Straw provides incredible speed. Straw is ranked 23rd in Baseball Savant’s sprint speed metric this season with the Astros, which evaluates the feet per second a player travels in their fastest second in very particular situations.
The average speed of straw was 29.2 feet per second. Amed Rosario (29.6, 13th overall) and Bradley Zimmer will be his immediate teammates on the Guardians (29.3, 19th overall).
He’s already swiped 17 bases this season, tying him for sixth all-time in baseball and the most in Cleveland.
In terms of raw running ability, Straw’s sprint pace places him in the top 4% of the league.
Straw, like Zimmer, is a fantastic center fielder who is expected to remain around for a long time (one terrible play Friday night from Zimmer notwithstanding). The parallels between the two players, however, end there.
Once you’ve mastered speed and defense, you’ll find that these two routes split completely.
Myles Straw is one of baseball’s worst hitters, but he rarely swings and misses, unlike Bradley Zimmer, who previously had pop with his bat but massive flaws all throughout his swing.
Only David Fletcher had a lower hard-hit rate than Straw last season (over exit velocity of 95 mph or above).
His hardest-hit ball of the season was 107.5 mph, which ranks sixth in the league and indicates that a player has the capacity to hit the ball hard but has been unfortunate.
Pitchers are hammering high-90s fastballs like they’re playing whiffle ball, so this kind of thing matters now more than ever.
Straw’s batting profile is unusual in that he almost never swings and misses, with a chase rate of less than 5% and a whiff rate of less than 2%.
If he swings, you can bet he enjoys what he sees. He does, however, strike out about 20% of the time.
Even in the minors, he never saw his strikeout percentage drop below 10%, which is how these types of batters with exceptional power but poor contact make it.