While his results have been less than impressive, it is really difficult to find fault with Aramis’ approach so far this season. It’s easy to look at his line of .205/.313/.398 and conclude that he must be doing something wrong, but looking a bit closer it appears as though he’s just been extremely unlucky over the first 25 games or so. It would be one thing if his low average was the result of swinging at a lot of bad pitches out of the zone, but Ramirez has shown extremely good plate discipline so far. His K/BB ratio is an outstanding 0.67, second only to Derrek Lee’s 0.58. It’s far better than Pierre’s 2.00 and Jones’ abysmal 3.75. The reason why Ramirez has been walking so often and striking out so seldom is because he’s swinging at good pitches. Aramis has swung at just 7.1% of pitches outside the strike zone in 2006, compared to the league-average rate of 8.4%. Pierre and Jones are expanding their zones far more often to the tune of 10.1% and 11.0%, respectively. Clearly Aramis is still seeing the ball pretty well and is doing a good job at swinging at pitches he can hit. The next question becomes what is he doing with the balls he makes contact on?

Just looking at simple stats like batting average would suggest that the answer is “not much.” Again, however, the simple stats are misleading in Aramis’ case. The Mendozaesque BA of .205 is depressing, but it’s in large part due to the fact that his BABIP is an astonishingly bad .183. It’s not that low because he’s hitting a bunch of weak grounders or pop-ups, either; ARam is hitting a lot of line drives – he's hitting line drives nearly 25% of the time he makes contact – but they just aren’t finding any holes in the defense. Research has suggested that a player’s BABIP will be around 100 points higher than the rate he hits line drives, but Aramis’ is 50 points lower. If you assumed that his batted ball types were dropping for hits at a normal rate, Ramirez should be hitting over .330 right now with an OBP well over .400.

To give you an idea of where Aramis’ hits have gone so far, I’ve prepared a spray chart of balls he’s put into play. Homers, triples, doubles, singles, and outs are marked ‘H’, ‘T’, ‘D’, ‘S’, and ‘o’, while ground balls, line drives, fly balls, and pop-ups are colored blue, purple, red, and orange, respectively.

Aramis is hitting quite a few line drives to the outfield that are being caught. The results aren’t what we’d hope for, but it’s hard to blame the player for the outcome when it appears as if he’s doing almost everything right. About the only fault that can be found with that spray chart is that all of Ramirez’ hits have come to the left of center field. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however, as it’s not uncommon for power hitters to attack pitches middle-in and pull the vast majority of pitches they see. (That’s why many famous power hitters such as Ted Williams and Barry Bonds see extreme defensive shifts.) What you don’t want your power hitter to do, however, is try and pull a pitch on the outer part of the plate, as that usually results in a ground out or double-play ball. With that in mind, let’s see where Aramis has placed pitches that were on the outer third of the plate.

It looks as if the percentage of outside pitches he’s trying to pull is about the same as the percentage of outside pitches he’s taking to right field. Even better news is the fact that only a few of those pulls have resulted to ground outs to the third baseman or shortstop, a big reason why Ramirez has only grounded into two double plays despite having so many AB with runners on.

In short, I find little reason to be concerned with Aramis’ performance to date. The results haven’t been pretty, but if Aramis keeps doing what he’s doing those numbers should turn themselves around in a hurry.