Rafaela is best served playing up here. You go down to AAA and you can get yourself a 10% BB rate just by reading up on the pitcher the night before and keeping the bat on your shoulder. I don't think they want their hitters doing that. Then you come back up to the majors and they sit you down with paint and 10 inch sweepers.
The fact is he's never going to be a guy who walks 10 or probably even 8% of the time. He's also never been a guy who strikes out 30% of the time. His highest rate in partial time was back in 2022 : 24.5% in A+. Since then he hasn't been above 21.9%. Which is to say despite a crazy chase rate he's shown good bat control and an ability to put the ball in play.
If we get to 150-200 PAs, and the K rate is still north of 30%, and he's not hitting homers to make up for it, then yeah, let's revisit this.
I think this would be an interesting topic of conversation. Do we have any examples of free-swingers learning/improving discipline at CR's current age? In the majors or minors?
And, secondarily, has that happened under the current org?
I couldn't dig up any evidence of guys
improving -- in fact I found that a lot of guys at the bottom of the BB% leaderboard walked about 8 or 9% in the high minors and saw their numbers fall to 4-5% in the majors (
Brandon Drury,
Javier Baez,
Michael Harris). But I found some guys who've made major league careers with minor league profiles like his.
Here's Bo Bichette's minor league numbers, who gets a lot of comps with Rafaela:
He kept his BB rate around 8% in the minors, and saw a dip of about 2% in the majors. That's not exactly comparable to Rafaela. Rafaela never posted K rates that low, or BB rates that high. But the K rate isn't far off for Rafaela in the minors.
Connor Wong had a similar experience: 7-8% BB rate becomes a 6% BB rate in the majors. K rate goes through the roof, but he struck out a lot in the minors, too.
Ezequiel Tovar:
We see the BB rate crater in A ball and A+ before climbing to 8 in the high minors. Then he regresses in his first exposure to the majors to less than 5%. Some better results in the earlygoing this year, but the K rate is way higher than it was in the minors.
And Thairo Estrada, whose minor league profile looks similar, if not worse, than Rafaela's:
BB rate of about 5% in AAA for the NYY when he was first promoted. Very little pop. Struck out 21% of the time in his first exposure to the bigs, and then 36% of the time in his second. He's basically had the same plate discipline the whole time but has made himself into a 3 win player.
CJ Abrams, another guy with comparable K rates and BB numbers in the minors.
Here's the full leaderboard for guys who qualified last year organized by BB rate. Lot of 3-4 win players in there, many of who are carried by their defense, but just as many who are making their bones at the plate too.
Which is just to say I don't think Rafaela needs to suddenly starting walking 8% of the time to make things work. He's just got to start putting the ball in play again, even if that means being aggressive. This really is a situation where I don't think they should meddle with his approach to much. Let the guy hit. He's hit everywhere he's gone till now.