Dylan Cozens is Patching Holes, But Is Still Dylan Cozens

I was planning on writing about Dylan Cozens this week, but after he hit 3 home runs today for the IronPigs, I thought I would move it up. Dylan Cozens is hitting .278/.385/.557 on the season, which is a large improvement on his 2017 season. He has made improvements this year, but that doesn’t mean he is suddenly a top prospect again.

His three home runs today really show a lot of who Cozens is at the plate. Here is Brent Hershey of Baseball HQ who was at the game today.

The box score wow will be Dylan Cozens’ 3 HR. But all three were on misplaced FBs. First was a 3-2 97 from Fedde; meant to be away, caught too much of plate. Landed in LF bleachers. An example of Cozens all-fields power. #Phillies

— Brent Hershey (@BrentHQ) May 2, 2018

In AB2, Fedde started Cozens off with quality 94 FB on inside corner; taken for strike. Pitch 2 looked like EF wanted to repeat, but missed spot, left it in middle, and it landed on RF walkway.

— Brent Hershey (@BrentHQ) May 2, 2018

AB3, Fedde gave him offspeed— Cozens swing over changeup, and eventually took two nice pitches that started outside but broke over outside corner for looking K.

— Brent Hershey (@BrentHQ) May 2, 2018

AB4, a reliever with an OK FB/CB combo tries to get ahead with a first pitch FB at 93. Cozens is ready for it, pretty much middle/middle, and crushes it for HR #3

— Brent Hershey (@BrentHQ) May 2, 2018

There is nothing wrong with hitting mistakes for home runs. Frankly most home runs seems to come on mistake pitches. The thing is we aren’t seeing Cozens do anything new, if you put a fastball over the plate in a favorable hitting count, there is a good chance he is going to do something to it. The key for Cozens has always been getting into that position where he is going to get that ball to hit.

Which brings us to PA #3. Fedde worked him away the whole time, back dooring two sliders for called strikes in the at bat. The soft pitches away are a problem for Cozens. If they catch too much of the plate he can flick them out of the park to left field, but otherwise his swing is not geared in a way where he can hit balls the other way (something that is pretty evident when we pull up his spray chart from before today).

It seems that Cozens’ strategy is to lay off those pitches as much as he can now, which isn’t a bad strategy, especially vs AAA level command. Major league pitches are going to try and expand the zone over there and force him to have to cover the outside corner.

This of course leads to the other continuing problem with Dylan Cozens, Dylan Cozens’ body. Some of this is totally out of his control. Nothing Dylan Cozens can do is going to make him not 6’6″ and not large framed. He has some long levers to get going and a big strike zone to cover. He also can’t really help that he isn’t a great baseball athlete. He doesn’t explode through his swing, he doesn’t have amazing bat control. He could get leaner and hope to get some of that, but it isn’t really there for him. This does lead into his body, he is big and stiff, and his movements are not always fluid and his swing is a bit one track into an uppercut. There is not a lot of making up for mistakes in his swing. This all opens up some structural holes in Cozens’ swing. One is inside. Now this is a dangerous one because a pitcher has to do one of two things and not miss. They have to throw hard or they have to have the pitch get inside inside, like a slider breaking towards his feet. If a pitcher misses and leaks one over the plate, Cozens has the ability to open his hips and pull it right out of the ballpark. The other weakness is one inherent to many hitters, but especially those with a long upper cut swing like Cozens, and that is the high fastball. He just isn’t going to hit that pitch, especially not if it has some velocity, because his arms are just not going to get there in time.

So what does all of this equal? A strikeout rate over 30% and possibly pushing 35%, and not a lot to be done about it. There are pitches that pitchers that major league pitchers can make that are going to render Cozens non competitive. The key then is how does he come back against that. This is an at bat vs former Phillies LHP Joely Rodriguez. Cozens has worked the count 3-2 and Rodriguez leaves a slider right over the plate and Cozens hits it out.

The first thing that is immediately clear is that this isn’t a home run swing, it is a line drive swing that he just strengths it out of the ballpark. It is a good swing and a good AB off of a LHP. Cozens has always had problems vs LHPs with 16 walks to 61 strikeouts vs them last year, while hitting .194/.291/.367. This season he has 7 walks to 10 strikeouts off of lefties and is hitting .261/.424/.435 in a very small sample size. This all fits into what Cozens can do, and for the most part has done, and that is to not swing. His walk rate was up over 15% entering today, and it isn’t just the walk rate that will be affected by a better approach and pitch recognition. Cozens needs pitchers to make mistakes, and the more pitches a pitcher has to throw him, the better chance one of them misses their spot. He in many ways has to embrace being a 3 true outcome player because he just isn’t going to make enough contact with his swing to drive his on base on hits alone. For now he is showing that he can do that.

A quick aside. There is some unexplained weirdness to Cozens’ home road splits. Coca Cola park is not Reading, but still here are Cozens’ home splits the past two years.

• 67 G 7 2B 1 3B 17 HR .270/.363/.530
• 13 G 0 2B 0 3B 6 HR .348/.412/.739

Here are his away splits

• 68 G 5 2B 2 3B 10 HR .154/.240/.313
• 11 G 4 2B 0 3B 0 HR .182/.356/.303

In 2017 he had a sizeable difference in BB% and K% as well. Without talking to Cozens about how he sees the ball or his pre-game routine, I don’t want to speculate, but it is strange (for context Rhys Hoskins had pretty neutral to slightly better on the road splits last season).

Ultimately, Cozens is kind of who he is. He is a big corner outfielder with big time power and a lot of holes, that just aren’t going to close. Darin Ruf carved out a few years of a career as a mistake hitting bench bat, and Cozens can do that too (with the better side of the platoon). At some point this summer the Phillies may decide they want to run more than a 4 man bench and Cozens will get his turn to see if he can crush major league mistakes. For now, 3 home runs in a game or not, he is still Dylan Cozens, just a more prepared version.