Andy Pages has taken a clear step forward in his second big league season. As a 23-year-old rookie last year, he was a league-average hitter with a .248/.305/.407 slash line and a 100 wRC+. In 2025, he’s leveled up. It was a bit of a rocky start, however.
In his first 73 plate appearances, he posted a miserable .544 OPS with a 30% strikeout rate and just a 29% hard-hit rate. But since April 21, the Dodgers outfielder has turned things around in a big way, slashing .335/.352/.590 with 13 home runs and six stolen bases. The only other players to match that combination over the same span are Shohei Ohtani, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Corbin Carroll.
Another major element in why Pages has played nearly every day for the Dodgers is his improvement on defense. As a rookie, he had a -1 Defensive Runs Saved in the outfield. He was even worse if you isolate it to just centerfield, where he had the fifth-worst mark among all centerfielders at -8 Defensive Runs Saved.
This season, he is tied for the fourth most Defensive Runs Saved in all of baseball with 10, regardless of position. He’s gone from a putrid -8 in centerfield last year to 2 this season. The significant improvements defensively, combined with the strides made at the plate, have led to him being the 13th-ranked position player by fWAR with 2.9, tied with Francisco Lindor and James Wood.
After being the center of drama last night, Andy Pages let his bat do the talking tonight pic.twitter.com/rq0ZEz3TmE
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) June 18, 2025
Power and Contact
The best hitters in baseball combine power with strong contact skills. Pages was not overly strikeout-prone as a rookie with a 24.4% strikeout rate, but he has taken a more aggressive approach this season, swinging more often while also cutting his strikeout rate to just 17.9%. His year-over-year improvements across several contact metrics rank among the best in the league. Interestingly, his bat speed is down slightly from 73.1 mph last season to 72.9 mph this year, and he also increased his swing length from 7.7 feet to 7.9. Typically, you see hitters shorten up and swing a bit softer to aim for more contact.
His barrel rate and hard-hit rate are down a bit from last season, but remain at quality marks with a 38.4% hard-hit rate and 8.8% barrel rate. He still has plus bat speed and flashed a 112 mph MaxEV in the majors last season. The most important piece for Pages has been maintaining consistent contact, as his production closely follows it.
His 89.7% zone contact rate is up nearly five points from last season and stands as an impressive mark. It puts him in a neighborhood of hitters who all have historically run strikeout rates in the teens, which bodes well for Pages in the future. He ranks in the 82nd percentile for Contact Over Expected, which looks at a player’s contact rate compared to their expected contact rate based on the quality of the pitches they are swinging at. Similar hitters around him include Josh Naylor, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Xander Bogaerts.
In addition to his plus bat speed, Pages has a favorable swing path to allow for a healthy amount of line drives and the ability to hit the ball hard in the air. The combination of good bat speed and good tilt is typically a good foundation for a hitter.
Andy Pages is going to be a great hitter. He has one of the best swing paths in MLB. Proj systems have him at ~115 for wRC+. We’ll take the over on that
He’s a lot like F. Freeman without the plate disc / walks https://t.co/2qBaifTDpg pic.twitter.com/7Jr8yqHIE3
— SwingGraphs (@SwingGraphs) May 4, 2024
Pages has seen fewer fastballs and more breaking balls this season. He especially struggled against breaking balls when first seeing major league pitching, hitting only .190 with a 32.8% whiff rate. He’s shown great adaptability at the plate, as he’s been better against fastballs, breaking balls, and offspeed this season. He’s doing damage against all three pitch groups, which leaves pitchers searching for answers.
Pages has already launched four home runs off sliders this season after slugging just .246 against them as a rookie. In 2025, he’s raised that number to .533.
Room for Growth?
There’s just a lot to really like with Pages as a player. A part of his game from the minor leagues that hasn’t quite translated yet is his high walk rates. The 24-year-old posted double-digit walk rates at every stop of the minor leagues except for two. And in the two instances where he didn’t, he was at 9.3% and 8.8%, so still above average.
In the torrid stretch mentioned previously, beginning on April 21, he holds a strong 13.3% strikeout rate and a 2.9% walk rate. He’s been much more aggressive this season with a career-high chase rate (35.4%). As a result, he’s been below average in various swing decision metrics. He’s down from 106 Decision Value last season to 97 in 2025. Further, he was in the 66th percentile in SEAGER last year and has dropped to the 24th percentile this year.
Now with over 700 career plate appearances, Pages holds just a 5.8% walk rate. It’s fair to expect the walk rate to inch closer to what he did in the minor leagues as he ages and continues to get comfortable in the majors.
Every projection system on Fangraphs thinks he will walk more than he is currently and maintain the skills he’s showing. His ideal swing plane allows him to spray line drives to all parts of the field to prop up the batting average. And he is right in the ideal pocket for fly ball rate at 41.2%. Regarding his fly balls, he isn’t pulling them in the air quite as often as he did as a rookie, dropping from 22.1% to 19.4%.
Of his 17 barrels on the season, 11 of them have been hit straightaway. The impact of batted ball direction on performance is well documented, and the difference in slugging between pulling the ball and hitting it straightaway is striking, with a mark of 3.026 compared to 1.409. So if Pages can tick up his pull rate on his barrels and fly balls, he could possibly attain a 30-home run type of ceiling. To go with an 81st percentile in sprint speed, he’ll be a consistent threat for double-digit steals.
Impressive work from Andy Pages‘ lower half on this swing. He’s been able to meet a lot of balls out in front and generate power that way – even on pitches low in the zone. pic.twitter.com/CbSL6ashtS
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) June 16, 2025
Pages projects quite favorably for the rest of the season, with a slash line of .268/.327/.474 (123 wRC+) to go with 29 total homers and 10 steals by THE BAT X. That’s a really good player for fantasy and in reality. His improvements defensively are impressive for a young player to make, and speak to his ability to improve his areas of weakness. A few interesting examples of players since 2010 who had between a .260 and .270 batting average with those levels of homers and steals include Nelson Cruz, George Springer, Justin Upton, Rickie Weeks Jr., and Avisaíl García. That’s quite the combination of names. He is one of 18 hitters to be projected for at least 14 homers, four steals, and a .268 batting average the rest of the way.
