Zach Vincej had one heck of a year in the Arizona Fall League in 2016. The Cincinnati Reds shortstop prospect hit .352/.425/.676 in 21 games for Peoria. His 1.101 OPS ranked second in the league. So did his four home runs and seven doubles.
That was much better than he hit during the regular season with Double-A Pensacola. For the Wahoos he hit .281/.329/.378 with three home runs. His solid performance in Double-A, plus his torrid performance in Arizona led some to believe he had a chance to be selected in the Rule 5 draft in December. That didn’t happen and he remained with the Reds.
William Boor spoke with Zach Vincej for MLB.com about his season.
I changed my mentality to always think aggressive, hitting and defensively,” Vincej said. “I tinkered with a few things mechanically and once everything started to click, my confidence grew and grew.
Vincej had the best offensive season of his career (full season) in 2016 with Pensacola. The numbers line up with his words, though. His walk rate plummeted to 5.7% (ranged from 8.5%-13.0% in past seasons). The strikeout rate was also the highest of his career at 19.4% (14.2%-17.5% in past seasons). His power was the best of his career, but at least before heading to Arizona, wasn’t really out of the normal range for him. Being aggressive can both help and hurt. Obviously, lower walk rates aren’t good. But, if the walk rate is lowered because you’re making more contact, that can be good if the contact is solid and not just contact. Let’s take a quick look at Zach Vincej’s batted ball rates over the last four years:
| Year | GB | LD | FB | PU |
| 2016 | 41.2% | 26.8% | 26.2% | 5.8% |
| 2015 | 50.2% | 18.5% | 26.2% | 5.2% |
| 2014 | 51.4% | 14.4% | 29.0% | 5.3% |
| 2013 | 49.0% | 14.6% | 28.2% | 8.1% |
Now, let me preface this all by saying that batted ball types are done by stringers. They are simply a guy in the press box deciding what a ball is. That’s going to leave some wiggle room in the rates. Still, there was a big decline in ground balls and a big increase in line drives. More line drives is always a good thing and for Vincej, it showed up in the numbers. It could explain his career best BABIP of .346 (full season best). Both his fly ball and pop up rates remained right in line with his career rates.
If being more aggressive is going to lead to high line drive rates – perhaps due to swinging at pitches earlier in counts, this new approach could help moving forward. You’d like to see the walk rate tick back up some. In Arizona it was 11.3%, double the rate he had in the regular season. If he can find a way to up the walk rate a little bit and continue to hit line drives at a high rate he could really become a guy to keep an eye on.