Over the offseason, many wondered why the Baltimore Orioles remained so quiet after losing vital pieces of last year’s AL East-winning team such as Nick Markakis, Nelson Cruz and Andrew Miller. While the Orioles never really made a major splash over the winter, per se, they did take a chance on a late-blooming breakout candidate in Travis Snider, who was acquired from the Pittsburgh Pirates on Jan. 27.

A former 14th-overall pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, the left-handed Snider made his MLB debut in 2008 at only 20 years of age after putting up impressive power numbers over his brief minor league career. While he showed flashes of promise over the first six seasons of his major league career, he never really lived up to the hype that comes attached to being a first-round draft pick, which was likely due to a combination of injuries and simply underperforming.

Snider was finally able to take his game to new heights last year, however, slashing .264/.338/.438 with 13 home runs, a .343 wOBA, and a 121 wRC+ to go along with a very healthy 9.5 percent walk rate through 140 games with the Pirates in a 1.5 fWAR campaign. It wasn’t exactly an MVP-caliber performance, but it was certainly a step in the right direction. Considering the fact that he is just entering his prime years at the age of 27, there could still very easily be more to come.

In order for that to happen, however, Snider will need to continue building off of the things that he did well last season.

One factor that truly stood out about Snider’s 2014 season was the damage that he was able to do against left-handed pitching. Granted, Snider’s platoon splits have been up and down over the years, and his career wRC+ of 94 against lefties is now only slightly behind his lifetime mark of 97 against righties. While he has only received 258 career at-bats against lefties compared to 1,312 against righties, he has also hit southpaws at a .256 clip while only hitting .245 against righties.

That being said, however, Snider has still struggled mightily against LHP at various points in the not-so-distant past. For example, he slashed only .091/.200/.091 with a .154 wOBA and a -11 wRC+ against lefties during his first full season with the Pirates back in 2013. The sample size was small at only 25 plate appearances, but he was clearly having issues against southpaws, and he was seldom used against them.

Then, last season, Snider was somehow able to crush lefties to the tune of a .381/.435/.619 triple-slash with a .458 wOBA and a 200 wRC+. Again, the sample size wasn’t very big at 47 plate appearances this time around, but it was still large enough to garner some attention.

So how did he start hitting lefties all of a sudden? Well, it is interesting to point out that when Snider was struggling back in 2013, southpaws were pitching him low and away.

As seen in the following chart, he had a rough time hitting the ball when it was placed in that location, or anywhere other than down the middle and inside for that matter.

A look at his whiffs per swing further illustrates the difficulties that he had in getting to the ball when it was pitched in that area.

Last season, it seemed that left-handed pitchers were following the same scouting report, giving him a heavy dosage of down and away pitches once again.

However, Snider must have made the needed adjustment as he ultimately found a way to hit the low and outside pitch. He was also very dangerous against pitches that were down the middle of the plate or inside.

Snider was still whiffing quite a bit on the pitches that were low and off the plate, but he was much better at dealing with the ones that were in the strike zone.

It is also quite interesting to note that Snider’s line drive rate against left-handed pitchers skyrocketed from 11.1 percent in 2013 to 23.5 percent in 2014, which is clear evidence that he was making much better contact.

So, that brings us to 2015. While the new season is obviously still very young, Snider seems to have picked up exactly where he left off, putting up a slash line of .333/.467/.500 with a homer and a robust 20.0 percent walk rate over his first eight games. Thus far, Snider has gone 3-for-5 against lefties, hitting a cool .600 with a .200 ISO. Although it is bound to come down as the sample size increases, he currently has a 50 percent line drive rate against lefties.

The one home run that he has hit so far this season came against a right-handed pitcher, but it is interesting to note that he only has a couple more hits in 14 more at-bats against righties, going 5-for-19 against RHP overall.

So, how have lefties been pitching Snider upon his return to the AL East? Well, based on the chart below, they are still sticking to the playbook of pitching him away.

Once again, however, Snider is showing that he can handle the outside pitch from left-handers these days.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Snider continues hitting the outside pitch from lefties as well as he has over his short sample size thus far. If he continues to show that he can hit that pitch, he may force opponents to challenge him inside, which has been one of his biggest hot zones in recent years.

It will also be interesting to watch Snider’s BB and K rates against southpaws as well, which are both areas he also made significant strides in last season. Sure, all of his walks have come against righties thus far, and he has struck out one time in five plate appearances against lefties for a K rate of 20 percent, but that is obviously a microscopic sample size once again.

Snider may only have a career walk rate of 6.0 percent against lefties over the course of his career, but he posted a mark of 8.5 in that department a season ago, which could very well indicate that he is now seeing the ball better against southpaws. Furthermore, his K rate against LHP plummeted from an astronomical 52.0 percent in 2013 down to 14.9 percent in 2014, so that could certainly be saying something as well.

Of course, Markakis, the man who Snider is essentially replacing, was always a pretty good hitter against lefties himself as evidenced by his career 99/118 wRC+ vs. LHP/RHP. However, if Snider is finally able to put it all together and hit both lefties and righties, he could show that can be so much more than a platoon player or a fourth outfielder. In a perfect-world scenario, he may very well have a chance to be better than the 2.5 fWAR player that Markakis was last year.

Over the past five years or so, there have been quite a few players who have shown that they simply just needed a little bit more time to pan out, such as Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, J.D. Martinez, Josh Harrison and Brandon Moss. The O’s have even had a pair of their own in Chris Davis and Steve Pearce. Maybe, just maybe, Snider could be the next one in line.

* All statistical information courtesy of Baseball-Reference, Brooks Baseball and Fangraphs

Brad Faber is a Senior Writer and Sabermetrics Columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @Brad_Faber, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on LinkedIn or Google. 

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