Valdez making an early impression with Bucs

This story was excerpted from Alex Stumpf’s Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ANAHEIM -- Enmanuel Valdez isn’t the most avid of fishermen, but it’s a family pastime and it was a chance to unwind with his loved ones. The infielder had been designated for assignment by the Red Sox earlier that week this past December, so some quiet time with his uncles sounded pretty good while he was in baseball limbo.

On that Dec. 15 trip, he got word that he had a new baseball home. The Pirates traded for him, so he was going to get another opportunity. The fish were also biting.

“I caught one, but I let it go,” Valdez said with a giggle, scrolling through his phone for a photo while coach and interpreter Stephen Morales relayed what he said. After a moment, Valdez pulled up the catch:

Now that’s a prize. Based on Valdez’s belly laugh while showing it off, he knows it, too.

Valdez surely won’t be quitting his day job to try to join the Bass Pro Tour Circuit anytime soon, but there are plenty of overlaps between baseball and fishing. You need a steady hand and patience to be successful at both. Steady hands are a big reason for his success with his new club, and his patience at the plate is finally being rewarded.

Valdez may have been relatively unknown when the Pirates acquired him, but he’s making some of the hardest contact on the team. Entering play Tuesday, his average exit velocity (91.8 mph) was the third-highest on the Pirates, trailing only Oneil Cruz and Bryan Reynolds. His hard-hit rate (balls with an exit velocity of at least 95 mph) is 51.4%, joining Cruz as the only Pirates to be making hard contact over half the time.

Mix in mostly average whiff, chase and strikeout rates, plus a knack for drawing walks (14.3%), and he has some of the best expected stats in the league, with Baseball Savant projecting him to have an expected batting average of .317 and an expected wOBA of .401. Both of those rank in the top 10% of players.

Valdez had some intriguing peripherals a year ago with the Red Sox, but nothing to this caliber. It starts up top, cutting down on his hand movements at the plate.

Valdez was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis with roughly two weeks to go in Spring Training. While working with Indianapolis’ coaches, it was suggested that he cut down on his hand movement. Quieter hands could be a pathway to success. He was quickly recalled on March 28 after Nick Gonzales hit the injured list, and the new approach has paid dividends.

“In Boston last year, I tried to do too much with my hands,” Valdez said. “Here, I’m trying to calm my hands and make more contact.”

So far, it’s worked. Or, at least it has worked in the peripherals. Valdez is finally getting some of his hard-hit balls to fall into the gap, but he wasn’t rewarded for a lot of his hard contact early. He was tagging the ball, but right at fielders. A .745 OPS is nothing to sneeze at, but the quality of contact and at-bats suggests it should be higher.

“I’ve been reminding myself everyday that they’re good at-bats,” Valdez said. “If I continue to hit the ball like that, I’m going to be OK.”

General manager Ben Cherington has seen some similar bad luck scattered throughout the roster -- guys whose results are worse than what the projections suggest. Valdez was singled out as one of those players, with Cherington saying he’s played his way to being part of the team mix.

“When we look at the numbers, [we] feel like his surface performance is below what we expected it to be,” Cherington said. “He’s hit into some bad luck. So feel like he’s given us really good at-bats in particular against righties, his defense has been solid. So that’s been great. He’s stepped up and taken advantage of an opportunity.”

The tweaked approach is starting to yield some fruit. Sometimes that hard contact will result in an out, but hey, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

“I know that I’m a good hitter, a better hitter,” Valdez said. “I’m just going to continue to work on my swings and the things that I’ve been doing and the results will be better down the road.”