In the Angels' June 12 game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Zach Neto appeared to believe he had hit into a routine pop-up behind first base. The Rays' first basema
Angels infielder Zach Neto drops his bat after hitting a solo home run against Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Jack Dreyer during the ninth inning at Dodger Stadium on June 6, 2026.
| William Liang-Imagn Images In the Angels' June 12 game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Zach Neto appeared to believe he had hit into a routine pop-up behind first base. The Rays' first baseman, Jonathan Aranda, drifted back before dropping the ball near the foul line.
Neto wound up on first base with a single, but the ball hung up in the air long enough to give the 25-year-old a chance at second base if he had hustled out of the batter's box..
"I think that’s what he was reacting to for the most part. Not much of an effort out of the box. He actually got a hit on it. He’s been very good about salvaging something in these games where the beginning really is .
" "I get asked a lot … ‘what’s going on with this guy? What’s the deal? ’ To be honest, I don’t have a clue what the deal is," Trumbo said of Neto.
"First pitch of the bottom of the first inning … he hacks at a ball a foot and a half outside the box. Pretty much explains a lot of it.
" “I don’t see any approach at all at the plate right now," Trumbo said. "Pure hacking. No fight with two strikes. A lot of weird swings, corkscrew, off-balance.
He seems to be entirely trying to do one thing and one thing only — that’s the long ball. He’s pimping balls that don’t go out of the ballpark. He’s pimping balls that go out by a mere foot. ”is backed up by the numbers.
He's swinging more in general this season , not just on pitches out of the zone . The problem is that Neto is making less contact on pitches outside of the zone , not more.this is a direct result of Neto's propensity to chase pitches that have no chance of being called a strike.
His chase percentage is up to 35% this season from 25% last year.this year is 25.7%. In effect, Neto is encouraging pitchers to give him nothing to hit inside the strike zone, knowing he will swing at balls. His results — a .220/.324/.419 slash line — suggest pitchers will continue to take this approach until Neto stops chasing. In a sense, opposing pitchers are stealing Neto's lunch money.
So far, they're getting away with it. J.P. Hoornstra is an On SI Contributor. A veteran of 20 years of sports coverage for daily newspapers in California, J.P. covered MLB, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Angels from 2012-23 for the Southern California News Group.
His first book, The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All-Time, published in 2015. In 2016, he won an Associated Press Sports Editors award for breaking news coverage. He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.
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