At the end of March I wrote about how Jose Siri was sticking out in spring training. How he was doing things differently at the plate that he wasn’t doing last year, either in Dayton or in Billings. That Siri was staying back on pitches, not swinging at pitches that he used to.
The impressive hitting that I saw in my week in Goodyear didn’t translate to Dayton in April. The 21-year-old hit just .208/.284/.325 in 21 games. What he did do, however was show big improvements in plate discipline. He drew seven walks with 19 strikeouts in 90 plate appearances.
In May things have gone much better from a statistical standpoint. He’s hit .297/.333/.418 in 23 games. In those 98 plate appearances he’s had a double, two triples and two home runs to go along with five walks and 22 strikeouts. Things have been going even better than that over the last two weeks where he has hit .345/.368/.527 for the Dayton Dragons. The power has really started to show up.
Jose Siri has some of the best tools in the entire system. He always has. They’ve been on display at times in the past, and we have seen them show up in Dayton this year at times as well. He’s stolen 19 bases already and plays an outstanding center field thanks to his plus speed.
The hit tool hadn’t shown up in Dayton to this point in his career, though he did show it off with the Billings Mustangs in 2016. What is interesting to see is the difference in the spray charts from 2016 to 2017. Last season he was much more of a pull hitter, going to left field more than twice as often as right field. This season he’s gone to right field 31 times and pulled the ball to left just 16 times. None of his three home runs have been pulled (one to center, two to right-center). One of his doubles and triples were pulled, but the other three triples and two doubles were to the right of center field.
Jose Siri looks different in 2017. He’s doing things differently in 2017. He’s using the field very differently than he has in the past. The early returns were rough, but things are beginning to rebound very well at this point. Perhaps this is just a bit of a hot streak, but there have been signs of a change for the last two months now. Perhaps there’s something to what we’ve been seeing.