Ryan Romano: Can Rickard regain his plate discipline?

Through his first month at the major league level, Joey Rickard has fared pretty well overall. The most recent Orioles Rule 5 pick, he's put up a .278/.308/.392 slash line over 104 plate appearances -- not elite production, sure, but much better than what the team got from Travis Snider and Delmon Young last year. For all his skill, though, Rickard has displayed a major shortcoming, and he'll have to correct it if he wants to have a long career in the show.

As a minor leaguer, Rickard never hit for much power, nor did he run a particularly high BABIP. He stood apart because of his plate discipline, which helped him to avoid strikeouts and pile up walks. For his career in the minors, Rickard struck out 16.3 percent of the time and walked 12.7 percent of the time. Rickard's discerning eye may have been what allowed the Orioles to snag him from the Tampa Bay Rays: At FanGraphs.com, Chris Mitchell noted that "scouts don't exactly drool over players with excellent plate discipline." Rickard could tell what pitches were balls and which were strikes, and that ability brought him to the majors.

But in making the jump, Rickard seems to have lost his judgment. This season, he's swung at 29.7 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, which ranks a mediocre 116th out of 198 qualifiers. Since opponents have attacked him relentlessly -- only 11 hitters have a higher zone rate -- this means he hasn't taken very many walks. Making matters worse, Rickard has offered at just 49.8 percent of pitches in the strike zone, the fifth-lowest in the majors. He has made contact on 85.5 percent of his swings, which places a respectable 39th and has kept his strikeout rate respectable. Still, the failure with pitch recognition is disappointing since he always excelled at this before.

Most of Rickard's troubles here have come in two areas, as Brooks Baseball makes clear. Simply put, he's swung early and often at inside pitches, while avoiding outside pitches to no end. Brooks divides the plate into five vertical sections: the middle three comprise the strike zone, and the outer two correspond to inner and outer pitches. Given a pitch on the two-fifths of the plate closest to him, Rickard has swung 49.7 percent of the time -- meaning he's chased too many balls and laid off too many strikes. On the flip side, he's swung at a mere 22.9 percent of pitches over the outer two-fifths of the plate, which makes for patience when they're outside the zone and passivity when they're inside it. For Rickard to regain his plate discipline, the solution seems clear: He needs to work on pitches on the inside and outside edges.

By no means is this a career-killing development for Rickard, or even a particularly unexpected one. Most Rule 5 players will experience some hiccups in their rookie year; for examples of that, recall the bumpy debuts of Ryan Flaherty, T.J. McFarland and Jason Garcia. Rickard can still earn his keep on the basepaths and in the outfield (although he hasn't shown it in 2016), so he doesn't need to strike fear into opposing pitchers to succeed. But if he wants to maximize his potential -- if he wants to remain Joey Freakin' Rickard -- he'll need to rediscover the sharp eye he once had.

After a blistering start at the plate, Rickard has slumped a bit recently. My fellow guest blogger at MASNsports.com Dillon Atkinson wondered last week if the Orioles should give Rickard a bit of time off. In the event that the team does take that route, Rickard could use the time to work on his pitch recognition, especially in these two areas of the plate. He's already come a long way to get here -- as a prospect, he heralded very little attention, and hardly anyone thought he could stay afloat in the majors. Taking free passes and eschewing strikeouts would allow him to swim.

Ryan Romano blogs about the Orioles for Camden Depot. Follow the blog on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.