Earlier this week, I published an article arguing that rookie Yainer Diaz showed remarkable adaptability during the course of his 377 plate appearances this year. His obvious Achilles heel was his tendency to swing wildly outside the strike zone, although somehow this did not translate into a high K%. He did show improved plate discipline as the season progressed.
It seems I put the cart before the horse. I did not anticipate that I would need to argue that he was an excellent, even elite hitter, despite his one major flaw. That seemed obvious. And yet many people seem to be fixated on the embarrassingly bad pitches Diaz sometimes swung at, rather than his 23 home runs, some of them on the aforementioned bad pitches.