Major League Baseball

Patient and disciplined, Dodgers slugger Max Muncy is quietly one of MLB's best

Published May. 27, 2021 8:59 a.m. ET

By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Max Muncy has stopped swinging at balls, and now he looks like one of the best hitters in the entire league.

Sounds simple enough, right? Sure, it’s easy to sit at home on your couch and yell at your TV: "Why’d he swing at that?!" But with velocity and pitch movement at an all-time high, even the best hitters in baseball are regularly whiffing at balls nowhere near the strike zone — and I promise you, you’d be flailing at those pitches, too.

Muncy, meanwhile, has taken this part of his game to a whole new level in 2021. Through Wednesday’s games, Muncy had swung at just 15.7% of pitches he had seen out of the strike zone, the lowest mark in baseball and just a shade lower than that of Juan Soto, a decent hitter in his own right. That 15.7% mark, if held throughout the season, would be the lowest by any qualified hitter in baseball since Daric Barton in 2010, the year he led the AL in walks with 110.

Plate discipline has always been Muncy’s thing, even long before his bona fide breakout with the Dodgers in 2018. Approaches of this caliber often manifest in high walk totals, and that has been true for Muncy since the beginning of his baseball journey. He walked a lot in his two summers playing in the prestigious Cape Cod League against the best collegiate competition around. He walked a lot in his three seasons at Baylor University. He walked a lot in the minors before the A’s first called him up in 2015.

And of course, he has walked a lot as a Dodger, most notably in the team's 2020 postseason run, when he walked 20(!) times in October, tied for the second-most in a single MLB postseason, behind only 2002 Barry Bonds. Muncy has picked up right where he left off so far in 2021, leading all of MLB with 42 walks.

The walks are cool, but simply walking a lot does not make you one of the best hitters in the game. Sometimes hitters with Muncy’s approach can be considered too passive at the plate. Walks are nice, but you also have to be able to do damage when you finally get a pitch to hit. It’s not just about running deep counts; it’s about getting to 3-2 and then doing stuff like this:

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Even in his brief big-league stints with Oakland in 2015 and '16 before he was putting up big numbers, Muncy demonstrated this elite ability to discern balls from strikes, swinging at just 20.6% of the pitches he saw out of the strike zone, tied for ninth-lowest in baseball among hitters with at least 200 plate appearances in those two seasons.

Obviously, this is not the flashiest skill in the world — it’s not like I’m going to pull up a bunch of highlights of Muncy watching a slider from a lefty just off the plate for ball two. But hitters such as Muncy are such a crucial ingredient to what makes the Dodgers' offense so difficult to deal with, even when not every star is firing on all cylinders. He’s ridiculously tough to face, and the numbers back it up.

Last weekend, Muncy was a big part of L.A.’s sweep of the rival Giants in San Francisco, including this monstrous dinger into McCovey Cove in Saturday’s game:

Muncy, of course, is no stranger to depositing baseballs into the Cove — or, in his terms, the ocean. Saturday’s blast was the third of his career, making him only the third non-Giants player with at least three splash hits, joining Adam LaRoche and Carlos Delgado.

The swing changes Muncy made upon arriving in Los Angeles have combined with his elite ability to decipher balls from strikes to produce a gaudy .286/.459/.537 line. Combine that with his underrated defense at first and second base, and you’ll find Muncy at or near the top of your WAR leaderboard of choice. He has been spectacular.

While we're here, I consider it my civic duty to inform people that there is, in fact, another Max Muncy primed to enter the Baseball Cinematic Universe this year: 45 miles west of Dodger Stadium at Thousand Oaks High School, shortstop Max Muncy is one of the top prep position players in the 2021 MLB Draft. He’s committed to Arkansas but could realistically start his pro career out of high school if selected in the top two or three rounds of July’s draft.

No complaints here — the more baseball Max Muncys, the better. As for the Dodgers' slugger, we’ll see if he can continue to carry the offensive load in a heated NL West race.

No matter how high his OBP climbs, Muncy will likely never take headlines away from Betts, Seager, Bellinger, Justin Turner and now even Albert Pujols. That’s fine. He’ll just keep on swinging and doing damage — if you throw him a strike, of course.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He lives in Maryland but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn't get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.