On the one hand, Colt Keith is having a truly awful go in his first six weeks against major league pitching. On the other, his strikeout to walk ratio remains well above average and he has a higher barrel percentage than Mookie Betts or Julio Rodriguez, or fellow rookie top prospcts like Jackson Chourio or Wyatt Langford. Ah baseball.
Still, it gets harder to defend a .152 batting average and a grisly 17 wRC+ now that we’re over a month into the season. The barrel rate thing is mainly just an example of small sample silliness, and the lack of utility with that particular statistic until we’re much deeper into the season.