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Few hitters in baseball have changed as clearly and concretely as Trevor Larnach has this season. That transformation began last year, when Larnach learned to slightly dampen his whiff rate on breaking and offspeed pitches by getting slightly more aggressive within the strike zone. It was last year that he slashed his strikeout rate (33.6% across his first three seasons, interrupted by injuries and demotions to the minor leagues; 22.3% in 2024) without seeing any attendant losses in his power or walk rate, or even the ability to find hits on balls in play. In short, he went from a frustratingly average-minus hitter (97 DRC+ in 2023, where 100 is average and higher is better) to a downright solid one (122 DRC+ in 2024) by altering his approach.
He carried over some of those changes into 2025, so we can compare him to his 2023 self to see how his control of the strike zone has shifted. Here's his swing rate by pitch location for both 2023 and this year.
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These charts tell the story of an intelligent adjustment. Larnach still wants to do his damage on fastballs, and likes to look for the ball up, but he knows he needs to cover the bottom half of the zone to avoid being called out on strikes at a galling rate or whiffing wildly when he's fooled into fishing for something soft. His approach indicates a conscious alteration to do just that.
It runs deeper, though, and big changes have happened just since last year. No hitter in baseball has flattened their swing path (as measured by Tilt, via Statcast, the degree of the angle formed by the bat relative to an imaginary line parallel to the ground and through the handle) more than Larnach has this year, and this is not one of those numbers that changes by mere coincidence. To have gone from 40° (one of the steeper swings in baseball) to 35° requires Larnach to have materially changed the way his swing works. It's had material effects on his batted-ball profile and his timing. He's also much more spread-out in the batter's box, on average, changing his stride signature and how his swing needs to work to catch the ball on the barrel.
Here's the thing: Larnach says he hasn't done any of it on purpose.
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- Clare and Cory Engelhardt
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