The Geovometer is warming up and is no longer icy. It is now merely cool to the touch.

Geo hasn’t hit for power, but at least he’s hitting.  Browse these ten graphs (shown below; click to enlarge) while I describe, and interpret, them a bit.

First, the explanations.  All of the below come from PITCHf/x data.  That’s the pitch tracking stuff you see in K-Zone and Gameday and all over the interwebs.  I’ve broken it down by month, going back to 2007, and ignoring short months like March or October ($#%*$!).

Going row by row, starting at the top left … Swing is swing rate (swings/pitches), Whiff is misses/swings, B:CS are the umpire’s calls, turned into a ratio, IWZ is anything in the strike zone, but the zone is 2 feet wide, which is how they typically play it, and stands for In Wide Zone, Chase is the hitter’s swing rate out of IWZ, and Watch is the opposite, pitches taken IWZ (the inverse of swing rate, BTW). The next row is batted ball type, based on PITCHf/x data, so the Fly ball/Line Drive splits may be dubious. The last graph is nkSLG, or slugging on contact.  Any ball in fair territory, including home runs, is counted; .520 is about average.

Each line is “broken” between years, so you get one dot in 2007, a bunch in 2008 and just two in 2009.  The change from April to May this year has been significant, but not enough to bring him back to “good”.

Swinging more is probably a good thing for Geo.  He wasn’t seeing a lot of strikes in April, but he wasn’t chasing garbage either.  Now, he’s more aggressive at the plate, in and out of the wide zone.

While Geo’s whiff rate has improved, and the level he hit in April was actually pretty good compared to his past.  So, any increase in contact rate in May (the opposite of whiff) is certainly a good thing.  Even if it wasn’t bad in April, relatively speaking.

When it comes to batted balls, Geo is hitting more in the air in May than he did in April.  Hopefully the spike really is in line drives, as the PITCHf/x data indicates. The batted ball types are entered by the MLB stringers, so it’s not technically PITCHf/x.  Gameday data, more accurately.

The supposed/hopeful increase in line drives corresponds with an increase in nkSLG, which makes it that much more believable. It also shows just how horrific his April was.  A meh May looks pretty good in comparison.

Even with the marked improvement, Soto ‘09 is still below less than the 2008 version. He’ll need a good June to show everyone that he’s really on track.