Eugenio Su\u00e1rez<\/a> of the Arizona Diamondbacks has been one of the best hitters in baseball in the second half of the season. Su\u00e1rez signed with Arizona in the offseason after posting the two highest strikeout rates of his career<\/a> with the Seattle Mariners<\/a>. Coming off a dismal first half of the 2024 season, posting an 86 wRC+, the direction for Suarez was trending down.<\/p>\n While Su\u00e1rez has always been a high-strikeout sort of player, he has always compensated for it with great power. He struggled to replicate that approach in the first half of 2024, as he posted his typical near 30% strikeout rate, but with his worst isolated slugging percentage since his rookie season.\u00a0 Under the hood, Su\u00e1rez was chasing pitches outside the zone at a career-high rate of 28.9% compared to his career mark of 22.9%.\u00a0 He was more aggressive overall but made less contact than in previous years.<\/p>\n While being more aggressive, Su\u00e1rez maintained an above-average walk rate. However, his quality of contact suffered as he experienced a seven-year low in both barrel rate and hard-hit rate.\u00a0 This could be expected, as Su\u00e1rez is on the wrong side of 30 years old, and age curves point to a decline in these areas around this age number.\u00a0 With bat tracking metrics being added to Baseball Savant<\/a> this season, we can look to those numbers as an indicator of decline as well as how he performed against fastballs.<\/p>\n Su\u00e1rez had a roughly average swing speed at 71.74 MPH with a longer 7.76 swing length in the first half.\u00a0 This checks out, as longer swings correlate with swing and miss and Su\u00e1rez fits that profile.\u00a0 On the other hand, he handled velocity fairly well with a 9.5% barrel rate on all fastballs. Conversely, a hole that pitchers were poking at with Su\u00e1rez was with sliders.\u00a0 He had one of the highest whiff rates on the pitch at 45.5% and a -8 batter run value, which tied for second worst among hitters with at least 30 plate appearances.\u00a0 While there were many negative signs in this sample of action, all hope wasn’t lost yet.<\/p>\n Eugenio Su\u00e1rez has gone ballistic in the second half with the fourth most home runs in the league. Notably, this has been the theme of Su\u00e1rez’s career.\u00a0 He has a career 104 wRC+ in the first half of the season compared to a 121 wRC+ in the second half.\u00a0 This season has been no different.\u00a0 The manner in which he has gone about it this time around is compelling.<\/p>\n As mentioned previously with the career-high chase rate in the first half, Su\u00e1rez doubled down on the approach and ticked the aggressiveness up even more.\u00a0 The difference has been the improvement in making contact, in addition to substantially improving his quality of contact.\u00a0 Here are some of the noteworthy process differences and improvements in contact quality:<\/p>\nEugenio Su\u00e1rez Enjoying Torrid Second Half for Diamondbacks<\/h2>\n
First Half Struggles<\/h3>\n
Second Half Stride<\/h3>\n