The Right Way to Panik-Off the Radar

Joe Panik was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the first round (29th overall) in the 2011 draft. After a successful stint in short season ball last year, the shortstop had a rough start to the 2012 season in High A. This caused writers to both question him, and more importantly, write clever headlines with his name. On Thursday (May 31st 2012), I watched Panik play against the Bakersfield Blaze (the Reds High A affiliate).

The left handed hitter was facing starter Daniel Renken of the Blaze for his first 3 plate appearances, and batted 2nd in the order. Renken is a right hander that was drafted in the 25th round by the Reds in 2010. He has shown the ability to strikeout a ton of batters, walk a few, but not give up a ton of hits or homers.

In his first at-bat, he took a high fastball before opening up early on a high inside fastball and popped out to first in foul territory. In his 2nd at-bat, he fell behind 0-1, taking what looked like a pretty good pitch. The next pitch was even better, almost right down the middle, but Panik flicked at the breaking ball to hit a soft liner up the middle for an out. These first two at-bats suggested his timing was quite a bit off, but he wasn’t overwhelmed by High A pitching. At-bat 3 was more weak contact, flying out rather softly, but this time it went at least to right field. This was after he took a high ball, then a high strike. So certainly there was a pattern of how Renken was trying to deal with him, and it was working. Luckily for Panik, he faced lefty Chris Joyce his next at-bat, this time in the 8th. In different levels over the last 2 years, Joyce has a 9.5 K/9IP but 1.5 WHIP in a small sample size. In a really small sample size against lefties this year opponents are hitting .250/.333/.250.

Panik took a high pitch, then a low pitch to get up 2-0. Joyce then hung a breaking ball basically down the middle and Panik pulled it for a home run, his first homer of the season. We see that there is ability in his bat, and he is not getting overwhelmed. He has the ability to make pitchers pay for mistakes, which is obviously the first thing a prospect needs, and he wouldn’t have been drafted this high if he didn’t have that ability. It is the refinement, the approach, and ability to hit pitches that are good pitches that separates prospects from non prospects. It is very important to note that the next hitter also hit a homer. Panik is not going to be a power guy it doesn’t appear.

At-bat number 5 was against wild right hander Brooks Pinckard. Pinckard has walked almost 10 batters per 9 innings so far this season. Howeever, he has a respectable strikeout rate so far in his career, and throws with good velocity, hanging around in the mid 90s. Pinckard continued to struggle with control against Panik though, and fell behind 2-0. Panik then took 2 more pitches to make it a 3-1 count before an outside pitch was taken for ball 4. Again, Panik is not overwhelmed by the level at all, at least from what I have seen (if he still was 2 months into the season, there may be cause for concern). He is not chasing pitches, and is showing some decent bat skills. Of course, he tried to steal and was caught stealing. So far, Panik has 16 steals and 8 caught stealings in 120 professional games, so that is clearly not going to be part of his game going forward. His “speed scores” have been mixed, but Baseball Cube rates his speed at 72, well above average (Baseball Cube also rates his power at 72, which I think is clearly too high). I didn’t get much of a read of him out in the field, but defense should be a huge decider in Panik’s future.

The home run gave Panik a 10 game hitting streak. While hitting streaks mean absolutely nothing as far as determining what a player is worth (both in the Majors or in the Minors as a prospect), they give you some sort of an idea for how things are going offensively for a player at the time. It is probably about as meaningful as stating that he hit .221/.323/.291 in April. Its descriptive yes, but at that sample size, it certainly isn’t predictive. Overall, Joe Panik is 21, while the average batter in the California League is 22.6 years old. His OBP is .352, while league average is .331. While he certainly isn’t slugging league average (.343 versus .413), he also has a BABIP of .290 versus league average (in the California League) of .320. This means 1 of 2 things, Panik is hitting the ball weakly a lot, or he has been pretty unlucky. From what I saw, the first one is almost certainly true, but the 2nd one could also be somewhat true. According to firstinning.com, Panik’s line drive rate is a little low at 16%, and his ground-ball rate is pretty high, supporting what I saw with my eyes. However, we are talking about a guy who is walking more than he strikeouts. If it is a simple problem of not squaring up the ball (assuming he has enough power to hit the ball hard, which, as a first round pick, he should), then that is much less worrisome than if he was striking out a ton and not walking at all. Like I said, the approach is there, and there is no reason to doubt his abilities yet, so the results at the plate should come.