Jorge Alfaro logged 143 games at the big-league level with the Philadelphia Phillies before being dealt to Miami, along with Sixto Sanchez , in the deal that brought J.T. Realmuto to the City of Brotherly Love. Alfaro was the team’s primary catcher for the first half of the season, but then Wilson Ramos came to town, significantly cutting into Alfaro’s playing time. In his first 70 games of the season, Alfaro hit .254 with six home runs, 21 RBI and a whopping 93 strikeouts. Yikes. He’s leaving a hitter’s friendly park for the spacious confines of Marlins Park, which dampens his numbers a bit, but Alfaro has the ability to make the park look smaller than it really is.

When Alfaro makes contact, it’s loud and hard. Last season, which was his first season exclusively in the bigs, he made hard contact 37.7 percent of the time, and only generated soft contact a measly 14.5 percent of the time. His soft contact percentage was on par with Milwaukee’s Christian Yelich and Washington’s Anthony Rendón . In fact, Alfaro’s average exit velocity last season was the 23rd best in all of baseball, and second-best among all catchers, trailing only Chris Iannetta . However, despite an average exit velocity comparable to Manny Machado , his launch angle was on par with Robinson Canó and Gerardo Parra .

He only hit 10 home runs last season, so his sample size may skew this statistic, but his average home run distance (420 ft) was tied with Carlos González for third-best in all of baseball, trailing only Colorado’s Trevor Story and Iannetta.

Here’s Alfaro’s spray chart from the past two seasons (fly balls and line drives) with Marlins Park as the overlay:

The ability to rack up power numbers like he would have in Citizen’s Bank Park may be diminished in his new home stadium, but even if the spacious Marlins Park won’t be able to confine Alfaro’s immense power. Will he be a 25 home run guy? Probably not, but with a full season’s workload, he should be able to hit about 15 in his new digs.

However, that is when he makes contact. Among players with at least 350 plate appearances, no one had a lower contact rate than Alfaro, who clocked in at a 61 percent contact rate in 2018. Why is that? Well, it’s quite simple, considering his 46.9 O-Swing percentage was the second-worst among batters with at least 350 plate appearances. He also swung the most, coming in at 61.1 percent and his swing-and-miss was over four percentage points higher than the second-worst player in the league.

Simply put, when you swing a lot at pitches outside of the zone, you’re going to swing and miss often, and Alfaro is the epitome of that.

All of that led to a 36.6 percent strikeout rate in 108 games last season for the new Miami backstop. Yikes. Strikeouts have always been a problem for Alfaro, even dating back to his days in Rookie and Single-A with the Texas Rangers. If he’s going to be able to sustain a respectable batting average, even for a catcher, something has to give between a high strikeout rate and routinely chasing pitches out of the zone. Aaron Judge can survive with a sky-high strikeout rate, but can Alfaro?

Despite hitting .262 last season, his expected batting average of .228 indicates that he outperformed expectations of his batted balls. xBA is based solely on the exit velocity and launch angle of the batted balls, and the likely outcomes are used to create an individual’s xBA. In this particular case, Alfaro’s batted ball profile and each batted ball event would have equated to a .228 batting average. He outperformed himself there, also due to an insane .406 BABIP. Listen, when it comes to Alfaro’s sky-high strikeout rate or BABIP decreasing, I’ll bet the money on the latter.

In short, Alfaro will not match last season’s .262 batting average in his first season with the Marlins. A .240-ish batting average with 15 home runs and 50 RBI would be an excellent inaugural season for Alfaro in the southeast.

Alfaro generates hard contact, but an immense strikeout rate and increased propensity to whiff on pitches are causes for concern in 2019.

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Statistical Credits
Fangraphs.com
BrooksBaseball.net
thebaseballcube.com
baseballsavant.mlb.com