Blue Jays’ Je’Von Ward Walks His Way To MiLB OBP Lead
Image credit: Je'Von Ward (Brad Krause/Four Seam Images)
The weirdest season in the minors is being turned in by Blue Jays High-A outfielder Je’Von Ward.
Ward leads the minors with a .460 on-base percentage. He has played 46 games. And he’s failed to reach base in only nine of those 46 games.
But Ward’s batting average is only .217. He is a hitter with the best on-base percentage in the minors and the eighth-worst batting average in the Northwest League (among qualifiers).
Ward has 28 hits this season. He has 58 walks. Ward has six games this year with two hits and none with more than two hits. He has 18 games with two or more walks including six three-walk games and a four-walk game.
He is the most patient/passive hitter in the minors. His 30.7% walk rate is by far the highest in the minors, as he’s learned to give High-A pitchers very little credit when it comes to their strike-throwing ability. So far, they have rewarded him for his skepticism.
Ward has taken a slightly reduced version of Miguel Vargas’ 2023 spring training experiment into actual games. If you remember, Vargas was told to not swing the bat during his first six spring training games that year because of a finger injury. He walked four times in those 12 swing-less plate appearances for a .333 on-base percentage against pitchers who knew he could take every pitch.
Ward is showing just how much a hitter can walk in Class A if you hardly ever take the bat off your shoulder. According to Synergy Sports data, Ward has a hard-to-fathom 30% swing rate this year. Of the other hitters in the top 10 in MiLB walk percentage, Rays outfielder Theo Gillen’s 33% is the lowest rate. Last year, Ward swung 39% of the time on his way to a .390 on-base percentage in the Northwest League. This year, he’s decided to swing much, much less often.
Seven out of every 10 pitches, Ward watches the ball go by. But here’s where it gets even more interesting. The Northwest League is a six-team league. Everyone plays everyone repeatedly, so tendencies quickly get noticed. The league’s pitchers know at this point that Ward is going to try to grind out a walk, and they know he isn’t much of a threat to do a lot of damage if he does swing the bat. He’s not only hitting .217—he has just eight extra-base hits in 189 plate appearances. But even with that, Ward is seeing a 50% strike rate when the MiLB average hovers around 63%.
The tendencies get even more extreme when he first steps to the plate. He’s swung at the first pitch only 14% of the time this year. But in a league where all five other teams’ pitchers know that Ward will almost assuredly take the first pitch and they can get ahead 0-1, pitchers have thrown only 46% strikes on that 0-0 pitch.
The only time Ward gets aggressive is when he gets into full counts. There, he swings 47% of the time, but he retains his batting eye, as he only chases out of the zone 13% of the time. In these counts, he’s posting a .583 on-base percentage, as he’s walked 26 times and gotten two hits in 48 plate appearances.
Ward’s approach is not likely to work the same way at higher levels, and the 2017 draftee is an org player at this point in his career. But in High-A, it’s allowing him to produce a truly fascinating season.
