{"id":755372,"date":"2026-07-10T21:03:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/755372\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T21:03:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T21:03:24","slug":"casey-schmitt-and-the-missing-walks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/755372\/","title":{"rendered":"Casey Schmitt and the Missing Walks"},"content":{"rendered":"

We may never find out what Casey Schmitt thinks about his aversion to walks. Is it a philosophical thing? Instinct? Last night, he finally drew a walk for the first time since May 24th. In his post-game interview with NBC Sports Bay Area<\/a>, there was an opportunity for a question about his approach to hitting that could\u2019ve addressed the walk situation in a positive way, but instead, the broadcast went in a different direction:<\/p>\n

KYLEN HILLS: Casey, gotta ask about a unique stat that you probably haven\u2019t heard yet, but, you\u2019ve hit seven first inning home runs, which is the most of any Giant in the last 50 years through this point in the season not named Barry Bonds. What is it about the first inning? Can you give us any insight?<\/p>\n

CASEY SCHMITT: You know, honestly, I thought this was gonna go a different way. I thought you were gonna say the at bats until I got a walk again [laughs]<\/p>\n

KYLEN HILLS: [laughs] Come on. We wouldn\u2019t do that to you. We\u2019ve got your back.<\/p>\n

CASEY SCHMITT: Yeah, I didn\u2019t know that. That\u2019s pretty cool. That\u2019s a cool thing to know. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I\u2019m just trying to get on base. I\u2019m not trying to swing for the fences or anything. I\u2019m trying to stay within myself every single at bat.<\/p>\n

A wonderful moment that tells us everything and nothing at the same time. What does Casey Schmitt think about drawing a walk? Or, at the very least, why does he try to avoid them? I have some theories:<\/p>\n

His favorite TV show is Hacks<\/p>\n

Sure, the title could be a reference to hacking at pitches, but the spirit of the show is being your unapologetic self no matter what the world throws your way. A comedy about two women from different generations trying to understand each other just enough to get what they want. Maybe Schmitt really likes Jean Smart or her chemistry with co-lead Hannah Einbinder. But the message of getting what you want by going after it, well, yeah, that would certainly diminish the value of a walk in the eyes of a hitter.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of Spring Training, Buster Posey brought into the clubhouse those items or people most important to the players. Casey was all, \u201cWait, what\u2019s my dad doing here?\u201d before Buster calmly explained that he was only going to allot a certain number of walks this season and that players who go over their allotments would be forced to watch something terrible happen to someone they love.<\/p>\n

When Casey Schmitt sees a baseball coming right at him, his internal monologue sounds like comedian Tim Robinson\u2019s screaming voice<\/a> and all he can think is \u201cF**K, F**K, F**K \u2014 A BASEBALL\u2019S COMING AT ME!\u201c And later he explains, \u201dIt was coming right at me \u2014 like, RIGHT at me \u2014 110, 120 miles per hour. It could\u2019ve taken my head clean off.\u201c<\/p>\n

Okay, seriously, it\u2019s got to be the approach the team imported from Canada\u2019s Toronto Blue Jays in the form of the World Series team\u2019s assistant hitting coach. Mense has brought a swing-first approach to the roster, it seems and it\u2019s clear that it\u2019s working. Since May 1st, the Giants are fourth in wRC+ (110) and fifth in batting average (.259). What\u2019s interesting to note about him is that he\u2019s a huge advocate of swing decisions<\/a>, an obsession over which got the last President of Baseball Operations fired from the Giants. So, has he instilled something in Schmitt or given him a permission structure for giving into his baser swing instincts?<\/p>\n

I guess we\u2019ll never know! The team-owned media has his back! Walks are taboo? We can\u2019t talk about them? Yeah, I guess that home run stat is pretty cool because being mentioned in the same breath as Barry Bonds is extraordinarily notable\u2026<\/p>\n

As Steven mentioned in his recap<\/a>, \u201cSchmitt worked a walk for the first time since May 24th \u2014 the longest span by a Giants player since Hal Lanier in 1964.\u201d And, if you tweak that search to be any Giant of the Oracle Park era, you find that in the Oracle Park era<\/a>, Schmitt\u2019s 169 PA walk-less streak is second only to pinch hitter extraordinaire Shawon Dunston\u2019s 246 PA streak (105 games!) that stretched from May 2001 to July 2002.<\/p>\n

So, on the one hand, Schmitt can hang with a Barry Bonds stat. On the other hand, he\u2019s in the same group as career .529 OPS Hal Lanier and career .712 OPS Shawon Dunston. And these players of recent vintage:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But then you see Jung Hoo Lee on this list with Pablo Sandoval, Hunter Pence and even Marquis Grissom, and suddenly the lack of walks doesn\u2019t feel quite so dire. Even Donovan Solano. I would not deprive a Giants fan of their Donnie Barrels love.<\/p>\n

The career walk rates of everybody I just mentioned: 6.4%, 7.1%, 7.4%, 6.2%, 6.2%, and all of them with sub-20% strikeout rates (some greatly under that). Schmitt\u2019s career rate of 4.7% and 22.1% strikeout rate check in as higher than this group, but this season, he\u2019s at 2.2 BB% and 19.3 K%.<\/p>\n

The reason why it\u2019s worth pointing out is that this simply isn\u2019t sustainable. The reason why walks matter is because it increases the rate by which a batter does not make an out. The lower the \u201cout\u201d rate, the higher the rate of runs scored. Yes, hits are more valuable, but treating on base as zero sum is foolish. The value of not making an out is greater than making an out, after all.<\/p>\n

Schmitt has drawn 8 walks in 357 plate appearances. Let\u2019s just say he gets to 600 plate appearances and ups the walk rate a bit to 2.5%; so, 15 walks to end the season. According to Baseball Reference<\/a>, that\u2019s only happened 27 times in the history of Major League Baseball (unless I\u2019m entering the filtering options wrong).<\/p>\n

The most interesting part is that the most recent 10 range from 1966-2017, but between the most recent 10 and the remaining 17, there\u2019s a 31-year gap. Anyway, if Schmitt is able to pull this off, he\u2019ll join these players:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting group. Alcides Escobar was 30 and would play just 3 more seasons. Tim Anderson was at the beginning of his career, and would have a great run after his 606 PA & 13-walk season from 2018-2022 without drawing many walks (.297\/.329\/.455 \u2014 4.0 BB%, 21.5 K%), but he\u2019d play just 3 more seasons after this run (.232\/.269\/.270 in 855 PA). Ben Revere played just 3 more seasons, too. Deivi Cruz played five more, but this was his last good season (.264\/.293\/.384, 3.5 BB%, 9.7 K%). So, let\u2019s hope that this is more Tim Anderson than any other player worth comparing him to on this list.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really tough to compare eras, too, but except for 2013-2015, the league walk rate since 2000 has been consistently around 8.5%. This season, it\u2019s 9%. If you step back to last century and look at 1966-1990, it\u2019s still around 8.5%, with the exception of a 3-year run when it was about 7.7%. So, historically, Schmitt is an outlier, and not in a way that typically signals long-term success.<\/p>\n

But we have other measures, too. He\u2019s making contact as frequently as Mike Trout and Junior Caminero (79.7%), for instance. It helps that he\u2019s swinging more than average (54.6% \u2014 12th-most in MLB), but he\u2019s also swinging out of the strike zone more than average (39.9% \u2014 13th-worst in MLB, 11th percentile), which isn\u2019t great and evidence that he\u2019s still probably guessing or still trying to do something at the plate rather than \u201cstay within himself.\u201d Still, he\u2019s not swinging and missing a lot (11.1% \u2014 between James Wood at 11% and Ohtani at 11.2%) and he\u2019s seen the fourth-most rate of pitches (44.4%) in the strike zone compared to any other hitter in the sport.<\/p>\n

The batted ball results are undeniable\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, I\u2019d say he\u2019s confident that he can get to a lot of pitches right now and confident he can do damage \u2014 because he is \u2014 but maybe over time he\u2019ll start recognizing which pitches are actually worth the swing.<\/p>\n

In his minor league and college careers, he walked around 8.5% of the time, which would be the league average if he could bring that sort of discipline to the major leagues. It\u2019s entirely possible this season is motivated by some tricky psychologically: he knew he needed to hit to stick and he\u2019s done exactly that. Once he settles into a position, will that consistency allow him to give himself the power to lay off some pitches?<\/p>\n

On the other hand\u2026 if it\u2019s working, why not keep doing it? The theory of why I\u2019m engaging in any concern here is simply that plate discipline and swing decisions have been historical drivers of future success and if Schmitt will be sticking around for a while, I think I\u2019d like to have some sense that he might be one of the players who makes the team better in the future. But for now, all of this is working for him, so, I guess I need to sit back and appreciate this breakout season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We may never find out what Casey Schmitt thinks about his aversion to walks. Is it a philosophical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,318588,99],"class_list":["post-755372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}