He’s still hitting the ball at a plenty hard, with his 49.1% hard-hit rate ranking in the league’s 83rd percentile. He pairs that with a 79th percentile barrel rate (12.7%) and an astonishing 96th percentile AVG exit velocity of 93.4%.
Then in terms of his expected metrics, his xBA, xSLG and xwOBA all sit in the 92nd percentile and above, ranking in the 99th, 92nd and 92nd percentiles respectively.
While all of these numbers are great, what really stands out with Witt is the way he has come on strong this season post-All-Star break.
| Half | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | K% | BB% | wRC+ |
| 1st | .294 | .345 | .504 | .849 | 19.0% | 7.1% | 126 |
| 2nd | .311 | .380 | .507 | .886 | 18.1% | 9.0% | 141 |
Then, when you look deeper, the quality of contact has looked much more promising since the play resumed after the Midsummer Classic.
According to FanGraphs, Witt’s second-half hard-hit rate is 43.7%, nearly five percent higher than his 38.8% first-half clip.
His harder contact means he’s no longer spraying the ball to the opposite field as much, which isn’t always a bad thing, but it does imply he’s hitting it on the screws far more. His pull rate has remained at an identical 34.5%, his center rate is at 41.2% in the second-half as opposed to his 35.5% mark in the first-half, all while his 24.4% opposite rate is much lower now than his opening 30.0%.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.justbaseball.com ’
