Dodgers Rookie Joc Pederson's Instant Superstardom Is No Joke

If you really strain your brain, you might be able to remember a time when rookie center fielder Joc Pederson was one of the big unknowns on the veteran-laden Los Angeles Dodgers.

Now, he's easily the best thing they have going for them.

Pederson was in the middle of an outstanding rookie season even before the Dodgers took on the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park on Wednesday night, and he proceeded to make it more outstanding. Albeit in a losing cause, Pederson jacked his eighth and ninth home runs of the year, tying him with the Cincinnati Reds' Todd Frazier and Dodgers teammate Adrian Gonzalez for the National League lead.

Pederson's first dinger looked like this:

And his second looked like this:

Beyond tying him for the NL lead in homers, Pederson's two dingers also kept up a recent trend. As the Dodgers pointed out, he's been on a home run binge in recent days:

To be fair, Pederson didn't just have a trend to uphold. As he told J.P. Hoornstra of the Los Angeles News Group, he also had a challenge to answer, courtesy of fellow young slugger Bryce Harper:

Granted, two home runs isn't three. But that's still good. Still good, indeed.

Also good? Pederson's numbers in general.

In addition to his league-leading nine homers, Pederson is hitting .272 with a .423 on-base percentage and a .667 slugging percentage. That's a 1.090 OPS, which puts him behind only Gonzalez among qualified NL hitters.

With numbers like these, Pederson is easily the early favorite for the NL Rookie of the Year. But when it comes to reading into what they mean for him going forward, we obviously have to be cautious. We're only talking about a sample size of 105 plate appearances, so the small-sample-size song applies.

But this doesn't necessarily mean we can't get excited. Because in this case, it's just so, so, so easy to get excited about what Pederson can do.

Morry Gash/Associated Press

One thing that can't be said of Pederson is that he's come out of the blue (pun kinda-sorta-definitely intended). As his Baseball-Reference page shows, he came into 2015 as a consensus top-20 prospect, and in general the book on him was that he was a legit five-tool prospect.

But one thing that the classic five-tool set sells short is a player's approach at the dish, and that's one area of Pederson's hot start that's been a pleasant surprise.

You can conclude that Pederson has been a discerning hitter just from looking at the fact that he's walked in 20 percent of his plate appearances, and the notion holds up when put under a microscope.

According to FanGraphs, Pederson began Wednesday seeing a smaller percentage of pitches (38.2) in the strike zone than all but seven other hitters. His response to this has been to chase outside the strike zone with only 25.5 percent of his swings, which is easily below the league average of 30.0 percent.

Danny Moloshok/Associated Press

"We just think he is going to keep improving," Dodgers skipper Don Mattingly recently told Earl Bloom of MLB.com. "He's got a really good eye, and it's going to get better with experience."

Granted, Pederson's keen batting eye hasn't helped him avoid the big letter K.

Because discerning hitters tend to get into a lot of deep counts, they run the risk of striking out a lot. That reality applies to Pederson, and it so happens he also has a big swing-and-miss element to his game. That he's striking out in over 30 percent of his plate appearances makes sense.

But when you're drawing walks like Pederson is, a high strikeout rate is easily forgiven. What can make a high strikeout rate even easier to forgive, meanwhile, is lots of bangs and booms when contact is made.

And that leads us to Pederson's biggest specialty: He hits the ball really, really hard.

It's not just his nine home runs that say so. As of the start of play Wednesday, FanGraphs had Pederson ranked eighth in MLB in hard-hit rate. Mark Simon of ESPN Stats and Information has figures that say Pederson is more like fifth in hard-hit rate.

Or maybe he's first in hard-hit rate. Because if you go to Baseball Savant (h/t Jonah Keri of Grantland) and draw up the MLB leaders in average batted-ball velocity, you get this:

Rank	Player	Balls in Play	Average Velo
1	Joc Pederson	32	97.8
2	Hanley Ramirez	57	97.6
3	Jorge Soler	40	96.1
4	Yasmani Grandal	39	95.5
5	Ryan Braun	45	95.2

What makes Pederson's batted-ball profile even better is that he doesn't waste his time on ground balls.

He entered Wednesday with just a 37.8 ground-ball percentage. He's otherwise hit 20 percent line drives and 42.2 percent fly balls. Take these percentages and combine them with his extreme batted-ball velocity, and he's had more or less the ideal batted-ball profile for a power hitter.

Of course, Pederson can't keep this up forever. Sooner or later, he'll start to chill.

Now that he's batting leadoff instead of eighth, pitchers are bound to get more aggressive in the zone against him and try to force the issue with his strikeout habit. What's more, a plot of Pederson's batting averages at Brooks Baseball makes it look like he has a hole in his swing up in the zone that pitchers can exploit. It may not be long before he's getting the Mike Trout treatment.

Pederson's inevitable cool-down shouldn't be too bad, though. He may not be a perfect hitter. But with a sharp eye and a bat that makes consistent loud contact, he's proven himself to be a damn good hitter. Damn good hitters don't tend to fall into deep slumps.

Oh, and should we mention that this guy is also a pretty good center fielder? Here, this catch can vouch:

Considering that the scouting reports on Pederson tended to like his defensive outlook rather than love it, it's fair to say catches like those have been more frequent than expected. His personal highlights are full of 'em, and the defensive metrics confirm that his defense has indeed been above average.

When it comes down to it, the only thing Pederson hasn't done yet is steal bases. But those should be coming. His new job as a leadoff man should give him more chances to show off his legs, and we know from his back-to-back 30-steal seasons in the minors in 2013 and 2014 that he has the speed for the job.

A scary thought indeed, given that Pederson is already doing enough to rank among baseball's elite players. Baseball-Reference WAR ranked Pederson in the top 20 among position players at the start of Wednesday, and the latest at FanGraphs has him all the way up at third overall.

We weren't wrong to view Pederson as a big unknown coming into the season. He only had 38 major league plate appearances under his belt, and unspectacular ones at that. The team also expected him to help make up for the losses of Matt Kemp and Hanley Ramirez, which figured to be no easy task.

But that was then. This is now. And if we've learned anything, it's that this Joc is no joke.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.