Evan White’s been struggling at the plate in his rookie campaign. At the time of this writing his wRC+ is sitting at a no good, very bad, quite awful 26 (UPDATE 1: White went 2-4 with two dingers last night, dragging his wRC+ all the way up to 50). It’s all anybody is talking about, probably. So let’s join in!

PART I – PLAY THE HARD HITS

You’ve likely seen something like the above image from Baseball Savant cited as a beacon of hope for Evan White. It’s undeniable that when White puts the ball in play he’s smacking the hell out of it. As the broadcast, Jerry Dipoto, and the teens of Mariners twitter are all too happy to remind us White ranks in the 81st percentile of exit velocity and 94th percentile of hard hit%. And while I’m smart enough to know that I don’t have a total understanding of the significance of a high barrel%, being able to consistently barrel up the ball seems like it should be a good thing, so we’ll throw it in here as well. Evan White hits the ball hard when he hits it and that’s a good thing. We’re all in agreement here. So if White’s hitting the ball hard when he hits it, that means that this is all just bad luck, right? He’s fine? Hell yeah, awesome. Everyone pack it up, we’re done here. we solved the Evan White ridd-[record scratch]

PART II – OH DEAR

While keeping the caveat of SMALL SAMPLE SIZES in mind, outside of the whole “hitting the ball hard” thing White has been total dogshit at the plate. The handwavey explanation of poor BABIP luck doesn’t fly here, as even White’s expected outcome stats (xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA) are horrendous. His 6th percentile xwOBA–sitting at an ugly .263 that falls below what the FanGraphs Glossary defines as “Awful”–is particularly troublesome since it takes into account the quality of contact that White makes, which we all just agreed was very good. What gives?

PART III – WHIFFLE BALL

The issue with saying that Evan White hits the ball hard when he puts it into play is that he’s mostly not, y’know, putting the ball in play. As of Sunday evening he’s running an absurd 44% K%, nearly double the 2020 MLB average of 23%. You don’t need me to tell you that striking out in nearly half of your plate appearances is not a recipe for success. K% stabilizes around 60 PA, so you can’t call this an anomalous result for Evan. Referring back one last time to the Baseball Savant percentiles graphic, we see that Evan White has a 2nd percentile whiff%. Second. Two (2) out of one (1) hundred (100). He has been among the very worst batters in MLB this season in terms of actually putting the bat on the ball when he swings; there’s way, way, way too much swing and miss in his game. Now, it’s very important to note that I’m not saying that these are indicative of White’s true talent level, but rather that they point towards fundamental flaws in his current approach at the plate.

MLB pitchers pick up on the flaws in a player’s game quickly, and the book is certainly out on our poor Weird Ass. He’s seeing low-and-away pitches about a third of the time, and it’s resulting in a lot of both White’s called and swinging strikes.

Also of concern is that hot spot in the heart of the plate on White’s swinging strike heat map. If he continues to miss meat gifts like those then pitchers won’t have to bother painting the low and away corner (UPDATE 2: The pair of dingers that White thwocked last night were on exactly the type of pitches I was referring to in this section. That’s an encouraging development that I really hope he’s able to build on).

The real kicker is that even when White is making contact on pitches in this quadrant of the strike zone he’s doing absolutely nothing with them. The low and away pitches he manages to put into play are averaging a roughly 72 mph exit velocity, and he’s yet to manage one barrel or hard hit. The best part of his game at the plate so far is nonexistent in the part of the strike zone that he’s seeing the most pitches in. (Ed’s note: This is what we call “bad”)

PART IV – I RAN OUT OF TITLES JUST READ THE DANG PARAGRAPH

I could continue on here, going into detail how White has gone from a guy who smacked line drives to all fields to someone who’s become pull-happy and only hitting liners at an 8% clip while driving the ball into the ground half the time. I’m not that much of a Swing Mechanics Guy so I’ll spare you my deep and poignant thoughts on that (it currently looks like doo-doo).

Ultimately what we have here is the picture of a player who was sent directly to the Majors from AA and is struggling big time, and I don’t really see anything here to suggest that this is a problem that will go away soon without major adjustments. Perhaps more troubling, though, is the Mariners’ apparent willingness to send White out there to die every single day when he’s so clearly overmatched. Even in the context of an abnormal situation due to (officially, finally) kicking off a rebuild in the middle of a global pandemic, allowing White’s bottom tier performance at the plate day after day has approached a level of developmental malpractice unseen within the organization since the Jack Z regime unjustifiably rushed Mike Zunino to the Majors before he was ready.

White has looked increasingly lost and frustrated recently, often following his strikeouts over the past week, a potential sign that his learning experience at the big league level has gone from constructively difficult to downright counterproductive. It’s difficult to watch and shouldn’t continue past the next roster cutdown, if for no other reason than to give White an extended breather and regroup himself. Evan White’s offensive struggles are the first major test that this rebuild is facing; if the Mariners run him out there for 200+ PA that look like his first 70 they will have failed it, and failed him.