Aristides Aquino is Bananas
Seemingly every season, a hitter comes out of nowhere to enjoy an insane couple of month stretch. In 2015, it was Franklin Gutierrez, of all hitters. In 2016, it was Gary Sanchez introducing himself as the next top catcher. In 2017, it was Matt Olson and Rhys Hoskins as the newest pure power hitters. And last year of course, it was Luke Voit and Ryan O’Hearn (and one might be inclined to include Max Muncy who did it over a larger sample size). This year with power settling in at record levels, we have several candidates. The best of these candidates is the guy easily leading all batters with at least 120 plate appearances in ISO (.422) and slightly leading in wOBA (.441). His name is Aristides Aquino and unless you’re a fantasy player or Reds fan, you probably never heard of him.
Aquino has been such a surprise that he wasn’t even ranked as one of the Reds top 33 prospects heading into the season! He was included in the “Huge Power, Tough Defensive Profile” section of the rankings, which isn’t a profile that is currently in high demand, and at the very least, sounds like someone best suited as a designated hitter, which doesn’t exist in the National League.
Well hey, the prospect boys got the “huge power” thing right. Aquino owns a 37.5% HR/FB rate, which has driven that absolutely absurd .422 ISO. His 15 homers have nearly matched the number of singles he has hit! He’s also been taking full advantage of his ability to turn his flies into dingers, as 47.1% of his batted balls have been in the air, which is well above the 35.7% league average. So how real does it appear his current HR/FB rate is? Let’s first determine whether the underlying skills he has displayed validates the mark by diving into his xHR/FB rate components and calculating it.
| Brls/True FB | FB Pull% | FB Oppo% | Avg FB Distance | HR/FB | xHR/FB | HR/FB – xHR/FB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50.0% | 40.0% | 32.5% | 345 | 37.5% | 25.9% | 11.6% |
With a 25.9% xHR/FB rate, Aquino has certainly deserved an inflated HR/FB rate. With a huge fly ball barrel rate, a penchant for pulling his flies, and an ability to hit his flies a far distance, he owns legit power. Of course, 25.9% isn’t the 37.5% mark he has actually posted. There was little chance he was posting the skills to support such an outrageous mark.
The question now becomes whether there’s any chance he could sustain the skills of a mid-20% HR/FB rate guy. He’ll need to, because as an extreme fly ball hitter who hits a ton of pop-ups, he’s going to kill your average if those flies hop over the wall at a decreased rate in the future. Amazingly, before 2019, he had never posted a HR/FB rate above 17.8% at any minor league level. He even posted single digit HR/FB rates at four different minor league stops, all over reasonable sample sizes!
The power breakout actually began at Triple-A this season, as he nearly doubled his HR/FB rate from his Double-A mark posted last year. Doubling that mark brought his HR/FB rate up to 30.1%, which is high enough to get excited about. He was always a fly ball hitter, so a strong HR/FB rate was really the only thing missing if he was going to become another pure power guy.
From a skills perspective, he’s basically Khris Davis (when he was good), but his SwStk% is worrisome and suggests there’s more strikeout rate downside. I think Davis is a good comp of the best case scenario for next year and since you have to account for the risk that he fails to reach that upside during his second tour of the league, he clearly shouldn’t be paid what Davis has been during drafts and auctions in previous seasons. With only one real strength, there’s lots of risk here and his poor defense won’t allow him to remain in the lineup when he hits an extended slump.
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.
I could sure go for some bananas right now. Haven’t eaten in almost an hour.
Does his 13SB/600PA in the minors give him a bump? Or do you think that fades a bit in the big show?
Is there a way to hide this from Luke.Shigeo in my fantasy league?
Like you’re going to trade Aquino to anyone
Luke Voit and Ryan O’Hearn ??
2019 Aquino – 15 HR in 132 PA
2018 Voit – 15 HR in 161 PA
2018 O’Hearn – 12 HR in 170 PA (all of which came in his 1st 153 PA)
So yeah, Aquino is obviously ahead of their paces, but more or less the same idea.
He’s got a good arm and decent speed. I don’t think his defense is going to hold him back (though the popouts and swing and miss are a real big problem for sure)
Obviously minor league defensive numbers aren’t as advanced but 13 errors over 1,453.1 innings in RF the last 2 seasons in the minors is not a good number, though the 19 outfield assists is a great number and 314 putouts is solid which gives a RF/9 of 2.06 if I’ve done the math correctly
By way of comparison, last year’s RF leaders in those:
– 1,387.1 innings for Markakis
– 8 errors for Haniger
– 12 assists for Haniger
– 312 PO for Markakis
– 2.36 RF/9 for Avisail Garcia, but only 727 innings. So maybe 2.29 for Haniger since he put in 1,154.2 innings
LF numbers are pretty similar. So scale Aquino’s numbers back by 10% to make them comparable and you have an error prone guy with so-so range and a big arm. I wonder how many of his errors are fielding and how many are throwing? (HIs player page doesn’t split those out for minors) He’s athletic enough that the Reds even tried him out in CF for 5 games at AAA this year and he held his own with 14 putouts, 1 assist and 1 error in 42 innings.
I don’t know, seems playable to me, certainly if he continues to hit.
He is 86th percentile in speed ahead of guys like Dee Gordon. Decent arm is an understatement as he has thrown the hardest baseball of any position player in the entire MLB this year already, so I think people are really trying hard to pretend like their scouting reports weren’t wrong. I could certainly see a .240 power hitter with speed, and averageish D propped up by an absurd arm. Some guys basically come out of nowhere (Aaron Judge) relative to their prospect ranking, at least. Not to say he is anything like him, but he wouldn’t be the first bat first prospect to be massively underrated due to concerns about his defense, or size. Frankly, I think the bigger a guy is the harder of a time scouting has with him. For example, Judge, Bryant, Zimmer, etc. Zimmer was actually the fastest runner in the entire MLB, and they had a 50 grade on his speed since he didn’t “look fast”.
Aquino also has legit speed (86th percentile at Statcast) unlike the guys he’s compared to (Khris Davis, Franmil) which should allow him to pitch in with a few SB’s (3 in 34 games YTD), maintain a healthy BABIP and play good enough defense to stick in RF.
Agree on the speed, but speed by itself isn’t enough to say he will “maintain a healthy BABIP”. His high fly ball and IFFB% are going to make it extremely difficult for him to do so.
Good point! When does the IFFB% tend to stabilize? His 25% IFFB% is way higher than any qualified hitter (~18% max)
Batted ball distribution stabilizes quickly, but pop-up rate is missing from our stabilization point article. Since it’s a rare event, it prob takes longer. He popped up a lot in the minors too (half to divide minor league IFFB% by 2 to get MLB equivalent), so this doesn’t seem like a fluke.
https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/
Thanks, amazing resource
I’m being offered a choice of Aquino or Verdugo in a deep NL-only keeper league. Very different profiles, but I’m leaning towards Verdugo based on my fear that a ball alteration could decrease that HRFB rate and sap Aquino of enough power that it would make him more of a AAAA guy, thus creating Adam Duvall v2.0.
Thoughts?
Aquino’s raw power is the one thing you dont need to worry about, his max EV is up there with the best of them.
I like Verdugo’s overall skill set, which makes him much safer. But he’ll need to increase his power and hit more flies, since he doesn’t have enough speed to contribute a whole lot in steals. I think he has a much better chance of remaining an MLB starter than Aquino. It really depends on how long you can keep the guy for. For next year, I might go Aquino since the power plays immediately, career-wise or many years, def Verdugo.
“His name is Aristides Aquino and unless you’re a fantasy player or Reds fan, you probably never heard of him.”
That seems very weird. I’d bet that 99% of people reading this site have heard of him, unless you were referring to prior to his call-up.
Well yes, it wasn’t aimed at the readers of my article, even though it was worded that way! Clearly if you’re reading the article, you’re a fantasy player, and definitely know what he’s been doing.
Are we all just going to pretend his 21% SWSTR over the last 2 weeks isn’t a concern? How many times have we seen minor leaguers come from nowhere, hit a bunch of home runs, and then swing and miss into obscurity once pitchers find the holes in their swings? This happens year after year after year. Have we learned nothing?