2013 Pod Projections: Brett Lawrie
Tying for the second most number of votes for a full Pod Projection was Blue Jays third sacker Brett Lawrie. After sky high expectations resulting from an exciting debut that mixed power and speed, the sophomore seriously disappointed in his full season follow-up. Lawrie missed a month of action due to an oblique injury and missed time here and there due to various other nicks and bruises. You have to wonder how healthy he was all season and if those issues affected his performance. This is just another example of why projecting player performance is so difficult. We have to speculate about injuries and their effects and we may never know if we were correct.
2013 Pod Projection Index
Introduction
Carlos Gomez
Mark Trumbo
At-Bats: 575
There is no reason to apply the injury prone tag so quickly, so Lawrie gets a projection that assumes a full season of at-bats. If he was expected to hit higher up in the order, this projection might have been 600.
Contact Rate: 81% (a reminder, this is [at-bats – strikeouts] / at-bats, which differs from FG’s K%)
Lawrie posted about an 83% contact rate last year after a 79% mark during his limited sample debut in 2011. He was at 79% and 82% at Double-A and Triple-A respectively. I’m projecting a slight regression due to a slippage in his second half contact rate.
GB%/LD%/FB%: 48%/19%/33%
Oddly, Lawrie went from a fly ball machine during his debut to a ground ball machine the following year. At Triple-A in 2011, his batted ball profile looked a lot closer to his Blue Jays distribution that season. So it’s a head-scratcher why he decided to kill worms instead last year. I’m projecting an increase in fly ball rate based on his history, but not a significant jump considering batted ball distributions are typically quite stable.
BABIP: .320
The two expected BABIP formulas I use spit out .327 and .330, but I am not yet ready to project a mark that high just yet, especially considering his career BABIP, albeit in a small sample size, is just .312. He has posted very strong BABIP marks in the minors though and sports the ground ball rate to maintain an elevated BABIP, since he has the speed to beat out some of those grounders. He does currently hold a league average pop-up rate, so that’s the one thing right now keeping me from a higher BABIP projection like what my xBABIP formulas spit out.
HR/FB Ratio: 12%
This was a tough one. In his 2011 debut, he went gangbusters, as his minor league power breakout continued in the Majors. He posted a 17% HR/FB rate which made most assume he was a lock for at least 20 home runs this year. But shockingly, that HR/FB rate dropped to just 9%. What’s scary is that before 2011, Lawrie never hit for a ton of power. Was 2011 just a weird fluke or did injuries hamper his power output?
There is another piece of interesting data that led me to hedge my bets and project closer to his 2012 rate than 2011. In 2011, his average home run plus fly ball distance was 297 feet, which is fantastic and fully supports the high HR/FB rate. But in 2012, that distance dropped to just 265 feet! That’s well below the league average. You know who else posted similar average distances? Denard Span, Brandon Crawford, Coco Crisp and Erick Aybar. Not exactly a group of mashers. So again, how much injuries played a role in the dramatic decline in distance, I don’t know. So I’m projecting a rebound, but nowhere near to the heights of his 2011 debut.
RBI and Runs: 80 and 85
Now granted, Lawrie didn’t exactly play a full season, but I’m not sure how he only managed 48 runs batted in. That’s pretty pathetic. He’s currently slated to hit sixth according to MLB Depth Charts, but does have a chance to move up to fifth if Colby Rasmus runs cold for a couple of weeks. Of course, Melky Cabrera could also very well stink and Lawrie could take over the two hole. So there are clear opportunities to move up in the lineup, which would possibly lead to better RBI and/or runs scored totals.
SBs: 18
Lawrie ran slightly less than 2011, but most of the disappointment came from the caught stealings. He went 7 for 8 in 2011, but just 13 for 21 last season. He also hit one less triple in nearly 350 more at-bats, another sign that his speed just wasn’t the same. The fewer attempts could be blamed on the oblique injury, as he made zero attempts in September after returning. But what about the caught stealings? Well, aside from 2011, which seemed to be a breakout in every single statistical category, Lawrie never was a very good base stealer. His 2011 looks more like the exception than the rule.
Below is my final projected batting line, along with Bill James and Fans projections for comparison.
| System | AB | AVG | HR | RBI | R | SB | CT% | BABIP | HR/FB | GB%/LD%/FB% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pod | 575 | 0.281 | 18 | 80 | 85 | 18 | 81% | 0.320 | 12% | 48%/19%/33% |
| Bill James | 602 | 0.289 | 18 | 71 | 96 | 21 | 83% | 0.326 | ? | ? |
| Fans (60) | 554 | 0.285 | 21 | 92 | 90 | 20 | 81% | 0.319 | ? | ? |
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Man, I didn’t realize Lawrie had such glaring issues. One thing I’d like to see added to your projection is just a brief overview perhaps of each player’s walk rates. Maybe doesn’t need to be analyzed, but it would be nice to have in context. Thanks for doing this!
I am 100% the Jays never gave him the green light in the second half of the season because of his fall into a camera bay against the Yankees that hurt his ribs. If I recall, he had one attempt immediately after coming back, then no more the rest of the season.
I’m guessing that sliding headfirst with busted ribs isn’t the best idea, so I think it’s reasonable to expect a rebound on attempts once his ribs have healed.
The more concerning thing is the extreme ground ball tendencies combined with the fly-ball distance, but he’s still only 22 and produced at a league-average rate last year, so regardless of his exact skillset, it’s pretty reasonable to expect him to become an above average player sooner rather than later.
This is one player for whom stats don’t tell the story just because he wears his approach on his sleeve and his hitting mechanics are so inconsistent.
Jays moved him to leadoff and he took it to heart, looking for slap hits whenever possible. The huge hitch in his swing makes it pretty hard to turn on a pitch if you’re going in thinking about a slap up the middle, and he often took the Devon White approach of pounding the ball into the turf for a huge bouncer and racing it to first base. When healthy and hitting 5th or 6th he’ll behave completely differently.
I’d have to agree with Tim. When he was moved to first in the order there seemed to be a marked difference in his hitting style. I braver man than I could delve into that and see if the statistics bare it out.
I got you homie.
Looks like his gb tendencies were there all year.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statsplits.aspx?playerid=5247&position=3B&season=2012
Now I’m rethinking keeping him for $14 in my keeper league. Should I still hang onto him?
I’d need league format specifics to make that call. I still think he has multiple avenues of upside from my projection, so it’s not like I don’t like him this season.
10 teams, 5×5, start one at each MLB position (no CIF, only 3 OF), $300 budget, 25 roster spots
Wow, weird positional requirements and a budget way above the standard. I’d have no clue what players are worth in that so I ran a custom value calculator with those settings. Umm, Lawrie only worth $4 based on the projections, which are a little light. However, looking at some of the other players and their values, it would seem he has around $30 upside.
These values are crazy! It shows Miguel Cabrera being worth $101! If I understand you correctly, only only start 8 hitters, 1 at each infield position and 3 OF? Lawrie being worth only $4 is because he’s close to the worst starting 3B.
We do start a UTIL spot, but we don’t do CIF, MIF, or the extra OF spots. The additional budget is because $260 standard budget is usually for 23 spots. Extra spots = extra $. We also have two SP, two RP, and three P spots.
Pretty sure these used to be ESPN standard settings, which is probably why we started using them. Is it really that strange? We haven’t even looked into changing them in quite some time.
who are some of the outliers in the pod projections? I would expect that playing time could be a variable where you could differ, given the manual nature of your system and the regression applied to most of the other variables.
I’m actually only up to the letter R (I got in alphabetical order) in the hitter projections, so not quite done yet. However, I could tell you that my hitter projections rarely surprise. They generally are pretty close to the other systems.
Pitchers, on the other hand, is where my projections sometimes differ dramatically. I think some of the systems still have a hard time regressing the luck components like BABIP all the way toward league average and assume a lot of it is skill and will be repeated.
Dwayne Murphy isn’t the hitting coach anymore. Expect every Blue Jay hitter to rebound.
Conversely, every outfield throw will now be skipping the cutoff man and heading straight for its intended target. Grip ‘er N’ Rip ‘er, Boys!
In ottoneu linear weights how do you feel about a $21 Bumgarner for $10 Lawrie? Lawrie would start at 3B on his new team, and be a backup 3B on his old one. Bumgarner would be the 3rd SP on either team.
Never played that format, but I can’t imagine any league setup where a $21 Bumgarner was a better value than a $10 Lawrie. Even at the same price I’d prob lean toward Lawrie. So I overwhelming like the Lawrie side. And just because he’d be backup on his old doesn’t mean that team should settle for someone who isn’t as good a value.
So if he’s healthy all season, would it be okay to think of .280/18/80/80/18 as his floor? If so, that’s not too bad a floor.
No, it’s def worse than that because of how he performed last year. We don’t know exactly how injuries affected him aside from his stolen base total. If he hits a ton of grounders again and posts another 9% HR/FB rate, he won’t exceed 15 homers. Since he has shown that as a possibility, that has to be his floor.
Lawrie is only 22 i feel in 5 years hes destined to be a 25 hr 100 rbi guy – but let me ask you this would any of you trade him in a dynasty/keeper league straight up for Jordan Zimmerman? – trade 2 scenario trade lawrie and miguel sano for Jordan Zimmerman and Zack Wheeler)?? Thoughts and or reactions please!
Absolutely not. I’m not as high on Zimmerman as most because to me he’s been extremely lucky in recent seasons. But even if he wasn’t, I don’t ever trade a hitter for a pitcher in a dynasty league, especially one who has 5-category contribution potential like Lawrie!
Same response for the second scenario.
Thoughts on a dynasty DMB league offer?
James Shields
for either
Brett Lawrie or Edwin Encarnacion
24 Team DMB league for context.