Nick Swisher's Fast Start

Tonight I thought I'd take a look at a hitter of to a fast start and see if what he's doing is sustainable or not.

Nick Swisher is currently 100 points over his career best OPS. Most of this has been fueled by an absurdly hot May (1386 OPS entering today, with 5 HR in 35 AB). He's always been a streaky hitter, but he's never had a streak this good for any appreciable period of time (he's cracked an 1.100 OPS twice over the course of a full month- once in April 2006 and once in April 2009).

A look at Swisher over at Fangraphs shows that Swisher is swinging a lot more this year. His swing % is up to 45.2% this year...the highest number of his career by far and the first time Swisher has cracked the 40% range since his sophomore season in 2006.

Given Swisher's proclivity to whiff, you'd think that if he were swinging more, that the strikeouts would be up. But they're down to 20.7%...the lowest rate of his career. He's making a lot more contact: up to 82.4% from his 76.7% career average.

The result of all this extra swinging is a huge spike in Swisher's line drive rate. He's way up at 23.9% on his line drive rate...making his current .333 BABIP seem actually reasonable.

As a result, the fast start is actually reasonable considering all of the markers and isn't a total mirage. I don't believe that Swisher will continue to have this much success given his career norms, particularly with a 66.7% contact rate outside of the zone. But if he keeps swinging more and takes the bat off of his shoulder, I could see him hitting 30-35 HR and driving in a pretty solid amount of runs in that powerful Yankee line-up. You might want to sell high, but I wouldn't be surprised if Swisher is one of those players who could have a late 20s/early 30s power spike if he keeps swinging - and swinging well - at all of these pitches.