John Connor did not exist until Kyle Reese was sent back to protect Sarah Connor from a terminator. Then the bee did something to the bird and voila! Connor became the messiah to bring down the bots. But the path wasn’t clear and fraught with much strife, as Connor was a juvenile delinquent and didn’t see the path until much later in life. Connor Norby of the Miami Marlins was luckier than his proclaimed-by-me brother from another mother, as he was selected in the second round of the 2021 MLB draft and received a $1.7 million bonus. It took him some time to get to the majors, but he’s here now and balling out with four home runs and one stolen base in 57 plate appearances. Will this Connor help take fantasy nerds to the Promised Land?
Norby is 24 years old, 5-foot-10, 187 pounds, and bats from the right side. The Baltimore Orioles drafted him out of college but was traded to the Marlins on July 30th.
During his minor league career, he showed good plate discipline with a walk rate in the 9% to 12% range. The strikeout rate was in the low 20s while the power was evident from the get-go with the ISO in the. 200 area. He went at least 15/10 in three seasons.
He got called up to the Orioles on June 3rd. In nine games, Norby racked up 32 plate appearances and slashed .188/.188/.406 with two home runs. He did not draw one walk and struck out 37.5%. The ISO was .219 while the BABIP was .222.
Since being acquired by the Marlins, Norby has played in seven games and notched 30 plate appearances. The slash is .345/.367/.690 with two home runs and one stolen base. The walk rate is 3.3% and the strikeout rate is 23.3%. The ISO is a whopping .345 but the BABIP is .400.
In Baltimore, he was batting eighth or ninth in the lineup. With the Marlins, he started out batting sixth, moved up to fifth, and has batted leadoff in each of the last three games.
The sample sizes are small so he’s probably not as bad as he was in Baltimore and not as good as he’s been in Miami. The one big difference is that Baltimore is in win-now mode and he was buried towards the bottom of the lineup. In Miami, there’s no pressure to win and Norby could rack up tons of plate appearances towards the top of the lineup.
Now, digging into the numbers, Norby has been able to square up pitches, as the barrel rate has been 13.6% in Miami and was 15% in Baltimore. For perspective, Aaron Judge is a godly 27.5% while Juan Soto is second at 20.1%. A 14% barrel rate would be top 20.
Unfortunately, though, while Norby has been able to barrel pitches, the exit velocity has been wimpy at best. It was 86.4 mph in Baltimore and has been 83.3 mph in Miami.
The plate discipline numbers are most troubling for me, though. In Baltimore, the chase rate was 43.1% while the swinging strike rate was 16.2%. The contact rate in the strike zone was 80.3%. In Miami, the chase rate has improved to 34.1% but the contact rate in the zone has plummeted to 68.9% while the swinging strike rate has spiked to 20.8%. Ezequiel Tovar leads the league in swinging strike rate at 19.8%.
The one positive is that Norby is in the 94th percentile with a 29.3 ft/s sprint speed and the Marlins are 11th in stolen base attempts per game.
Norby could bat leadoff and, while he showed a penchant for walking in the minors, there’s been no evidence of that translating to the majors. In addition, there’s too much swing and miss to his game that I worry about what it looks like when pitchers adjust. And with this being his first stint in the majors, we haven’t seen if and how he reacts those.
