{"id":119401,"date":"2026-04-18T15:24:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=119401"},"modified":"2026-04-18T15:26:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:26:47","slug":"a-deep-dive-into-josh-jungs-hot-streak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/04\/18\/a-deep-dive-into-josh-jungs-hot-streak\/","title":{"rendered":"A Deep Dive Into Josh Jung\u2019s Hot Streak"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Jung<\/a> came into the year needing to prove that he belonged<\/a>. It wasn’t looking good, as he didn’t manage a single hit in March. Ezequiel Duran<\/a> was hitting better than him, and it seemed like the former Texas Tech Red Raider was going to lose significant playing time. Then he flipped a switch. He has been a different player in April, with a slash line of .375\/.444\/.550, and has been the Rangers’ best player<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The April Turnaround<\/h2>\n

In the 13 games that he has played in April, he has logged hits in 11 of them, with four of them being multi-hit games. He has especially been hot over the last six games with a .400 batting average<\/a>, one home run, and four RBIs.<\/p>\n

His patience has played a big part in this, as he has walked five times in April against the zero walks that he drew in March. He has also cut down on his strikeouts with seven in March, while he has only struck out five times in April.<\/p>\n

His .290 batting average is now second on the team, just trailing Brandon Nimmo<\/a>. He has done a good job at providing offense for the Rangers in a time when the offense is struggling to come alive. At the time of writing this, Jung has logged back-to-back three-hit games in wins for the Rangers. Now let’s take a look at what caused this turnaround.<\/p>\n

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The Advanced Stats<\/h2>\n

The advanced metric<\/a> that is ranked the highest is his expected batting average, which is projected to be at .317, the top four percent in baseball. The top metrics that led to this were his hard hit rate and his LA sweet spot percentage, both of which are in the top ten of baseball. He is hitting the ball hard at a 56 percent rate, seeing the ball really well.<\/p>\n

His LA sweet spot is the launch angle at which he is hitting the ball. This leads to Jung putting the ball in the air a lot instead of just hitting the ball on the ground. If he didn’t have a good launch angle, then it wouldn’t really matter how hard he is hitting the ball. But he is consistently squaring it up at an 80% rate, and the results speak for themselves. He squared up the ball at just a 51% clip last season.<\/p>\n

The thing that has ailed Jung the most in the past has been the swing and miss. So far, he has also really cleaned that up with whiff and strikeout percentages above average. He is only whiffing at a 19 percent clip, which is good for the top 18 percent in the league. Additionally, Jung has a 17.9 strikeout percentage. In previous years, the best that he posted was a 25.2 percentage, which was in the bottom quarter of the league.<\/p>\n

The Last Word<\/h2>\n

Jung found his groove in April; now he just needs to keep it up instead of letting it be a flash in the pan. If he can keep this up, then the Rangers have added another weapon to the lineup, and he could be on his way to another All-Star nod.<\/p>\n

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Main Photo Credit: Dennis Lee-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Josh Jung came into the year needing to prove that he belonged. It wasn’t looking good, as he didn’t manage a single hit in March. Ezequiel Duran was hitting better than him, and it seemed like the former Texas Tech Red Raider was going to lose significant playing time. Then he flipped a switch. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5610,"featured_media":119473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1071,35],"tags":[1515,5051,2624],"class_list":["post-119401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rangers","category-mlb","category-news","tag-brandon-nimmo","tag-ezequiel-duran","tag-josh-jung"],"modified_by":"Augustus Oswald, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119401"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119476,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119401\/revisions\/119476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}