A Deep Dive on Joey Wiemer's Early Returns

Joey Wiemer is a player who makes you love baseball. From his gangly running style, legs all akimbo; to the enormous hacks he takes at the baseball; to his refusal to take it easy down the first base line, this is a player who looks slightly less polished than most of his major-league counterparts. How could you not love his flying catches in the outfield; be drawn to each of his at-bats just on the off chance he gets into one; and even if he tops one on a routine ground ball to short, he has the wheels to leg it out anyway. On top of that, almost no one has run on him since the opening weeks of the season, with his quick release and cannon of an arm.

Great Expectations

While he is a player with huge four- or five-tool potential, he has had a few growing pains in reaching the majors. Coming into the season, we were a little less hot on him due to the meteoric rises of both Jackson Chourio and the hitting machine that was Sal Frelick, and also a slight slump in the middle of last year at Biloxi when he was struggling with a wrist injury. Prior to that, he had won the Brewers’ Prospect of the Year award in 2021, hitting 27 home runs with a .959 OPS across both levels of A ball.
When he made the jump to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds, he cut his strikeout rate considerably, from 30% at Double A to just 19.5%--a huge improvement considering there were concerns over whether he could make consistent contact with the size and speed of his swing. He also rediscovered his power stroke, slugging .520 over 174 plate appearances with six home runs, a triple and 15 doubles, to go along with a 12% walk rate.

  
He was a bit under the radar coming into spring training, with most expecting him to be on the outside looking into the early outfield mix, but his quality defense in the outfield as well as his improving eye at the plate, and most importantly his right-handed bat, made the Brewers call him up just a single day into the season, after Luis Urias’s hamstring went out.
In terms of his ceiling, it’s clear to see the amount of power he can generate, the speed on the base paths, the fielding and throwing arm in the outfield. There are questions over his hit tool, but this is a player who, when healthy, has hit over .270 in every level of the minor-league system. The sky's the limit for this baby-faced assassin, if he can make adjustments to major-league pitching.

The Story So Far

Early on in the season, Wiemer was getting by using his speed to beat out ground balls with regularity, with a lot of topped contact on fastballs and a complete inability to square up any sort of breaking pitch. Since then, he has struggled with a change in the pitching approach, and has been looking out of sorts at the plate, with an increasing propensity to swing and miss and a lack of consistency in his plate appearances. He hit much better against the fastball, whiffing on less than 20% of them, which is why he’s been fed a very steady diet of breaking pitches–45.8% to be exact. On these breaking pitches he has a batting average of just .167 and a slugging percentage of .208. However, he has recently started to make much more consistent hard contact, suggesting a change in approach and perhaps an adjustment to the extra break that major-league pitchers will have on their pitches.

His defense, meanwhile, has been magnificent, grading out as slightly above-average in center field and an absolute weapon in right, with four defensive runs saved in total, and being in the 91st percentile for outs above average, 87th percentile for arm strength (which is furthered by how he throws without any momentum), and 78th percentile for outfield jump. The jump is particularly impressive given that his routes haven’t been great, but his reactions have been the best in the league. It's been consistently excellent and has almost assured his place in the lineup for a few months, given the injury crisis around him with Garrett Mitchell and Sal Frelick.

His derring-do on the base paths has been incredibly fun to watch as well, with an average sprint speed of 29.1ft/sec, good enough for 21st in the league, going home to first in 4.23 seconds. He’s had five steals so far, being caught once while attempting a fairly reckless third-base steal, and also been caught trying to steal third on infield grounders that just weren’t an option. Part of the excitement is that you don’t quite know what he’ll do next, and his decisions on the base paths will improve over time, as well as his steal total if he can get on base just a little bit more often.
Stand Out Stats
-          Wiemer has just a .390 OPS on the road compared to a 1.061 OPS at American Family Field
-          With runners in scoring position, he almost always puts the ball in play, with just one strikeout in 28 plate appearances.
-          With such a violent swing, he’s still only hovering around the league average in strikeout percentage, and 60th percentile in walk rates.
-          He doesn’t miss belt-high pitches, with just a 5.4% whiff rate.
-          Against left handers, who throw fewer sliders to him and mostly use fastball/changeup combinations, he has a 1.061 OPS

The Deeper Look

Wiemer’s struggles are shown in two simple graphics from Baseball Savant. As you can see below, his whiff rates in the bottom part of the zone are astronomical, a byproduct of his struggles with breaking pitches. Even when he does make contact, it’s mostly weak, topped balls, leading to the excessive ground ball rates you see below. When pitchers have kept their breaking balls down, he’s almost guaranteeing them an easy out. When they get ahead in the count, they’ve fed him a steady onslaught of pitches down and away, resulting in 15 of his 25 strikeouts. For further emphasis, he hasn’t gotten a hit yet against a sweeping slider.
Quite simply, Wiemer hasn’t adjusted to the amount of break he’s seeing on these pitches, but it’s almost inevitable that he will catch up. His expected batting average against these is starting to creep up, from .063 just three weeks ago to now breaking the Mendoza line.

He also needs to do a better job when he gets ahead in the count, and working the count to his advantage. Only eight of his plate appearances have ended with him ahead in the count. Christian Yelich has had three-ball counts in 38 plate appearances so far this season, Joey Wiemer has managed this in just 21. He could do a better job, perhaps, with an approach closer to what we’ve seen from Tellez so far, waiting on a specific pitch to swing at and consciously laying off breaking balls early in the count and sitting on higher fastballs or hanging breakers until he has to swing.

Final Notes

While his swing doesn’t look technically fit for major league pitching, he has remarkably fast hands, and it’s fair to say that so far, he hasn’t struggled to catch up to the fastballs. He does have small adjustments to make in his approach, and his eye at the plate will only improve the more major-league pitchers he sees, something we are already starting to see. Most of his slugging so far has come against offspeed pitches, to the tune of a .500 slugging (even before his home run against Tony Gonsolin’s splitter).

Wiemer's talent is there for all to see, and while he could be an impact player similar to Kyle Tucker, his defense provides a very high floor for him to bring value to the Brewers as he learns on the job. It’s important to note how normal this is, Jarred Kelenic took 500 plate appearances before his ability started to show this season. If Wiemer can get it to click by the time the stretch comes around later this season, the Brewers will have one hell of a player on their hands.