Gather ’round, friends! There is a buzz that needs to be killed, and I am answering the ignominious call of duty.
This buzz is significant. Moreso, even, than the buzz I sustained throughout the entirety of my 20-game season ticket plan in 2022, which I convinced my now-wife was a sound investment because it would give us first rights to … playoff tickets. My only positive memory of that season at the ballpark was the guy at the [redacted to protect identity of chill service worker] concession stand,
who began to recognize me by mid-June and started setting aside my traditional fifth-inning order (three Modelos).
Those season tickets were my Bane moment. Reader, you merely adopted the buzzkill. I was born into it, molded by it. I do not fear the buzz in front of me, for I watched the Rick Hahn rebuild die 20 separate deaths.
Still, this brings me no joy to say: Colson Montgomery has a serious problem.
Here are the three pitches Colson crushed against the Twins this weekend:
Slider down and away. Zebbie Matthews put this in a good spot.
Middle-middle sinker.
Hanging cutter.
Colson has done an outstanding job of hitting these three pitches in the big leagues. He is slugging .667 (!) on sinkers, .714 (!!) on sliders, and .813 (!?!?!?~) on cut fastballs. Incredible numbers!
So what’s the issue then, you buzzkill buffoon?
(Wow. Rude.)
Just like jazz, the point is what’s in-between the notes. None of these three home runs were hit on a 4-seam fastball; Colson’s homers rarely are. He is currently batting .154 and slugging a pedestrian .410 against the most common pitch in baseball. To put it frankly, Colson has not shown any ability to catch up to a slugger’s best friend.
Montgomery has seen 4-seam fastballs 32.8% of the time. He has seen sliders, cutters and sinkers at a combined rate of 38.3%. Colson is not going to keep producing like he has been if he can’t time up the slugger’s best friend.
For comparison, here is the average MLB player’s batting average on fastballs in the strike zone, split into 16 quadrants:
Here is Kyle Schwarber, whose bat speed is comparable to Colson:
And here is Colson himself:
Finally, here is the Savant leaderboard for Run Value generated on individual pitches:
We see here that 10 of the top 14 pitches that hitters mash are 4-seam fastballs. Three of the four other pitches are from hitters who ALSO have their run value against 4-seamers in the Top 14 (Vlad, Judge, and Ohtani). Only George Springer is providing Top 14 run value solely on a pitch other than a 4-seamer.
Look at the far-right column: The number of times hitters have seen the pitch as a percentage of total pitches seen. Only Willy Adames has a higher percentage than Colson does. Pitchers are starting to exploit this hole in Colson’s game; pair that with Colson’s whiff rate on sliders (currently at a grotesque 56.5%), and pitchers are only going to ramp up this approach until Colson adjusts.
The data is pretty clear on this: In order for a slugger to maximize their value, they have to crush 4-seamers. Colson has made a good living to this point on crushing secondary mistake pitches. If he’s going to hit 40 home runs at some point in his career – and based on what we’ve seen, that should be the expectation Colson sets for himself – a drastic improvement on 4-seamers is non-negotiable.
I didn’t see the light until I was already a White Sox fan; by then, it was nothing to me but blinding!
