Seiya Suzuki Hit Two Home Runs Saturday He'd Never Have Hit Before 2025

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Rick Osentoski-Imagn Images

Cubs slugger Seiya Suzuki has always found his power at the top of the strike zone. Since coming to the United States from NPB in 2022, Suzuki has hunted in the top half of the zone for balls he could elevate with his hard, level swing, sending line drives from gap to gap and occasionally sending a ball flying far over the wall. He has a robust .594 career slugging average in the top third of the zone.

In the past, if you wanted to get Suzuki out, you pounded him away—and occasionally, you'd come down and in on him. That area wasn't quite a hole for him, but if you worked in the lower and inner thirds of the zone, he didn't have a great way to truly punish you. His best swing, on those pitches, might result in a scalded ground ball through the left side. The real danger came if you left one out over the plate, and if you elevated the ball. Suzuki was more than a mistake hitter, but to hit homers, he needed to either catch a pitcher trying to sneak one past him above the belt or capitalize when they missed, badly, with a pitch aimed down and in. Here's his weighted on-base average (wOBA) by pitch location for the first three years of his Cubs tenure.

The number in that lower left box is still very good, but again, we're talking about a lot of hard-hit singles and doubles. Entering 2025, in fact, Suzuki had only hit four home runs on balls in the lower third of the zone, which were also at least the width of a baseball closer to him than the center of home plate. 

He already has three such home runs this year, after hitting two of them Saturday alone. You're now better off trying Suzuki up and in, though the league doesn't seem to have fully realized that yet. 

Certainly, the Tigers thought they had a gameplan that would work, and were sorely mistaken. In the first inning, on a 3-2 pitch, Tyler Holton tried a changeup that needed to have the zone (lest he walk Suzuki). He kept it on the bottom rail, but Suzuki obliterated it.

Later in the game, Chase Lee simply threw a sweeper that didn't sweep. Again, though, this is the kind of mistake Suzuki would only have punished with a single in the past. This year, these mistakes go a very, very long way.

What's fueling this? Firstly, as I wrote last week, Suzuki is tapping into more of his power this year by geting more aggressive. With earlier swing decisions, he's catching the ball out front more, and that's leading to more loft and more of a pull tendency. Those are key ingredients in the cocktail of power. Secondly, though, he's just gotten more comfortable generating his typical bat speed on pitches down in the zone.

In 2023, when bat-tracking was live only for the second half (but in which year that coincided with Suzuki's renaissance at the plate and his torrid finish to the season), he had an average bat speed of 70.4 miles per hour on pitches in the lower third of the zone and below. That's well below average, especially given that he swings harder than the average hitter overall. Most batters swing as fast or faster than their total average when chasing the ball down, because it lets them extend their arms more at contact. Suzuki was a rare case of the opposite—of needing the ball to come up to put his 'A' swing on it.

Last year, that number rose to 71.6 miles per hour, but the resulting attack angle of his bat didn't appreciably change. In other words, though swinging faster, Suzuki was no earlier on the ball; he was making fractionally later decisions and trying to rush his barrel to the ball. This season, though, he's at 72.0 miles per hour on swings down in the zone, and his attack angle is up from 14° to 16°, with an accompanying change in attack direction. He's catching the ball two inches farther in front of his body, which means he's gained more extension by the time he meets the ball. All that has resulted in more power in the bottom portion of the zone—especially down and in—than he'd ever been able to create before.

Suzuki is now on pace 40 home runs, after three seasons in which he never hit more than 21. He's gotten more aggressive, and yes, that's eroded his walk rate, but it's also put him in a position to crush the ball—including some balls he could only have managed singles against in the past.

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