Zach Neto showing real growth with Angels during latest heater (with one exception)

Zach Neto has been something of an interesting phenomenon for the Los Angeles Angels. The young shortstop made a big leap from his rookie season in 2023 to his sophomore year in 2024, but from there, he's seemed to stagnate. Neto posted identical 117 wRC+ marks in both 2024 and 2025, and has been on a similar, if not slightly worse, track in 2026. He's been a very good player, but the question has been whether or not the 25-year-old can become a true superstar.

There have been plenty of things to gripe about. Neto has always struck out at a high rate, and it's been getting worse in 2026. At the same time, Neto's defense has been shoddy at times at shortstop. This doesn't mean tat the Campbell University product doesn't have immense potential, but there are still strides that need to be made.

Neto was a trade deadline darling for a reason, though. Many teams were rumored to be interested in the Halos shortstop because he is a very good player and is still so young that it's not hard to squint and see him becoming a superstar in the near future.

Recently, Neto's been heating up, and his performance during Los Angeles's recent road trip was astounding. He was named AL Player of the Week for his heater last week, hitting .500 (14-28) with seven extra-base hits and nine RBI. It's not just a hot week, either. Over his last 17 games, through August 24, spanning most of August, Neto slashed .292/.320/.528 with three homers and four steals.

Zach Neto will never completely fulfill his promise with the Angels if he doesn't fix his plate discipline issues

One positive that we've seen from Neto over this stretch has been a reduction in his strikeout rate. He's gone down via the K just 21.3% over those 75 plate appearances. That's a massive improvement over the 30.6% rate he's been running this year, and is a good deal better than his career rate of 26.3%. However, in that same span, he's walked just three times, which is good for a 4% walk rate. It's hard to be consistently productive when you walk so infrequently.

This is the opposite of what we've seen for most of the year from Neto. He entered 2026 as a guy who never walked much. His career-best before this year was a 6.5% mark coming in 2024. Coming into this season, his career walk rate was 6.2%.

For much of the year, Neto has been better at drawing bases on balls. Even with this recent dry spell, he's walked 9.1% of the time. That's come at a cost, though, as his strikeout rate this year has topped 30% for the first time in his career. It's almost as if when he's drawing walks, he's being too passive at the plate, and the Ks rise along with the free passes. Then, when the strikeouts fall, the walks plummet alongside them as he swings at and makes contact with more pitches out of the zone.

In order to truly reach the next level, Neto's going to have to figure out how to lay off the junk while still being aggressive in the zone. If he can do that, we might be looking at one of MLB's brightest superstars. Still, this is something we've been waiting on for years, and time is running out.

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