We make fun of Juan Uribe around here a lot. No, seriously. A lot. Just check his category tag if you don’t believe me. We laughed at how he was basically banished to the moon last year, being nailed to the bench for most of the last two months and stuck in limbo between “you’re too bad to play” and “there’s too many injuries and you’re making too much money to simply cut”. We thought for sure he’d be gone over the offseason, but somehow, some way, he kept on surviving.

Now here we are in the early days of May and not only does Uribe exist, he’s starting. Luis Cruz has flopped badly, and Nick Punto has been needed to help cover for Mark Ellis at second. Uribe has started 12 of 27 games at third, more than anyone, but even that’s gone up as time has gone by — in six of the last seven games, it’s been Uribe’s name in the lineup.

And somehow… he hasn’t been awful. I’m not going to say he’s been good, because he’s still hitting just .200, but by the standards of the atrocities he’s provided over the last two seasons, he’s… actually been pretty good. His wRC+ is 119 — 100 is average — and when his solid defense is factored in, he’s been slightly above replacement level this year.

That’s wonderful, but the funny thing is, it’s not that he’s fixed a hitch in his swing that resulted in better performance. It seems to be simply that he now understands how awful he is. For example, here’s a chart:

Uribe is walking an astounding 23.9% of the time. (This includes two intentional passes, which should probably be eliminated for data purposes but remains because the idea of actually giving him a free pass would be laughably dismissed at this time last year.) That’s from a man who had never once in his life walked in more than 7.8% of his plate appearances, and it stands today as the highest walk rate of anyone in baseball with at least 40 plate appearances.

The. Highest. Walk. Rate. In. Baseball. For Juan Uribe. If you wanted to tell me that the magnetic poles of the earth would switch position tomorrow, and that we’d all be flung off into space, I’m not sure I could reasonably refute you at this point.

So how is that happening? Because the man is simply not swinging at as much garbage as he used to. Per FanGraphs, here’s Uribe’s swing rates — Swing% is obviously the total amount of pitches he swings at, while Z- is inside the zone and O- is outside the zone.

And there you have it. Look at that O-Swing%! Juan Uribe isn’t exactly “better”, because he still has just seven hits on the season (granted, two are homers). He’s just doing fewer of the things that make him atrocious. It’s a small difference, but there we are, and it’s just beyond wonderful to me that Uribe’s performance was so bad that simply saying, “hey, dingus, whatever you do, don’t swing when you get up there” seems to be the plan and that’s actually been enough to make him more effective.

I said on Twitter a few weeks ago that the character arc Uribe seems to be taking, from the most hated villain on the team to good-natured redemption story, would be phenomenally interesting. We’re not quite there yet, and I’ll nearly guarantee that he’s not going to remain the starting third baseman all season, but it’s on the right path.

Juan Uribe, doing more by simply doing less.

Lost, understandably, in all of the ongoing hoopla about Zack Greinke‘s injury and Carlos Quentin‘s status on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, is the fact that the Dodgers did win the game, and they did so in large part due to Juan Uribe‘s pinch-hit homer. That’s his second homer of the season, tops on the team and as many in 12 plate appearances as he managed in 179 atrocious times up last year.

The two homers, in fact, are his only two hits, and that’s how you end up with a 1.133 OPS and a .000 BABIP. So in Uribe’s honor, at least until a game thread goes up later today, a list (thanks, b-ref!) of all the qualified players in baseball with fewer dingers than he has. This isn’t (just) a list of light-hitting shortstops; there’s MVPs, future Hall of Famers, and every single other Dodger.

Really looking forward to Uribe’s turn from reviled bust to uplifting man of the people, you guys.

1 Jacoby Ellsbury 1
2 Paul Konerko 1
3 Michael Saunders 1
4 Chris Heisey 1
5 Jason Heyward 1
6 Jarrod Saltalamacchia 1
7 Matt Holliday 1
8 Ryan Howard 1
9 Nick Hundley 1
10 Nate Schierholtz 1
11 Alex Gonzalez 1
12 Edwin Encarnacion 1
13 Alcides Escobar 1
14 Andre Ethier 1
15 Jeff Francoeur 1
16 Juan Francisco 1
17 Brett Gardner 1
18 Justin Sellers 1
19 Adrian Gonzalez 1
20 Justin Ruggiano 1
21 Jimmy Rollins 1
22 Jose Reyes 1
23 Trevor Plouffe 1
24 Joe Mauer 1
25 Andrew McCutchen 1
26 Yadier Molina 1
27 Miguel Montero 1
28 Kendrys Morales 1
29 Gerardo Parra 1
30 David Murphy 1
31 Nick Markakis 1
32 Manny Machado 1
33 Adam Jones 1
34 Ben Zobrist 1
35 Howie Kendrick 1
36 Josh Reddick 1
37 Alexei Ramirez 1
38 Martin Prado 1
39 Pete Kozma 1
40 Erik Kratz 1
41 Chris Parmelee 1
42 Brandon Crawford 1
43 Ike Davis 1
44 Nelson Cruz 1
45 Adrian Beltre 1
46 Carl Crawford 1
47 Will Venable 1
48 Lyle Overbay 1
49 Luis Valbuena 1
50 Jason Castro 1
51 Matt Carpenter 1
52 B.J. Upton 1
53 Alberto Callaspo 1
54 Mark Trumbo 1
55 Norichika Aoki 1
56 Alejandro De Aza 1
57 A.J. Ellis 1
58 Michael Bourn 1
59 Yonder Alonso 1
60 Jose Altuve 1
61 Rickie Weeks 1
62 Josh Donaldson 1
63 Miguel Cabrera 1
64 Greg Dobbs 1
65 Lance Berkman 1
66 Michael Young 1
67 Carlos Beltran 1
68 Ichiro Suzuki 1
69 Matt Wieters 1
70 Juan Pierre 0
71 Ben Revere 0
72 Jhonny Peralta 0
73 David Wright 0
74 Salvador Perez 0
75 Cliff Pennington 0
76 Carlos Pena 0
77 Ryan Zimmerman 0
78 Dustin Pedroia 0
79 Placido Polanco 0
80 Buster Posey 0
81 Donovan Solano 0
82 Alfonso Soriano 0
83 Justin Smoak 0
84 Andrelton Simmons 0
85 Giancarlo Stanton 0
86 Drew Stubbs 0
87 Kyle Seager 0
88 Marco Scutaro 0
89 Nick Swisher 0
90 Ruben Tejada 0
91 Brendan Ryan 0
92 Josh Rutledge 0
93 Denard Span 0
94 Shane Victorino 0
95 Joey Votto 0
96 Neil Walker 0
97 Mike Trout 0
98 Eric Sogard 0
99 Angel Pagan 0
100 Dustin Ackley 0
101 Allen Craig 0
102 Luis Cruz 0
103 David DeJesus 0
104 Daniel Descalso 0
105 Andy Dirks 0
106 Matt Dominguez 0
107 Ryan Doumit 0
108 Brian Dozier 0
109 Mark Ellis 0
110 Yunel Escobar 0
111 Starlin Castro 0
112 Lorenzo Cain 0
113 Melky Cabrera 0
114 Pedro Alvarez 0
115 Elvis Andrus 0
116 Erick Aybar 0
117 Brandon Belt 0
118 Emilio Bonifacio 0
119 Jackie Bradley 0
120 Michael Brantley 0
121 Jay Bruce 0
122 Marlon Byrd 0
123 Everth Cabrera 0
124 Danny Espinosa 0
125 Chris Getz 0
126 Carlos Gomez 0
127 Evan Longoria 0
128 Jonathan Lucroy 0
129 Starling Marte 0
130 Victor Martinez 0
131 Justin Maxwell 0
132 Cameron Maybin 0
133 Nate McLouth 0
134 Jesus Montero 0
135 Justin Morneau 0
136 Mike Moustakas 0
137 Josh Hamilton 0
138 Jason Kipnis 0
139 Jeff Keppinger 0
140 Alex Gordon 0
141 Jedd Gyorko 0
142 Adeiny Hechavarria 0
143 Aaron Hicks 0
144 Eric Hosmer 0
145 Torii Hunter 0
146 Omar Infante 0
147 Austin Jackson 0
148 Desmond Jennings 0
149 Matt Kemp 0
150 Chris Nelson 0