Here at Pitcher List, we have a suite of PLV metrics to analyze every pitch in a baseball game. Decision Value (DV) is our hitter swing decision metric. It takes inputs like pitch velocity, location, and movement, and tells us whether the hitter made a good decision to swing or take a particular pitch. This isn’t quite as simple as plate discipline; swinging at a Logan Webb sinker and pounding it into the ground is a bad outcome even if the pitch was a strike.
Instead, Decision Value rewards hitters for swinging at pitches they should be able to hit hard, and for taking pitches they’re unlikely to do much with. The flipside is that Decision Value punishes hitters if they don’t swing at pitches they should be doing damage on or swing at pitches that are unlikely to generate quality contact. You can find a much more thorough introduction to PLV metrics and Decision Value here.
As we reach the end of July, trade season is ramping up. In this week’s edition of PLV DV Weekly, let’s take a look at some of the hitters who might be on the move to new teams in the next week. What can potential new employers expect to see from them in terms of swing decisions?
Luis Arraez – 101 DV
I wrote about Arraez about two months ago, but we have nearly twice as much data today. In that time, his overall DV has remained fairly constant, but he’s been making changes under the hood. When that article was published, Arraez had a 132 zDV and a 91 oDV. Arraez sits at a 104 zDV and a 98 oDV today. Generally speaking, the best way to improve your oDV is to chase less, but Arraez has only cut his oSwing by 1.1 percentage points to a still-high 31.4%. What he’s done better, though, is avoid swinging at obvious balls. Statcast partitions pitch locations into four categories: heart, shadow, chase, and waste. The shadow zone is the crucial concept here, and consists of pitches within 1 baseball (2.9 inches) of the edge of the rulebook strike zone.
Anything closer to the center of the zone is in the heart, and anything further away is a chase or waste pitch. While Arraez has only cut his oSwing by a percentage point, he’s cut his swing rate on pitches in the chase zone by 7.3 percentage points. His swing rate in the shadow zone is actually up a point. Arraez’s oDV has thus improved significantly because, in addition to chasing less, he’s chasing better.
Arraez’s zDV has fallen dramatically as his oDV has improved. Some amount of this is sample size, as there are no current hitters with a zDV above 113, meaning outliers like early-season Arraez have regressed towards league average. A lot of this is Arraez’s approach changing, though. Arraez is swinging 5.6 percentage points less often in the zone, leaving him with a zSwing-oSwing under 30%. The reduction isn’t coming from borderline pitches, either. Arraez is swinging nearly 10 percentage points less often at pitches in the Statcast-determined heart of the zone. Hopefully he’ll be able to put his early-season approach in the zone together with his current approach to pitches outside the zone.
Eugenio Suárez – 98 DV
Suarez has had a disappointing return to Cincinnati after hitting 49 homers in 2025. I wouldn’t entirely blame his approach, but there have been some steps back there as well. Suarez has never ranked particularly well or poorly by DV, sitting around the MLB average in each of the most recent three seasons. Suarez tends to rank poorly by zDV and a bit above average by oDV, as is fitting for a guy whose career called-strike rate would rank 38th of 146 qualified hitters this season.
What Suarez did better last year was swing more often at pitches in the zone, and particularly in the heart of the zone. Suarez had his highest heart swing percentage since 2018, which also led to career highs in his zone and overall swing rates. Suarez hasn’t had particularly good contact rates since that 2018 season either. For the first five seasons of his career, Suarez made contact on 77.3% of swings. From 2019 until today, he’s never made contact on 73% of swings in a season. The increased aggression in 2025 led to more swinging strikes, but also more production when he made contact. One upside of the approach is that Suarez also cut two points from his called-strike rate to a career-low 14.6%.
This year, Suarez has given back the gains in aggression but kept the increases in swinging strikes. He’s lost 4 percentage points of zSwing while his chase rate and swinging strike rate remain the same. As a result, Suarez has the highest CSW of his career, with a full third of pitches ending up as strikes. All of the decreased aggression in the zone is coming from pitches in the heart of the zone, too, with Suarez running an identical swing rate at pitches in the shadow zone. Compounding the problem, Suarez has lost nearly a tick of bat speed and 2 mph of average exit velo. I’m pessimistic about the value he could bring to a contender who acquires him at the deadline.
Ryan Jeffers – 124 DV
Jeffers is having an excellent season at the plate for the surprisingly competitive Minnesota Twins. That said, with free agency coming after the season and an ownership group unwilling to spend on the team, the Twins may choose to move him while they can still get something better than a compensation pick in return.
While part of Jeffers’ success this season is his excellent results on contact, he’s also showing incredible improvement in his plate discipline metrics. Over the first five seasons of his career, from 2020-24, Jeffers struck out in 27% of his plate appearances while drawing walks in 8.3% of them. Last year, he made massive improvements by trimming his strikeout rate to 19.6% and improving his walk rate to 10.8%. This year, he’s had a nearly equally large improvement, now walking in 14.8% of plate appearances and striking out in just 16.5% of them.
Jeffers has improved by swinging less often. Early-career Jeffers chased 30% of pitches outside the zone, while 2025-26 Jeffers chases just 24% of them. Early-career Jeffers was also more aggressive inside the zone, swinging at 64.7% of strikes while the current model sits at 54.5%. I’d be lying if I said I loved the in-zone approach, and indeed Jeffers has given back in called strikes nearly everything he gained with fewer swinging strikes. That said, his contact rate has ticked up this year, and pitchers are throwing him fewer strikes than at any point since 2020. There are a few reasons to think Jeffers isn’t going to maintain a 159 wRC+ going forward, but I don’t see why the current approach couldn’t replicate his 2023 line of .276/.369/.490.
Isaac Paredes – 109 DV
Paredes makes consistently good decisions at the plate, belonging to a relatively rare group of players: those with above-average marks in zDV and oDV. The two swing decision metrics are negatively correlated within players since zDV tends to increase as you swing more in the zone and oDV tends to increase as you take pitches outside the zone. Players with high swing rates in the zone tend to have high swing rates outside the zone as well, which leads to a negative correlation between the two metrics.
Paredes has gotten to his strong DV mark by taking a step forward inside the zone. In past years, Paredes usually had good swing decision metrics, culminating in a 114 DV in 2025. He’s consistently ranked poorly in zDV, though, while having excellent oDV numbers. This season, they’re basically equal, with Paredes sitting at a 102 zDV and 103 oDV. The difference from 2025 is coming from a 6.3 percentage point increase in Paredes’s chase rate and a 2.4 percentage point increase in his zone swing rate.
The increase in Paredes’s swing rates has led to the lowest walk rate in a full season in Paredes’s career. He’s still in the 57th percentile with a 9.5% walk rate, but he’s never had a full season with a walk rate under 10.2%. The upside is that he’s striking out less than ever, too. Paredes’s strikeout rate is down to an excellent 15.1% after sitting just above 17% for his career entering 2026.
Seiya Suzuki – 109 DV
Lest you think I’m crazy, Suzuki only makes this list because he’s nearing the end of his contract with the Cubs. Suzuki gets to his 109 DV the old-fashioned way, with an excellent chase rate and a zone swing rate you wish was higher. Suzuki has chased just 20.9% of balls in his time in the majors, but he’s swung at just 59.3% of strikes. This season isn’t much different. He’s swinging a bit more at both balls and strikes, but because the composition of pitches he’s faced has changed (he’s seeing 3 percentage points fewer strikes), his overall swing rate is up just a tenth of a percentage point from 2025.
Seiya’s passivity at the plate costs him in his strikeout rate despite excellent contact ability for someone with his power. Suzuki has good outcomes when he swings the bat. Despite a declining contact percentage while chasing, he’s had zone contact percentages of 85%-ish for his career, and overall contact rates in the high 70s. With 65th percentile bat speed and optimized launch angles, Suzuki could benefit from putting the ball in play more. Instead, he has practically the same CSW rate as Kyle Schwarber and Rafael Devers despite contact rates that are 5-10 percentage points better than the two sluggers. This isn’t to rag on Suzuki, as he’s a consistently excellent bat, an incredibly safe bet to be 25-30 percent better than league average. It just feels like slight progress on pitches in the zone could unlock another level for the Cubs’ right fielder.
Photo by Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire | Designed by Aaron Asbury (@aarongifs on Instagram)
