Through the first week of the season Edwin Encarnacion is second in the NL in walks behind some guy named Adam Dunn. Encarnacion’s 8 walks and 4 strikeouts are potentially a sign of things to come for the young right hander heading into his ‘prime’ years at the plate. The old theory goes, the more pitches you see, the more likely it is that you see a mistake pitch and one that you can do some serious damage on. While Edwin is hit 4 for 16 at this point in the season, he is getting on base over 50% of the time he steps to the plate at this point in the season due to his walks. I thought I would just go ahead and make a quick post showing the pitches Edwin has swung at versus the pitches he has looked at so far this year (minus opening day which had tons of missing data).

Really, there are only 5 swings that are more than 2 inches outside of the zone that Edwin has swung at this season. If he can keep up this kind of selectivity we may see the culmination of the past two seasons for Edwin Encarnation where he hit .289 in 2007 and then hit 26 HR’s in 2008. If he can put those two things together in one season it will go a long way toward helping this Reds offense have another run producer to go along with Joey Votto.