If Tarik Skubal locates his fastball up within the zone, opposing hitters are in all probability cooked. Almost half the time they swing, they arrive up empty. In the event that they handle to place it in play, they’re unlikely to do a lot injury — of the six hits he’s allowed on elevated heaters, 5 have been singles. That lone extra-base hit? An absolute tank! A 429-foot dwelling run, off a wonderfully executed 98-mph heater on the primary pitch of the sport, courtesy of 1 Zach Neto, who’s at the moment making a case for low-level stardom.
After a tough rookie marketing campaign in 2023, Neto broke out in his sophomore effort, posting 3.5 WAR by enjoying a reliable shortshop and clubbing sufficient dwelling runs (23) to cowl up his mediocre on-base potential. Even after lacking the primary few weeks of this season with a bum shoulder, the 24-year-old has managed to take one other step ahead in 2025: His 139 wRC+ ranks second amongst all shortstops with no less than 150 plate appearances.
That improved line is fueled by an influence surge. In simply 37 video games, he’s homered 9 occasions and hit 10 doubles. The barrel price has actually doubled, leaping from an 8.4% price final yr to 16.8%. In consequence, his .589 anticipated slugging (xSLG) ranks eighth in baseball, just under big-time sluggers like Aaron Decide, Shohei Ohtani, and Kyle Schwarber.
These three guys are arduous swingers, perennially topping the bat velocity leaderboards. However Neto doesn’t match that profile. He stands at a slender 5-foot-11; even with a slight uptick in bat velocity year-over-year, his 71.7-mph common swing velocity falls beneath the large league common. The Angels shortstop isn’t posting elite energy numbers as a result of he’s swinging the bat arduous. It’s as a result of he’s maxing out the aggression in his strategy, promoting out for energy and largely succeeding.
To grasp Neto’s strategy, it requires a tour into the brand new stats dropped by the beneficent of us on the Statcast manufacturing facility. The primary rollout centered round batting stance information, measuring the vertical and horizontal location of the place a hitter stands within the batter’s field and the common “intercept level,” or the place the hitter makes contact with the ball relative to the plate and their middle of mass. The second rollout featured statistics about bat path, most notably the swing path tilt — the angle of the swing within the 40 milliseconds earlier than contact — and the assault angle, which is the angle of the bat relative to the ball at contact.
The batting stance metrics present Neto creeping nearer to the pitcher with every passing yr. In his stance, the middle of his physique is nineteen inches again within the field, three inches nearer to the pitcher than the place he stood in 2024 and general the ninth-shallowest setup of 252 certified hitters. You possibly can see his entrance foot is about as near the entrance of the field as attainable:
As is obvious from that video body, he additionally crowds the plate. He stands simply 22 inches away from the plate’s middle, rating fourth amongst these 252 hitters. This proclivity for standing on the interior fringe of the field just isn’t new; his distance from the plate is nearly unchanged over the course of his profession, and possibly contributed to his 16 hit-by-pitches in each 2023 and 2024. (Surprisingly, he’s solely been hit twice this yr.)
By the best attainable measurement of stance aggressiveness — including up the depth within the field and the space from the plate — Neto ranks second in all of baseball, behind solely Xavier Edwards.
This mixture of scooching up within the field and crowding the plate permits gamers like Eugenio Suárez, Anthony Santander, Xander Bogaerts, and Neto to assault all types of pitches out in entrance, making it simpler for them to faucet into their pull-side energy. (The plate crowding additionally has the advantage of discouraging pitchers from attacking their weak point inside for worry of placing them on base with an HBP.) Neto’s common intercept level is 16 inches in entrance of the plate, 5 inches farther out than it was in 2024 and trailing solely Bogaerts and Suárez amongst all hitters within the pattern.
The opposite consider Neto’s energy surge is his swing tilt, which elevated from 33 levels in 2024 to 37 levels this season — solely Spencer Torkelson has added extra tilt in 2025 — and the result’s much more balls within the air. Due to his aggressive stance and lofty swing, Neto at the moment sits within the 93rd percentile in Statcast’s “pull air” share. Pull air balls are essentially the most precious of all balls in play, and Neto is rolling them up in bunches.
He’s not precisely doing it like Isaac Paredes, who units up a bit of farther away from the plate so as to higher punish inside pitches. Conversely, as a result of Neto stands so near the plate, his favourite pitches to assault are typically center or away. The graphic above reveals all of Neto’s 2025 barrels — as you may see, there are fewer barrels inside (the place he will be beat) and extra the place he can prolong his arms and elevate. Take a look at him crush this 3-1 slider on the periphery to left-center subject:
Right here’s the ultimate piece of Neto’s breakout: When he’s swinging, he’s developing with flush contact. His price of blasts on contact — outlined by Baseball Savant as arduous swings the place the pitch is firmly squared-up — is within the 92nd percentile, up from a league-average mark in 2024. That barrel accuracy, no less than so far within the season, has allowed him to get essentially the most out of his pure energy.
Apparently, Neto’s aggression doesn’t prolong to his swing choices. His general swing price is among the many lowest within the league, significantly on pitches contained in the zone. Even his meatball swing price — a hair over 60% — ranks 211th out of 220 hitters who’ve seen no less than 40 meatballs. But when there may be one place that Neto is looking pitches, it’s up and away.
When Esteban Rivera wrote about Neto’s swing path in June of final yr, he famous that Neto made an adjustment to higher assault these excessive fastballs, climbing his palms as much as get shorter to the ball. However to my eye, that adjustment has pale. Neto is now holding his palms decrease along with his elbows nearer to his physique. Try his setup at pitcher foot plant in 2024…
And in 2025…
Possibly I’m squinting too arduous, however to my eye, it looks like Neto has dropped his palms, tucked his elbow in, and angled his shoulder inward, creating that enhance in swing path tilt and subsequently enabling him to have interaction launch mode. Do not forget that homer off Skubal from the intro? Neto can flip over the barrel and elevate, even on premium velocity on the prime of the zone.
These tweaks include some fairly clear trade-offs. The flip aspect of all this approach-based aggression mixed with passivity on pitches within the zone is a comparatively excessive strikeout price. Neto is putting out extra — practically 30% of the time — whereas strolling even fewer occasions than final season. Crowding the plate exposes him to inside pitches, and perching up to now up within the field provides him much less time to react. He’s significantly susceptible to up-and-in fastballs, although pitchers have but to reliably exploit that weak point. Pitching to that nice of a goal is admittedly troublesome as a result of the margin for error is small and the potential destructive penalties are fairly massive. If pitchers miss inside, they threat plunking Neto and awarding him first base; if their pitch leaks out over the plate, Neto is able to capitalize on the error. To this point, he’s doing that.
Neto’s new strategy places a number of strain on him to proceed hitting for energy to maintain offering worth, however I don’t suppose the extra-base hits are some form of small-sample mirage. It is sensible that he’s slugging extra as a result of he’s made vital mechanical modifications to do precisely that, and the elevated energy output is mirrored within the batted ball information. At a spindly 5-foot-11, he doesn’t look the a part of a slugger. However thanks to those new stats from Baseball Savant, we will perceive that slugging can imply extra than simply rotating the bat as shortly as attainable.
