Leading the league in RBIs, Cincinnati’s phenom is shattering franchise records by deploying a rare triple-speed swing strategy that mirrors the legendary efficiency of Johnny Bench.
The country is starting to realize just how good a hitter Cincinnati Reds rookie Sal Stewart is. He leads the league in runs batted in with 102, three more than second-place Alec Burleson. Stewart is hitting .263 with an .814 OPS and is currently the favorite to win NL Rookie of the Year over St. Louis Cardinals middle infielder JJ Wetherholt.
Stewart hit a solo home run into the left-center-field seats at Wrigley Field on Friday to break the record for most runs batted in by a Reds rookie in franchise history. Stewart is having the best month of his career in August despite the Reds being just 12-14 in the 26 games they’ve played.
The Miami native is hitting .294 with 18 runs batted in, six home runs and an .826 OPS in August.
Paul Hembo went on the Baseball Tonight podcast with ESPN’s Buster Olney to discuss Stewart and the season he’s had in his first full year with the Reds. Hembo pointed out that Stewart is responsible for 19.1% of the Reds' run production, which is the most by a 22-year-old since 1970, when Cincinnati all-time great Johnny Bench put up similar numbers.
Hembo also went on an analytical deep dive into Stewart’s approach and found that he uses three different swing speeds for three different situations. Stewart uses a high-bat-speed swing when no one is on base, and he knows he has to do damage to produce runs. He swings slower when there are runners on base but not in scoring position, knowing he doesn’t have to leave the yard to create a run, and he swings even slower with runners in scoring position, knowing he just needs to get a hit basically anywhere to get a run.
That is an extremely mature approach for such a young player, as Olney and Hembo point out. It’s also working just about as well as any approach in the history of Major League Baseball has worked, as what Stewart is doing as a rookie is unprecedented. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more and more players adopt this kind of approach, as we are in a day and age of power-focused, high-strikeout approaches.
So often do players make little to no adjustment in a given situation. Hitters will remain with their power approach in a one-out, two-strike situation with a runner in scoring position. They become easier outs when they do that, but Stewart has gone in another direction, and it’s been very effective. He knows when to rear back and try to leave the yard, and he knows when to serve a single into the outfield to score a run.
