2015 was a wonderful year for rookies. In fact, it was the best offensive seasons in aggregate for the freshman class over the last five years:
And this year’s group looks like it may have introduced us to several future superstars. Amazingly, three of them play third base.
Matt Carpenter has always been a strange roto player. Historically, he’s one of those guys who is better in real life than fantasy. He often contributed over 700 plate appearances with a chance to hit for a .300 average. He’s an OBP league stud. We knew he’d score plenty of runs, but his RBI opportunities would be truncated by batting leadoff. Alas, the strong two category production would come with fewer than 10 home runs and about five stolen bases.
Well, my pain may be your gain. For a future Hardball Times article I am working on, I needed to create some historic pitcher groundball rate (GB%) projections. I decided to go ahead and run the values for 2016 and make them publicly available.
Here is the basic background behind creating the projections.
• I used a three-year weighting of .7 for 2015, .2 for 2014 and .1 for 2013.
• The data was regressed some to a league average rate.
• I didn’t use any aging factors.
• The final r-squared from the projection to actual results is around .67.
With that small amount of background information, here are the projections.
This is what a breakout looks like:
The third overall pick in the 2010 Amateur Draft, Manny Machado made his MLB debut at the tender age of 20 and took baby steps to gradually increase his offensive performance heading into 2015. The power remained ho-hum, he was a poor base stealer, and he was a bit too much of a free swinger, routinely posting below average walk rates. Furthermore, he dealt with major knee issues that required surgery in both 2013 and 2014. But then 2015 happened and he loudly announced his good health and validated why he was a former top prospect.
Isn’t it nice when things work out? At the height of draft season, Nolan Arenado was elevated into the top 50 despite career-highs of 18 HR, 61 RBI, and 133 games played (and not all in the same season). It was a calculated gamble on someone who hadn’t exactly done it for a full season yet. He showed a ton of promise as a high-contact power hitter (13% K, .173 ISO coming into ’15) who also had the security blanket of Coors Field.
Of course, we now know that it really couldn’t have gone better and being drafted 50th was actually a bargain by season’s end as he finished as the 5th-best player overall. Arenado blasted an NL-best 42 HR and drove in an MLB-best 130 runs in 665 PA as he missed just five games all year. His strikeout rate was a career-high 17%, but that’s still better than most power hitters. Of the nine hitters who popped 40+ HR, he was third to only Albert Pujols (11%) and Jose Bautista (16%).
And yet… (yep, I actually have something to complain about within his excellent season)
Take away the guys with shortstop eligibility, or second base eligibility. Take away the hurt third basemen that should have been stars if they were on the field more often. Take away the backups that accumulated enough time to be relevant. Take away the stars that played like stars. Take away the rookies that just came up and didn’t get full seasons.
Who’s left? By definition, they’re not stars. But they are starting veteran third basemen that stayed healthy and put enough numbers to be relevant. Could you define the under-rated player any better? Who else is less exciting to draft than that guy that’s going to hit for a middling average, with middling power, a few steals, possibly at the bottom of the order?
And, yet, Trevor Plouffe and Brett Lawrie were both above replacement level third basemen this year. Considering that many of the players above them had other eligibilities, they may have been good enough to start at third in many leagues.
2015 Visualized: Second Base
2015 Visualized: First Base
2015 Visualized: Catcher
* * *
For the next few weeks, the RotoGraphs staff will devote an entire week to each defensive position, including spotlights on particular players as well as trends throughout the 2015 season. This week, we’re highlighting third basemen.
I don’t claim to be a Tableau (or data visualization) whiz by any means, but I thought it would be cool to visually represent the third base landscape in 2015 — with some analysis sprinkled in.
Steamer and ZiPS represent premier player projection systems; FanGraphs’ Depth Charts combines the two, and the writing staff allocate playing time accordingly. The playing time part is less important relative to the combined projections, as aggregated projections tend to perform better than standalones.
I compared projected wOBA (weighted on-base average) from the preseason to actual wOBA (1) by team and (2) by player within team. Unlike WAR, wOBA is a rate metric, so it does not need to be scaled according to playing time.
I wrote a lot about Mike Moustakas heading into the 2015 season. First, I asked whether there was any hope for the man affectionately known as Moose Tacos. Although if you stared closely enough at his statistical trends, you could see a tiny seed blooming painfully slowly, it seemed obvious that there were too many flaws to make him worth a roster spot outside of AL-Only leagues. I then took another, perhaps closer look, three months later and proclaimed that the Moustakas breakout was upon us.
Episode 288
The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!
In this episode, Paul Sporer, Eno Sarris, and Jason Collette are together in Phoenix for Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Forums and Arizona Fall League action! The trio discusses some of the goings-on from the conference including whether or not Justin Verlander and Kyle Hendricks are legit from their ’15 performance. They also discuss some of the players they’ve seen and talked to at AFL including Clint Frazier, Austin Meadows, and Alex Blandino.
Oh, and Paul totally embarrassed himself in his first draft of 2016… and it wasn’t with his picks for once. By the way, here are the first 23 rounds of that NFBC 50 round draft & hold. It’s Kentucky Derby Style slot picking so once your name is drawn from the hat, you can pick your spot. I picked 15 once 1-2-3 were gone (a couple others were, too, I was 6th or 7th out of the hat). I’ll be writing more about this draft in the coming week or so, but here are the pics if you wanna see where someone was (or wasn’t) drafted:
I’m team 15 (click to see clearer)
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It’s never too early to prepare for next season, just as you can never have too many articles about the mechanics of projection systems. Well, ok, the second part of that statement is a lie, but it has been awhile since we’ve talked about how we use projection systems.