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Taro's picture

A guy thats great at squaring up the ball and has very good pop, but has only okay batspeed is the type of guy who would benefit GREATLY from focusing on hitting fastballs the other way.
Interesting to see that hes hit offspeed a lot better than fastballs so far in his career, but his spray chart shows that hes a pull hitter. Even this HR was off of a changeup.
He doesn't have a quick enough bat to look to pull fastball and adjust offspeed, so its really important that he become a patient thinker at the plate and also hit the fastball to the opposite field.
In other words, instead of either anticipating to pull fastball OR look offspeed, he should think of hitting the fastball away to left field while adjusting to offpeed and only looking to pull the fastball mostly in hitter's counts.
Originally I thought Texiera was a better comp and it is in a lot of a ways he is, but Smoak needs to hit more like Adrian Gonzalez.
{Tex is a pull hitter from both sides of the plate with plus batspeed, Adrian Gonzalez is an extreme opposite field hitter with huge pop.}

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