I think Vegas would set the line at a Carter type of line in the next year or two at well under 30%, maybe in the 5-10% range. Carter in his first season as a 21 year old had nearly as many walks as strikeouts, to go along with 17 homeruns. Zunino, as you said, has an 11/101. Guys with those types of eyes/contact issues don't just take off the next year or two and level their K's and BB's.
The lists you compiled are filled with a lot of guys that have K rates in the low-mid teens, even in their first couple seasons. Zunino is sitting at 33% this year. Some of their EYE ratios are down right good, so I'm not sure what the comparison is. And many of those guys hit the big leagues at 20, 21 years old. Altuve K's 12% his first year as a 21 year old, with an .081 ISO, so not sure what the comp would be there.
-Mathews has a 10%bb/20%k ratio his first year at 21.
-Jones was 12/23 as a 20 year old
-Banks has a 6%/7% ratio his first year over 600 PA's
-Pudge K'd 15% hit first year as a 19 year old.
-Kemp is the one guy approaching Zunino levels, but in his second year, which would be Zunino's year this year at age 23, he cut his K's by 10 points to 21%. And he had K rates in the high minors in the mid teens. Mike K'd 29% last year in AAA.
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The point being, I think you are underselling exactly how big a gap he has to overcome to even sniff some of those guys numbers as rookies. Gary Carter NEXT year or the year after is just way too optimistic. The Parrish comp seems more reasonable, but even then Parrish had K rates in the 19-23 range in his early 20's.
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To me a pretty fair modern comp would be Arencibia. Catcher, 1st round pick, was a top 50 prospect in baseball coming up. His first full year, he put up a 7/27 ratio with good power. His next two years he put up worse EYE ratios, in the 4/29 range, very similar to where Zunino is now. So he's kind of like a warning light blinking at us. If Zunino doesn't either shore up his contact ability or start laying off pitches out of the zone, I fear he's headed down the same path. You can have all the power you want, if pitchers don't need to throw you pitches in the zone to get you out, they won't throw you pitches in the zone. See: Carlos Peguero.
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I ultimately do think he stops chasing as much as he has and settles around the 25% K mark, with a BB rate in the 5-8% range. We all know what kind of defender and teammate he is, so if he can just do that, he'll have a really nice career here.
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