An Early Jake Lamb Update

I’m nothing if not consistent. As we close in on the end of the season’s first month, I figured it’d be pertinent to review the early performance of one of the more intriguing players the third base position has to offer in Jake Lamb. That intrigue stems from a tremendously strong start last year, followed by a notably terrible decline that was largely attributed to injuries (as well as perhaps a lack of trust vs. left-handed pitching from his former manager).

The Arizona Diamondbacks are off to a strong start, and while their pitching is still relatively suspect, it’s hard not to love what they bring to the mix on offense. Serving as an offensive catalyst for the Snakes is their third sacker, in Jake Lamb. Lamb has followed up what was a strong start to the 2016 campaign with a rebound from last year’s second half, looking to showcase himself as a valuable entity not only to the Diamondbacks, but also as a fantasy entity at one of the corner spots.

And in a general sense, it’s hard not to love what Lamb’s bringing to the mix thus far. He has a slash that features a .299 average and .368 on-base percentage, as well as an OPS of .900. Now, those former two figures certainly have the potential to come down given that he’s averaging .396 on balls that he puts into play, but with how hard Lamb hits the ball, how much should we really expect it to come down? Regardless of the OBP stuff, which will take some time to stabilize, it’s hard to argue against Lamb as a legitimate power presence at the plate among his third base counterparts, given last year’s results and the first month of 2017.

The isolated power numbers speak for themselves, really:

He’s managed to remain above league average on the power side, with his .234 ISO currently ranking eighth among a group of 27 qualifying third basemen. His OPS, a category in which he excelled last year, comes in ninth with that .900 figure among that same group.

He’s also continuing to hit the ball hard just as he did last year. After finishing with a Hard% of about 39% last year, including a touch over 41% in the season’s first half, Lamb comes in at 40.4% heading into Wednesday’s action. That percentage also ranks ninth, but what’s also encouraging is the obscene lack of soft contact that Lamb is also producing. At 5.8%, Lamb has the fourth lowest Soft% of that group. These two percentages, in context with league averages, are illustrated below:

There are a couple of drawbacks here, but nothing so significant as to deter anyone from hopping onto the…Lamb-wagon. His strikeout rate is nearly 30%. However, we can largely chalk that up to lack of sample size, given that his swing percentage has barely fluctuated, his swinging strike rate is down (11.9% last year to 10.5% this year), and his contact rate is up about four percent overall (76%). The inevitable question with Jake Lamb, though, immediately shifts focus to his success against left-handed pitching.

Chip Hale notably benched Lamb at every opportunity against southpaws last year, something that hasn’t been as prevalent with Torey Lovullo at the helm. The early results haven’t been terrific, though, with a park-adjusted offense of just 59 and an on-base percentage of .296 against lefties. However, the extremely encouraging thing there is that he’s hitting the ball hard against them 46.7% of the time. And his approach has remained the same, with his walk rate against left-handed pitching just a bit higher than that of his rate against righties. We’re obviously working with a sample size of less than 25 plate appearances as well, so it’ll be interesting to see which direction his performance against lefties trends as the season wears on and that sample grows.

(For comparison’s sake, Lamb is mashing righties, with a .302 ISO, 167 wRC+, and an OBP of .400.)

So to sum up: Jake Lamb’s a monster against righties, is hitting the ball hard (but to no avail) against lefties, and is developing into one of the larger power threats at the third base position. The market in which he plays likely doesn’t get him the attention that he deserves, in a national sense or a fantasy sense. But if he continues to generate power like he did in the first half of 2016 and the first month of 2017, now that he’s healthy again, I can retire from my job as “guy who yells on Twitter about how wonderful Jake Lamb is.”

Just kidding. I’m never giving up that post.