When I say we're now at a time where stats are real I mean we're at a time where it takes more than a hot week to change your fortunes. I've mentioned this before but let's take an example. Joey Meneses is hitting .294 / .333 / .381 right now. If he were to get SUPER HOT over the next week, hit .500 with 5 doubles and 2 homers, get walked 3 times (a lot for him) his stats would shoot up to... .319 / .360 / .440 . It's a nice bump but he's not suddenly great or anything. If he were to go ICE COLD, hit .100 with a double and a walk his numbers plummet to... .270 / .309 / .351 Disappointing but not a problem player.
No, at this point you need to have an extended run of good or bad hitting to make a sea change. Guys can (and will!) get better and worse but we have a good sense of around where they'll end up. Most will end within 20 pts of their OPS+. Yeah it's a big range but it also tells you things like it's really unlikely Joey Meneses ends up a star again. or that Lane Thomas will be anything worse than average.
To be clear the forecasting we're doing here is 2023 only, not related to how these guys might pan out over careers or anything.
So what seems real today?
Keibert Ruiz / Luis Garcia / CJ Abrams - not going to be stars this year with a non-zero chance of collapsing. I'd guess all three end up around where they are now, maybe a tick higher. Both Ruiz and Garcia have stats to back up a little better numbers and Abrams has the pedigree. But for a team looking for stars it's not coming from these guys this year.
Thomas - certainly a starter and might be special? He came from an overstocked Cardinal OF not because he wasn't liked, but because they liked others better. The talent was there to be something and he's never failed when getting the time to shine.
Meneses - is not special? There was a fair amount of thinking the Nats found something last year but with teams having a book on Meneses and the fairy dust gone away they've cut his power by feeding him more junk. Maybe if he were 19 you'd say he could adjust but at 31, nah. Be glad he has talent enough to keep that average up.
Candelario - good gamble. Plays solid D and hits fine. Mostly proves last year was the injury fluke the Nats were hoping it was. I'd try to lock him up for a few years with no IF on the immediate horizon. If he gets pushed by like House then 1B seems open. Speaking of which.
Smith - money back. He started poorly but has rebounded to a point. The big issue is the power of 2019 and really 2020 - remains gone. If the BABIP goes unlucky he'll be an anchor. He's a back up player for most teams in 2023. For the Nats he holds ground if they want him to.
Call - bad gamble. They liked throwing him out there but he never got going at the plate. With the upside being average and the downside being terrible, the Nats should move on.
with less conviction :
Robles - transformation at the plate makes him good again. Play him everyday if/when he gets healthy.
Garrett - got his shot (Really did this time) and doesn't look to be anything, but may benefit with another set of PAs if the Nats give up on Call like I suggest.
Corbin - A rotation guy. Outside of 2021 he has been this honestly but some bad luck made him seem worse and when you are pushing 4/5 worse is out of baseball. This year things are more in line and he doesn't miss bats anymore but he's adapted enough with increased patience and focus that he can eat innings.
Gray - Also a rotation guy but cloudy on where .The ERA says 1. The FIP says 4. He's basically the same pitcher as last year but the HRs are WAAAAAAAAY down and the Ks are down a little. It's a good trade. But his LOB% and HR/FB% are at the level you expect regression... The good news take away for 2023 is he's not threatening to be pulled from the rotation. He's here to stay. The rest of the year is clarifying where.
Gore - Mid rotation guy right now. Slight improvements across the board from last year. Really working those Ks. Don't see him falling past 4 but probably not jumping to a 1 in 2023.
Williams - Like Gray but the range is more 2-5 than 1-4. He's not doing anything well with more IP under his belt. striking out fewer while giving up a few more hits and homers. The end result is he's losing his gamble on himself. For the Nats small chance he bottoms out of the rotation, but more likely not. Really the Nats got him to trade him so on that end they remain a little lucky. He's not pitching well but his ERA is hiding some bad stats now. Yes, baseball guys would know that but there is also selling it to your fans and owners. If he improves and pitches to the ERA (3.90) you can sell that easier than if he improves but he's coming down from 5.18 and sitting at 4.55.
I'm not going to bother the less conviction of the bullpen and 5th starter. Too many to throw out what amounts to 50/50 guesses
17 comments:
I think these are good takes across the board, Harper. (Yes, Call and Garrett have had their shot. They don't need to be DFA'd immediately, but if it's required in order to do anything useful, you don't hesitate.)
The one question I have, though, is around Garcia and Ruiz still getting very unlucky by statcast estimates, with Garcia 50 points under his xwOBA and Ruiz 70 points under. They are the 11th and 1st biggest underperformers among all qualified batters this season. If we believe that is just random variance, then their true talent wRC+s would be in the 120-130 range.
But I'm not sure how confident we can be that it is just variance. Has anyone been able to look at YoY correlations of those errors? I think I'm mostly a believer in the logic behind the xwOBA stat, but I'd be very curious if certain types of hitters have systemic errors.
Call has no business on the roster next year. But he's a Major League center fielder. Lane Thomas is cromulent in the corners, but he is no CF. Until Robles is back and in the groove, I wouldn't fire Call just yet.
Anon @ 10:21 - You can kind of "stat out" why Garcia and Ruiz are struggling to match numbers but luck does seem to be a big portion. If you ask me I'll say Ruiz ends up in that 90s OPS+ and Garcia closer to 100 - playables, no worries, but not stars. It's ok. Maybe next year.
As for digging into xwOBA I would guess that particularly slow players systemically under perform because not all types of hits incorporate sprint speed only basically dribblers. This means probably extremely fast players sort of break this as well a little. So Ruiz might start falling into that.
Anon @ 2:42 - yeah it would be good to have a Call replacement. Maybe bring up Blake Rutherford just to do it. (to be honest you probably need to get him a good look before you get Wood/Hassell up - may not be 2023 but probably 2024 unless they falter)
I think you owe Joey Meneses a bit more love. He was a 30-year old rookie putting up Ken Griffey, Jr.-like numbers...unheard of to begin with and continuing that pace was never plausible. But if you count up from zero and not down from Griffey, he is putting up a nearly star level set of numbers. Based on his hitting to date, ESPN projects a full year of 194 hits and 84 RBI's and about a .300 batting average. Currently, he is tied for 5th in hits and 13th in batting average in MLB rankings. Granted, no power...and maybe he can't sustain this level...but taking your words as offered: we are at the point where YTD numbers are meaningful. And he has an extraordinary set of numbers for a late-blooming player who is not a star.
A DH cannot slug below .400 (unless they can put up an OBP of .400)
They "can" slug below .400. Like Kyle Schwarber this year.
Meneses is ranked about 15th among 21 qualifying DHs in lots of stats Including OPS, WAR, WRC+. But that's because there are a lot of good DHs this year.
His stats this year would put him in the middle of DHs last year. His 0.729 OPS would put him 8th last year, behind Justin Turner.
Harper alludes to it, but part of the reason Meneses is hitting for less power is the amount of junk he's thrown. I don't have numbers to compare against other DH's, but I rarely see him get good fastballs to it. The problem I've seen (eye test only) is that he doesn't punish the fastballs when he does get them. If he can start doing that (which likely means being a little more aggressive and sacrificing avg), then we're back to having a well above average player on the roster
Of course! How could we have missed all those Junior similarities to Meneses? Let's show some love for Gore, too. Lot of Randy Johnson in that boy!
People are getting a bit wacky on here!
To me, it's not that Meneses is doing that much worse than expected. He had pretty wide error bars going in to the season, and he's at most one standard deviation below expectation and probably more like half of one. The problem is that is enough to destroy almost all of his value over replacement.
Somewhat relatedly, I've been thinking a bit about the DH penalty. My first approximation has always been that it was correlational. The DH, on any given day, is more likely to be mildly injured or in need of a day off, and so I figured the lower batting lines were just downstream signals from the decision to keep someone out of the field and more tied to injury / health / athleticism / age than to anything directly caused by not playing in the field between PAs.
But then why do only a third of the teams have DH's with plus bats? Meneses ranking 15th is wild to me. Fewer than half the teams have DH's with positive production over replacement. Wow. (Though that also might mean the positional penalties are scaled wrong. Not sure how you'd parse that out.)
Anyway, it seems absurd that the perfect preparation for hitting is to mill about in a field and occasionally catch or throw a ball. But you have to assume teams are trying different things and, at least so far, DHs are still underperforming.
His stats aren't useful to any team interested in winning. Not at 1B. Not in LF. And certainly not at DH. If people thought Schwarber was going to finish with a SLG below .400, they wouldn't play him either. I hope Meneses improves because he's a good story, or he was, but .300/.340/.390 is not good enough to justify taking up space at the left edge of the defensive spectrum.
I guess that's it for The Strasburg Story. Sad news.
@Expos 1983 blog
It is sad but also frustrating that he was the one sentimental mega-extension the fans got. It was never a good idea given his injury history. Others that "got away" have had injuries and underperformance, but any of them (Harper, Turner, Max, even Rendon) would have given the Nats more.
Out of the big contracts they've given, only Max has really worked out. Strasburg is cooked without a real start since the ink dried. Corbin gave them one good year and turned into a pumpkin. Werth was never quite valuable enough, but if the point was simply to signal they would pay big fot FAs, then count it as a half success.
Werth worked out too though, with some definite ups and downs, by today’s standards it’s a bit less of a mega-contract.
You could argue Corbin did too since they have a banner in part due to him. Maybe they could’ve signed another lefty for less who would’ve also come out of the bullpen in the playoffs.
You also need to count Stras 1 as a huge success.
Max and Stras 1 as wins. Werth as a push. I'd say Rizzo is batting about 50/50 on these mega extensions (though Stras 2 is such a total disaster it should probably be weighted as two losses).
Not great, but not bad. And definitely way better than all the teams that just never offer 9 figure contracts to anybody.
In such scorekeeping, Max might count as 2 wins? His performance was, arguably, among the best returns that any team has ever gotten from a mega-contract. Not sure of the comparables, but maybe among the top 3 or 5 all time?
Rizzo didn't sign Stras to Stras 2. it was Ted Lerner, all alone.
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