So what is a Joey Meneses? It's an older player who in his first real chance at playing does well enough to make you hope they are something more. As the last comment in the previous post said - the reasonable hope is he's around league average for 2-3 year, bridging the gap between good times, costing the team little so maybe they can make a big free agent or international signing with an eye toward the future.*
Have we seen that with other Joey's? I made a quick attempt yesterday but let's pin it down even closer. 29 year old or more, 200+ AB, "rookies"**, posting OPS+ of at least 90. What do we got?
In the past 25 years - not a lot.
Shinjo, Matsui, Taguchi... we know why they didn't make it earlier.
2004 David Newhan - odd case where he played in 1999, 2000, and 2001 and wasn't very good. Then he got hurt in 2002 and didn't play and played all 2003 in the minors. He was bouncing around teams but Baltimore needed a 3B, he was available, they picked him up and he took off. Here's a feel good story about him. But the brief outings before 2004 were more real and he stunk up the joint in the next three years.
Iguchi, Johjima
2006 Chris Coste - 33 when he debuted (here's the feel good for him) he'd actually be a reasonable back-up catchers for a couple more years (re: not good. but back-up catchers are hard to find) before his age caught up with him. The guy WAS 36 after all
2008 Edgar Gonzalez - 30. Adrian's older brother. Got the call up in part deserved, in part because Adrian was on the team and it's a nice story. Read the feel good here. He did perfectly fine that first year but the next year did bad. He got hit in the head and missed nearly two months with a concussion but actually hit better coming back briefly but never got another shot.
Aoki
2015 Joey Butler - 29. Bounced all around and had a couple small cups of coffee in previous two years before coming up and doing pretty decently (requisite feel gooder). But the Rays are not sentimental and he was DFA'd to make room on the 40. He was picked up by Cleveland, didn't hit in AAA. Then picked up by the Nats! Hey hey! Didn't hit for them in AAA either. But don't worry there's another Nat around the corner...
2015 Clint Robinson 30. (Classic Wags delivering the feels) The Nats were looking for organizational depth and picked up Robinson after the Dodgers let him go. The Nats had just decided to go with Zimm at 1B after letting LaRoche go and Zimm couldn't stay on the field. So Clint played a lot and was basically the only other Nat (Ok Yuney too) to hit in the season Bryce tried and failed to carry the Nats to the playoffs himself. But in 2016 the magic would wear off and he'd be gone.
Dae-Ho Lee
2017 Manny Pina 30. The Pineapple himself. He did play at 24 & 25 in the majors but only 5 games. (FG here). Possibly the biggest success as he played 4 seasons as a workable back-up catcher.
Gurriel - Cuba
Now we're getting into too recent territory with stories still being written but I'll give you the 2019 guys.
2019 Jon Berti - 29 (feel good) He's still playing and currently leads the league in stolen bases. No, for real. Look it up. And it's a legit percentage. He should be stealing at this rate. Is he any good? Not really. More he's fallen into a team that won't spend money and needs warm bodies. He's not bad though
2019 Austin Nola - 29 (FG) catcher. still playing with Padres. Brings up the question - can Joey catch?
Anyway not even a mixed bag. The catchers have stuck around, which speaks to it being hard to develop catchers and that it's hard to find good back ups. The rest are flashes in the pan. Again Joey is the flashiest flash, hitting better than anyone in this group. He also has the most limited ABs though.
*Of course you know my feelings on this - THEY CAN DO THIS ANYWAY!!!
** meets rookie qualifications.
9 comments:
I hope that he turns out to be more of a Michael Morse type. Morse had played in the Majors before, but he was kind of a AAAA player. That's why he was available for Ryan Langerhans. Maybe Joey can catch that kind of magic for a couple of years and get a decent contract before he is done.
@Harper, why did you decide to be stricter with the age cutoff than with offensive production? >90 OPS+ hardly does justice to Joey's 167.
I feel like a better comparison set would be to pull something like rookies at >27 years old with a >130 OPS+ breakout. But maybe even that set is basically empty, and the real takeaway is that no one has ever done this before.
I mean, I don't think anyone would bet at even odds on this being his true talent level. But such sparse data means to me that there's hope. What odds would you require to bet on 300+ PAs with a 120 or better wRC next year? I'd definitely bet it at 5-2. Maybe even 2-1.
Here's the current MLB top 10 for the season in wRC+ (min 200 PAs):
Judge, 208. (Also, just wow. You must be loving this ride, Harper.)
Alvarez, 184.
Goldschmidt, 179.
Trout, 172.
Altuve, 158.
Meneses, 158.
Freeman, 157.
Machado, 153.
Jimenez, 152.
Arenado, 152.
Joey is doing really really good.
This is what I was thinking
The question is whether it makes sense to limit it to guys who were actual rookies at age 29-30, or if you also should include guys who bounced around with limited MLB playing time until they finally got regular playing time at age 28, 29, or 30. Because I pretty quickly came up with a few guys in that last category: Morse (age 28 breakout), Raul Ibanez (age 29), Geronimo Berroa (age 29). And I'm guessing there are more like that.
Including age 28 rookie (or near rookie) seasons, you get guys like Matt Stairs, Luke Scott, Mike Yastrzemski. (I know Joey is 30, not 28 - do those extra 2 years make that much of a difference?)
In terms of career development patterns 30 might be very different than 28 (so many fewer 30-year old rookies). However, on physical capability, I imagine there are a lot of MLer's who were signficantly better performers at 30 than 28. In the end, the Joey story is fun. I am fine with simultaneously holding great hope for his continued succss and a recognition how nearly unprecedented that would be.
I think those two years make a lot of difference in terms of expected outcomes 4+ years out, but for the next 2-3 years, I'm not sure if it matters much at all that he's 30 and not 26.
To me the main risks are twofold:
1. He's way way over-performing his batted ball profile. .372 BAPIP with 18th percentile sprint speed. A HR/FB rate of 28%. An xOBA of .338 vs his actual OBA of .398. A lot of the success is simple positive variance.
2. A lot of rookies get off to a great start, and then the league adjusts to exploit their weaknesses. You never really know if a level is sustainable until you see the player adjust back. I'd also bet that players without pedigree are the ones who are least likely to be able to make the necessary adjustments.
On the other hand, an OPS of .850 or an wOBA of .340 is still very good. That's solidly above average and possibly the best bat on our terrible team. So it's very possible that Joey "fizzles out" to a 1B/DH with a wRC+ of 125 generating 1.5-2 WAR/600 and he's still the best upside surprise that this team has had in a while.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. In the stats-intensive sports of baseball, we're always uncovering little never-been-done-before kernels. Always. Its hard to imagine a week going by without hearing announcers color a play or player series of at-bats as a outrageously unique. We all want interesting stories.
Eventually, SOMEone at 30 years old is going to breakout and have a super 5-6 year run. Its bound to happen. Happy if it's Meneses. Unlikely as it may be. Root for the guy.
Someday someone will hit a homerun cycle, too (4 HRs, one with 1 on base, one with 2 on base, one with 3 on base and one with none on). Everything is possible.
Solid articles on Joey by Szymborski @ Fangraphs and awhile back by Lindbergh @ the Ringer. Great to see him getting some love
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