There remains a strong debate among Cardinals fans and here on VEB about Grichuk's value and whether he should be considered a starting caliber position player. Grichuk strikes out a lot and walks very little, but when he makes contact the ball is lucky to survive. So far the mix has worked, with Grichuk owning a .524 SLG% and a 120 wRC+. But is it sustainable?

Grichuk strikes out a ton. In and of itself, that doesn't worry me much. Specifically, he strikes out in 29.2% of plate appearances, which in this day and age isn't THAT bad. League average K% among non-pitchers so far this year is 19.6%. So he is striking out about 50% more often than average. A negative to be sure, but that's something that a hitter can make up for in other parts of their offensive profile. Namely, they do so by taking a lot of walks and hitting the crap out of the ball when they do make contact. Randal certainly does the latter, but he is dreadfully bad at the former.

There are 15 players with more than 100 PA this year who strike out at a higher rate than Grichuk, and none of them have a lower walk rate than Grichuk. 7 of those players have posted wRC+ above 100, and every one of them has a double digit BB%. Of the 8 who are hitting below a 100 wRC+, the highest walk rate is 8.5%.

But we shouldn't just look at those worse than Grichuk at striking out. So below is a chart. I took Grichuk, the 15 players with a worse K% than Grichuck, and the 15 players next behind Grichuk in K% and ranked them by BB%. So essentially, this is the 31 players with the highest k%, grouped by how often they walk.

This graph is not kind to Randal. As you can see, many players maintain very high strikeout rates but still manage to be above average performers at the plate. However, nearly all of them run very high walk rates. The only above-average hitter with similar K and BB numbers to Grichuk is Joey Butler, a guy who has bounced from org to org and is currently the benefactor or an extremely high BABIP. The next above average hitter comes in at 18th from the bottom in Ryan Flaherty. But Flaherty walks 9.3% of the time. League average BB% is 7.7%. So besides JOEY BUTLER, Randal is the only player on this list who is both an above average hitter and below average at taking walks. That is not good company.

Let's look at it the opposite way. Among players with 100 PA, Randal Grichuk has the 11th lowest BB% in the majors. So let's take Randal, the 10 hitters with lower BB% than him, and the 10 next lowest after him, for the 21 players least likely to walk. And let's rank those players by K%.

Bad news again for Grichuk. Of the 21 players who take the least walks, Grichuk strikes out more than all of them. Butler is there again, but on this whole list the only other player running an above average wRC+ is Salvador Perez, with a 114. But while he walks even less than Randal, he at least strikes out well under average. The only player other than Butler to make both lists was Hector Gomez. They were also the three worst performers on both lists! This is very bad company for Grichuk to be in. It's also why I believe the lack of walks is a much worse sign for Grichuk than the slew of K's. While there were many decent hitters on the high K list, this list is nowhere near as successful.

There is one other area in which Grichuk is an extreme data point, and this time it's extremely positive. BaseballSavant.com keeps track of average batted ball velocity numbers. Grichuk has 49 tracked at-bats. Among players with at least 45 tracked at-bats (a pool of 297 players) Grichuck places 5th in average batted ball velocity at 93.9 MPH. The names in front of him: Stanton, Moreland, Pederson, and Cabrera. The names behind him: Bautista, Donaldson, Grandal, Justin Bour, and Arod. Now this is the company Grichuk would like to be a part of!

It remains to be seen how much of an affect Batted Ball Velocity can have on a player's BABIP and ISO, but it would be very strange if it wasn't a positive correlation. FiveThirtyEight.com did a study showing the correlation between OPS and Batted Ball Velocity, and eyeballing Grichuk's numbers gives him an expected OPS a little above .800. However, the study does not control for strikeouts and walks, and thus Grichuk would be expected to perform worse than the best fit line would indicate. How much, we don't know, hopefully they do a follow up but correlate Batted Ball Velocity to wOBA on contact, which I think would get more to the heart of the issue, which is measuring how much Batted Ball Velocity has an affect when making contact.

So we don't know if Grichuk's contact quality can make up for his lack of contact quantity and his complete lack of ability to draw walks. I personally very much doubt it though. What we can definitely say is that Grichuk is one of the worst in the league at both avoiding strikeouts and taking walks, and that is a very dangerous combination. At the very least he has zero margin for error in terms of contact quality. If he slips at all in terms of knocking the crap out of the baseball, his stats could get ugly quick. He's running a .362 BABIP and a .252 ISO (one point ahead of Miguel Cabrera) and both those numbers are way more likely to regress than stay where they are. With a 120 wRC+, they really don't have to regress far in order for him to drop to a league average hitter or worse.

Grichuk may look like a Greek God, and he may absolutely pummel baseballs when making contact, but in order to be an above average player long term he will need to either cut down on the swings and misses or learn how to control the strike zone. Probably a combination of both really. While he is still young (he turns 24 in August) very few players make notable strides in these two stats once making it to the major leagues. So while I love watching the ball fly off his bat, I'm not looking forward to what comes next for Randal Grichuk. What we've seen so far pretty much represents the best case scenario of what we can expect from a player with his profile.