Thairo Estrada is becoming a cornerstone player for the Giants

Thairo Estrada is hitting .344 right now. He’s on pace to steal 43 bases. He’s on pace to hit 29 home runs. There’s a chance — a small chance, but a real one — that he’ll be the first 30-30 player in Giants history who isn’t a member of Barry Bonds’ extended family. The difference here is that Estrada is doing this as a middle infielder, which explains why he’s currently tied for the major-league lead in Offensive Wins Above Replacement.

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It’s time to talk about Thairo Estrada.

The first mention of Estrada as a Giant came here, when he was paired with Skye Bolt in a “Who are these guys?” article. In the middle of last season, he was unexpectedly leading the Giants in games played and plate appearances, which prompted a “Did you notice this?” article. During the offseason, when there were rumors about every position on the field, there weren’t any about second base, which prompted a “Sure seems like the Giants are comfortable projecting Estrada for a major role” article.

The progression from afterthought to cornerstone might seem unexpected to us, but there’s a consistency with how the Giants have perceived him. They liked him enough to pursue him when the Yankees decided they’d rather have Rougned Odor (?!), and they liked Estrada enough to keep him over Mauricio Dubón when the roster crunch became impossible to avoid. They liked him enough to get him into the lineup every day last season, and they liked him enough to park him in the starting lineup of their projected roster from the offseason. Nobody has been more of an unambiguous champion of Estrada’s talents and expected contributions than the people in charge of San Francisco Baseball Associates LLC.

So let’s dig into this fast start and see what’s going on with Estrada. What’s he doing right? What should continue? What is less likely to continue?

Fewer ground balls

This is a big one. Last season, Estrada ranked sixth in the National League in percentage of balls hit on the ground. This isn’t automatically a bad thing for hitters; Brandon Nimmo was essentially tied with Estrada, and he had a fine, money-making offensive season. Grounders are murder on hitters who aren’t fast, but that’s not a concern here. Heck, back in the day of pencil mustaches and tight baseball pants, coaches used to tell players like Estrada to hit the ball on the ground on purpose. There’s a reason why Estrada had one of the highest rates of infield base hits last season.

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Still, a notable piece of baseball trivia is that nobody in the history of the sport has hit a ground ball over the fence. It’s also harder to get an extra-base hit at all with a grounder. The league hit .242 with a .265 slugging percentage on ground balls last season, but they hit .230 with a .677 slugging percentage on fly balls. Batters also hit .697 with a .895 slugging percentage on line drives, which seems good.

Got that? More line drives, fewer ground balls. I’d be a great hitting coach. “Hey, you, batter! Hit more line drives,” I’d say, possibly while sipping from a drink with an umbrella in it. It’s difficult to imagine that this change was unintentional. Estrada is getting better at giving his batted balls a chance to be hits.

Estrada is still hitting more grounders than the average batter, but he’s not close to being near the top of the league, like he was last season. (That last one is infield-fly ball percentage, and while it’s not entirely related to the topic, it’s worth a mention. Hard to get a hit on infield fly balls, too.)

Elite in-zone contact percentage

Throw Estrada a strike, and he’ll hit it. At least, he’ll hit it if he swings. That seems like ordinary baseball stuff, but Estrada is better at this skill than most hitters, making more contact with pitches in the strike zone than all but six NL hitters. He was good at this last year, too. He has what the cigar-chomping scouts call “bat-to-ball skills.”

There is a way to be too good at making contact, though. The new hitting orthodoxy posits that not all strikes are created equal, and the Giants are built around this philosophy. There exists, at least early in the count, a tip-your-cap strike that hitters are supposed to ignore. Nip the corner with a back-door sinker or front-door cutter, and congratulations, you’ve stolen a strike. But if you miss, that’s count leverage in the hitter’s favor, and there are even more rewards for ignoring the bad strikes.

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Last season, Estrada swung at 69.1 percent of pitches in the strike zone. That’s close to the league average. This season, though, he’s swinging at 61.5 percent and to great success. He’s not a perfect plate-discipline hero, as he’ll chase more than you’d like, but he’s also taking a lot of called strikes. That might seem like a bad thing, but it’s counterintuitively proving that he’s feeling more comfortable at the plate. He’s not giving a rip that he’s behind in the count, especially if that means that he’s not lunging for corner pitches.

A weirdo who loves it when pitchers throw changeups

A good changeup is pure wizardry, and there’s nothing better than a batter swinging for the fences on a pitch that’s three feet from the plate. It’s, for my money, the pitch that seems the most impossible to hit.

Except Estrada is good at it. Really good. He’s on a list of the best hitters against the changeup since the start of 2021, along with some of the greatest hitters in baseball history (Mike Trout) and a couple of ex-Giants (Christian Arroyo, Carlos Correa).

Dude loves to hit changeups.

Thairo Estrada's home run off Brewers closer Devin Williams was the first Williams has allowed to a right-handed hitter since Sept. 2, 2021 … when Thairo Estrada took him deep.

— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) May 7, 2023

Dude loves to hit changeups. Devin Williams has allowed four homers on his changeup — a magic pitch with its very own nickname — and Estrada has two of them.

This doesn’t exactly explain why Estrada is breaking out this season, but it sure is fun, and it deserves a little nook in this article.

This isn’t a point worth belaboring, as you already know that he’s the fastest player on the Giants and one of their few stolen base threats. But his prowess extends beyond stealing bases; he’s outstanding at taking extra bases and generally imposing his will on the basepaths.

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He stands out on the Giants, but it still feels like it’s possible to underrate his baserunning. Going first-to-third, tagging up on medium-deep fly balls and beating out the back end of a double-play attempt aren’t the first things you think of when evaluating a player, and they don’t show up on the back of a baseball card, but they sure help when they work. This is a big part of Estrada’s value right now.

Along with the, you know, .344 batting average and chance at a 30-30 season.

Disclaimer: There are more than a couple of red flags

The obvious one: Estrada’s batting average on balls in play is .404. Faster players get a little bit more love in that department, but no one can get that much love. Estrada is among the league leaders for hits that left the bat at under 80 mph. That doesn’t have to disappear entirely, but it goes a long way toward explaining the Ty Cobb-like batting average.

Estrada isn’t an exit-velocity king in general. He’s down with the bottom-feeders in that category (15th percentile), although he’s comfortably in the top half of baseball for maximum exit velocity, which is also important. But when you look at his expected statistics, they’re skeptical. xwOBA is short for “Expected weighted on-base average,” and while that might sound like nonsense to you, it’s just a way to put batted-ball data into a blender and see how it stacks up with other hitters.

Estrada’s career xwOBA: .328

Estrada’s xwOBA in 2023 so far: .335

So, not much better than the old Estrada. When you look at his expected stats just on the balls he’s making contact on (xwOBACON), he’s still doing better (.385) than the league-average hitter (.368), but he’s not blowing them into the ionosphere, like his traditional stats are suggesting.

The good news is that he doesn’t have to give any of these hits back. They’re already on Baseball-Reference, and he gets to keep adding to them. Let’s say there are two options, though:

1. Thairo Estrada is one of the best players in baseball right now and an MVP candidate, and this will continue for several seasons.

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2. Thairo Estrada is improving, and he’s a better player than he was last season, even if he’s probably not this good.

It’s the second one. Don’t want to be a wet blanket, but that’s what the overwhelming evidence is suggesting. Call this Grant’s Law of Surprisingly High Batting Averages.

If the question is “Is this player a modern-day Rod Carew?”, the answer is probably “No.”

Ichiro was a modern-day Rod Carew. There are hundreds of players who were not. The “no” answer works 99 percent of the time, and it probably works here. Estrada probably isn’t Rod Carew, or Ichiro or even Luis Arráez.

He’s pretty good, though. He already was, but it seems like he’s getting better, even if he’s probably not the MVP candidate that his start to the season suggests. The Giants are in the middle of a brutal draft-pick slump, but it helps if you pretend that Estrada was a first-round pick who is coming into his own. It also helps if you pretend he was traded for Jonathan Loaísiga, with both teams feeling good about the deal.

More than anything, though, Estrada is a strong player who helps the Giants in several ways and makes the confidence in the front office and coaching staff look extremely wise. The Giants don’t have a lot of players who can be dropped into any lineup, against a left-handed or right-handed starter, and make the team better. They have one, though, and he’s a huge part of the 2023 season, so far. He’s hitting fewer balls on the ground, he’s running well, his defensive stats have stabilized in a good way and he’s becoming a cornerstone player for a Giants team that’s desperate for them.

Estrada probably won’t be this good all season, but he should be plenty good, alright. He might not have been the breakout player you were expecting, but he’s turned out to be the breakout player the Giants needed.

(Top photo of Estrada: Darren Yamashita / USA Today)

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