suppose.

(Note: special shoutout, however, to Alex Duvall from Royals Farm Report, who apparently was the only one paying attention to Vinnie all the way back in 2019. Like I said, hindsight is 20-20, and Alex crushed it with his coverage over four years ago.)

So what did it all tell us? Which school of thought was more correct? There are four main takeaways that I see from Vinnie’s 2023 season. I’ll discuss them below, and what they mean moving into 2024.

He’s probably not a .300 hitter… but the average will fluctuate

We’ll get the bad out of the way. I know most people don’t particularly care about batting average, especially in the sabermetric world, but it’s still something that is unfortunately used plenty in the casual and traditional sense, and has value because of that. And in that metric, Vinnie Pasquantino probably isn’t a .300 hitter, despite his .309 college average and his .292 minor-league average in large sample sizes.

I think that’s what 2023 told us. In 61 games, Pasquantino hit .247, and I would imagine that’s the low mark for his current play style. He’s likely going to end up somewhere in the .250-.280 range regularly throughout his career if his swing and approach continues unchanged.

That is a large range, and I’ll get into why a little bit later in this article.

The strikeout/walk rates are ridiculous, and probably here to stay

“Current play style”. “Approach continues unchanged”. I’ve said those phrases and others like them a couple times now. What do I mean?

Vinnie hates striking out. If he was a 5’9″ 150-pound speedster, that would make plenty of sense. But he’s a big power hitter with the ability to crush the ball out of the park and put up exit velocities beyond 112 mph; he had an 87th% max exit velo in 2022. And yet, he still avoids striking out like the plague.

Take a look at the way he’s able to handle some really good pitchers’ pitches here and here and here. He doesn’t look like someone who’s going all out to launch homers, which is impressive as a guy of his size and ability; he knows who he is, and sticks to his approach. It’s awesome to see, and because it hasn’t changed in a long time, it’s likely not going to change.

Watching Pasquantino’s at-bats also makes me far less worried than I normally would be about a much diminished average exit velo number from 2022 to 2023. This is a conscious part of his approach and nothing physical or skill-related, which makes something that would normally set alarm bells off in my head instead just make me shrug. It’s just not his game.

He’s hindered by playing in Kansas City for national recognition potential, but it probably fits his odd skill set

Kansas City is an old-school organization, known best for their commitment to contact hitting and old-fashioned baseball. Kauffman Stadium is an interesting field with some odd park factors that support their style of play, as well.

This impacts Pasquantino in a few ways. One is that as long as he is a Royal, he’s not likely to change the way he plays. He’s going to continue to foster contact skills, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. He obviously has a special ability to put the bat on the ball, and I think coaching that out of him in favor of power just takes what’s unique to his game and sacrifices it, making him just another AAAA offense-first power hitter. He’s more valuable as a graded 65/55 HIT/POW than a 40/60 HIT/POW guy, especially to the Royals.

I mentioned earlier that the average might fluctuate, and I think this because Vinnie is going to be subject to a significant amount of BABIP luck. His ability to put the bat on the ball and refusal to strike out means that he has some inconsistent quality of contact, and those bloops sometimes fall, sometimes don’t.

One thing about the Royals and Kauffman that will hurt Pasquantino is that the Royals will likely de-emphasize home runs as a part of Vinnie’s game, and Kauffman is one of the worst places in baseball to try to hit bombs.

We can already see Vinnie’s home run potential being hindered; taking a look at Statcast’s expected home runs by park list (below), we can see that he’d be better off hitting homers in 26 out of the other 29 ballparks. The exceptions are Fenway, Oracle Park, and Target Field, all of which have oddly-shaped right fields, which looking at Vinnie’s spray chart is where all of his homers go. (Yes, all of them: we’ve yet to see a Vinnie Pastquantino oppo-taco.)

He’s really good.

There’s no real getting around it. Pasquantino is really solid, and should be looked at as a really good and unique MLB player moving forward.

Fantasy-wise, he’s ADPing at around 125-140, which is a fair position. For points leagues, he’ll be an especially significant help, as he’s going to nearly even himself out in walks and strikeouts, so any hitting he does (which will likely be a good amount) will be positive. In leagues with less attentive or more hype-focused players, look for Vinnie to drop a little and be a steal, as he’s probably not going to have the attention he should unless the home run numbers go up, especially playing for a Kansas City team that doesn’t look like it’s going to be much better than a bottom-dweller.

One of the best things about Vinnie is that he’s more than a baseball player. He’s a regular on the Chris Rose Rotation podcast from Jomboy Media, he live-vlogged his WBC experience for Barstool, and he’s done plenty of regular interviews elsewhere. He’s a great personality, and he’s going to be really good for baseball. MLB’s typical problems with publicizing themselves aside, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pasquantino a whole lot more if his performance warrants it.

Josh Bookbinder is a writer for and co-founder of LowThreeQuarter. See more of his work and others’ work on the site through the links at the top of the page, or explore another recent article linked below.