Hunter Goodman Cut Down On Chase and Was Chosen For the All-Star Team

Hunter Goodman will represent the Colorado Rockies in tonight’s All-Star Game, and while he plays for the worst team in the majors, he is by no means a quota-filling selection. The 25-year-old catcher is slashing .277/.325/.517 with 17 home runs and a 120 wRC+ over 345 plate appearances. Moreover, his 52 RBI are the most among senior circuit backstops.

Three months before his All-Star selection, he was featured here at FanGraphs in an article titled Hunter Goodman Isn’t Choosy. When my colleague Davy Andrews penned the April 9 piece, Goodman had seen 63 pitches outside of the strike zone and swung at 33 of them, giving him a 54.1% chase rate. He also had a 66.1% overall swing rate.

As Davy wrote, “This is about as extreme as baseball gets.”

I brought up the article when the Rockies visited Fenway Park last week, and Goodman’s response was gold. Having read my colleague’s column, the young slugger replied, “That guy better not show up here.” He was kidding — the words came with a smile — after which he turned serious.

“Honestly, I was hitting pretty well at the time,” recalled Goodman, who then had a wRC+ just north of league average. “I was getting a lot of pitches to hit. But yes, I was swinging a lot. Starting the year, I was trying to be aggressive and trying to see where I was at. It’s like everything else; the more you get going, the more things start to calm down. Over the season, it’s gotten better. Being in the lineup every day has helped a lot with my timing.”

A fourth-round pick out of the University of Memphis in 2021, Goodman has already played a career high 85 games at the big league level this season. He debuted in late August two years ago, and his lackluster 2024 campaign — a 61 wRC+ over 224 PAs with the Rockies — comprised 70 games, plus 31 more in Triple-A.

The attack-mode approach isn’t new. As Davy also pointed out, Goodman came into the season with a higher-than-ideal chase rate, and while it has improved — especially compared to the first two weeks — he’s not exactly morphing into Juan Soto. A leopard can only change his spots so much.

“I’ve always been an aggressive hitter, and that’s the thing,” said Goodman, who now has a 36.5% chase rate and a 55.7% overall swing rate. “The coaches and I have talked about it. I don’t want to be up there thinking ‘swing less,’ I want to be up there looking to do damage. I mean, my approach hasn’t really changed, but I do want to be a little more selective.”

According to Rockies co-hitting coach Nic Wilson, augmenting that attack-mode mindset with a more nuanced approach will only make Goodman better.

“With Goody, the decisions are always going to be important,” said Wilson, who was Colorado’s minor league hitting coordinator before moving into his current position in mid-May. “When he is swinging at pitches that are good for him, he is dangerous. That’s an ongoing conversation. We’re working daily. Even back when he was in A-ball, it was a big point of focus.”

When our 2024 Colorado Rockies Top Prospects list came out that April — Goodman was ranked fourth with a 45+ FV — Eric Longenhagen wrote that “Goodman’s power is sensational. He takes epic, max-effort swings and is capable of putting balls out to all fields.”

Asked if honing in on a certain zone would further improve the extent to which he punishes pitchers, the erstwhile Memphis Tiger neither agreed nor disagreed.

“I think it depends,” replied Goodman, who has 5.8% walk rate and a 26.8% strikeout rate on the year. “In June, I hit homers in a bunch of different locations in the zone. There are times where I’m going good, and if it’s a strike I have a chance to do damage. There are also times where I’m going bad, and I need it to be in a certain spot. It’s about figuring out when those times are.”

Goodman doesn’t necessarily agree with the notion that he takes max-effort swings, at least not when he’s going well.

“When I get in trouble is when I try to swing too hard,” he told me. “I want to keep it nice and smooth. It’s like a controlled aggression. It doesn’t feel like my effort level is super high, although maybe it could look like that from the outside.”

Which brings us back to his plate discipline. Asked how Goodman rebounded from his chase-tastic start to the season, Wilson cited how the mental and physical are intertwined in the batter’s box.

“In terms of adjustments, we’ve tried to relieve a little bit of tension in his setup,” the hitting coach explained. “Early on in the year he was a little tight in his shoulders. When he’s having a lot of success, it’s with a very fluid move. It’s a big move — it’s dynamic — but there’s not a lot of tension in it. He’s moving like an athlete. He’s kind of gotten back to that, and it’s played pretty well for him.

“It’s all tied together,” Wilson added. “When you feel good in the box, you’re going to make better decisions. That’s a big part of it. When Hunter feels like he’s on time and is able to hit the pitcher’s best heater, he’s going make better decisions. When he does that, he’s going to do a lot of damage.”