Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports
On Monday, Ben Clemens published an article containing a list of the hitters who are getting the most power from the fewest swings and misses. It’s a ratio of barrels to whiffs, which Ben calls “whomps per whiff.” One name that stood out to me was Jake Cronenworth, who came in seventh on the whomps per whiff leaderboard. I first encountered Cronenworth many years ago, when he was the Shohei Ohtani of the Big Ten, and have been mightily pleased to see him evolve from a seventh-round pick to a two-time All-Star, and a starting infielder on a Padres team that usually buys its infielders from the Rolls Royce dealership.
A year ago, Cronenworth signed a seven-year contract extension that will keep him in brown and gold into the 2030s, and then the wheels fell off. The Padres backslid from the NLCS to around .500, and have been shedding star players ever since the death of beloved owner Peter Seidler last November. And last year, Cronenworth was one of the avatars of that decline. A line drive-spraying second baseman for the first three years of his career, he moved to first base, and rather than improving his bat to fit the offensive demands of his new position, he started hitting like a catcher. That seven-year contract, initially seen as a bargain, now looked more like a millstone.
Lucky for Cronenworth, and the Padres, he appears to be bouncing back. Cronenworth was never a superstar; over the first three seasons of his career, he averaged a wRC+ of 115, and 4.0 WAR per 162 team games. The Padres, presumably, would settle for that after Cronenworth hit .229/.312/.378 last year and flirted with replacement level. And sure enough, through the Padres’ first 25 games — of which Cronenworth has played 23 — he’s back to a wRC+ of 115 and on pace for 3.2 WAR.
**Jake Cronenworth, Past Four Seasons**
| Season | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2021 | 8.6% | 14.0% | .266 | .340 | .460 | 117 |
| 2022 | 10.2% | 19.2% | .239 | .332 | .390 | 110 |
| 2023 | 8.8% | 18.6% | .229 | .312 | .378 | 92 |
| 2024| 9.8% | 15.7% | .241 | .330 | .414 | 115 |
However, what is this undersized, line drive-hitting first baseman, this Millennial Mientkewicz, doing near the top of a whomps per whiff leaderboard? Cronenworth is whiffing less, but only just; he’s missing on 14.9% of his swings this year, down an even percentage point from 2023. Rather, Cronenworth is whomping more. A lot more.
**The Underlying Jake Cronenworth, Past Four Seasons**
| Season | Barrel% | xBA | xSLG | xwOBA | xwOBACON | HardHit% |
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2021 | 7.2 | .276 | .443 | .344 | .365 | 35.0 |
| 2022 | 5.6 | .221 | .356 | .303 | .318 | 34.1 |
| 2023 | 4.4 | .238 | .370 | .305 | .327 | 33.2 |
| 2024 | 12.5 | .319 | .543 | .406 | .446 | 44.4 |
Cronenworth is hitting the ball incredibly well this year. Even in his better seasons, Cronenworth lived around the 20th percentile in HardHit% and around the median in barrel rate and the various expected stats. He got by on making a lot of contact and spraying the ball to all fields — he was never some Statcast darling, at least not since his extremely truncated rookie year.
To the first question of whether he is doing something different, Cronenworth does seem to be making better swing decisions. He’s always had excellent strike zone judgement, but Baseball Savant has Cronenworth’s chase rate down to 21.9%, from 26.4% last year. Meanwhile his overall swing rate is down three percentage points while his in-zone swing rate is up seven-tenths of a point. Cronenworth has also changed his batting stance.
**The Spray Charts of Jake Cronenworth, Past Four Seasons**
| Season | LD%+ | GB%+ | FB%+ | Pull%+ | Cent%+ | Oppo%+|
| — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 2021 | 104 | 99 | 99 | 85 | 110 | 110 |
| 2022 | 84 | 82 | 130 | 83 | 106 | 121 |
| 2023 | 111 | 87 | 110 | 88 | 107 | 110 |
| 2024 | 134 | 91 | 93 | 72 | 134 | 98 |
In general, line drives are the best kind of hit no matter in what direction they go. But you want to hit the ball to the pull side in the air — think of any beefy left-handed hitter clearing his hips and yanking the ball down the line and into…
