Cardinals’ surprise breakout bat boasts very intriguing offensive profile

Ask a Cardinals fan who the team's best hitter has been this season, and you're sure to come up with a myriad of answers.

Brendan Donovan (prior to his injury), Iván Herrera, Alec Burleson, and Willson Contreras are the likeliest names you'll get in response, though there's bound to be someone in Cardinals Nation who will vouch for Lars Nootbaar.

One name you almost certainly won't hear is Yohel Pozo, the team's backup catcher with a 96 wRC+ and sub-.300 on-base percentage. He's more or less capably filled his role as Pedro Pagés' understudy, but his bat has been far from elite, right?

Well, at least in some respects, Pozo has actually been the best hitter on the Cardinals this season.

Yohel Pozo's unique approach gives Cardinals a different look in the lineup.

Among batters who have seen at least 500 pitches for the Cardinals this season, Pozo leads the team by a wide margin with an in-zone swing rate of 76.2%.

Thanks to his excellent contact abilities, he's making contact on those swings 87.4% of the time (fourth on the team). In fact, given that he ranks first on the Cardinals in overall swing rate (by another wide margin at 59.7%), it's downright jaw-dropping that his whiff rate is a scant 19.3%.

And we haven't even gotten to the best part yet! Pozo's bat control is so off-the-charts good that, in 124 batted ball events on the year, he has yet to make weak contact once.

The only other player on the roster with a weak contact rate below 2.0% is Jordan Walker, though his profile couldn't be more different from Pozo. Whereas the catcher gets by with elite bat control, Walker simply swings the bat as hard as anyone. Polar opposite approaches leading to similar results is what makes baseball so beautiful, after all.

Unfortunately, where Pozo really falls part is in the plate discipline aspect of the game. He's got a comically bad 46.2% chase rate, hence his practical inability to barrel the ball (2.4%). There's a consequence to swinging as often as Pozo does, and it comes in the form of his lack of walks (4.7% walk rate) and hard contact.

As a high-contact, low-exit-velocity kind of batter, Pozo somewhat resembles Luis Arraez, the three-time batting champion out in San Diego. While Arraez is more elite in his contact skills, he's also far less well-rounded than Pozo is—the backstop's .163 ISO this year dwarfs Arraez's career .097 mark.

Plus, Arraez makes his living as a first baseman, a far more demanding offensive position than catcher. That isn't to say Pozo is more valuable than Arraez, but it's a reminder that profiles like Pozo's can work at the MLB level.

Sure, it's easy to hope for better swing decisions and more power, but the evolution of Yohel Pozo in St. Louis this year has been a fun one to monitor. With a few more tweaks, he could become something far more than just a "backup catcher."