Billy Hamilton’s Spiritual Contract, Complete with Upside

Baseball, in all its glorious history, bears as its fruit some remarkable encounters between legends of the game. Allow me to recount a charming, wholly undocumented, 100%-real encounter between some of baseball’s greats:

…And then Billy Hamilton, to whom his colleagues and comrades affectionately referred as “Billy Hams,” appealed to the Baseball Gods:

“Please, O Baseball Gods, allow me to play once more. For my legs are restless and my competitive spirit restlesser.”

The Baseball Gods — who, peculiarly, are a committee of the spirits of baseball greats appointed by election rather than divine right — appealed in return:

“But you’re old, Billy Hams. Like, really old.”

Billy responded with gusto: “My body may be old, but my spirit remains young.”

“So be it, Billy Hams, but you must make a concession in return.”

“It matters not to me,” replied Hams, who, in 1891, stole 111 bases. “Let me hit for nary any power; turn my strikeouts into walks, and my walks into strikeouts; endow me with half as many runs and RBIs; convert my offensive value into defensive prowess; just please, please, let me run wild. Let me still run free, like I once did.”

“Very well,” the gods conceded. “Your reincarnation papers should be authorized and processed by mid-2013. In the meantime, pack your bags.”

In due time, Billy Hams saw the field once more, albeit in an entirely different era of baseball. And ran wild he did: the Baseball Gods listened and allowed Billy to identically replicate his baserunning value exactly 124 years later. Who knew the Baseball Gods are so sabermetrically inclined.

Best Baserunning Seasons, 1871 – Present

Rank	Season	Name	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	BB%	K%	ISO	AVG	BsR	Off	Def	WAR
14	1891	Billy Hamilton	636	2	141	60	111	16.0%	4.4%	.082	.340	13.4	61.2	-2.2	7.2
15	2015	Billy Hamilton	454	4	56	28	57	6.2%	16.5%	.063	.226	13.4	-12.2	16.2	1.9

Source: this FanGraphs leaderboard

With that totally real, not at all made up account of Billy Hamilton’s manifestation on Earth, we arrive at the 2015 offseason, following a season in which Hamilton produced almost 2 WAR without qualifying for the batting title and also hitting almost 50% worse than league average.

And that’s the value Hamilton is obligated to provide, per his spiritual contract. As fantasy owners, it leaves us in a bit of a bind: the stolen bases are so pretty, but the one-category production requires a great deal of tolerance.

I’m no judicial expert, but upon deeper inspection of the fine print of Hamilton’s spiritual contract, there appears to be more room for growth than previously indicated in press releases.

For instance, his walk rate (BB%) grew from 2014 to 2015, albeit minimally. His strikeout rate (K%) receded by a larger, but still somewhat inconsequential, margin. He incurred fewer swinging strikes, offered at fewer pitches outside the zone on a rate basis, and generally made more contact.

But perhaps the most significant, and arguably most important, improvement manifested in his baserunning. He stole one more base in 157 fewer plate appearances. More remarkably, he stole one more base in 14 fewer attempts.

It’s this improvement that warrants your attention. He was not only more efficient — his success rate catapulting from 71% to 88% — but he also simply attempted more steals on a rare basis, up from 77.5 per 600 PAs in 2014 to 85.9 in 2015.

One-category production is difficult to stomach when the other four are so profoundly horrible. But Hamilton’s batting average on balls in play (BABIP), despite his relative ineptitude at the plate, deserved to be about 50 points higher, per my xBABIP equation from long ago. That’s the difference between his actual .226 batting average and a possible, certifiably less-painful .262. Sometimes, xBABIP whiffs, but rarely does it whiff by this much without the stench of statistical foul play permeating the room.

Hamilton, therefore, actually offers a non-trivial amount of upside for 2016. If he evades the injury bug, he could steal something like 70 bases. If he evades bad luck in BABIP, he could actually achieve an on-base percentage (OBP) above .300 and contribute in other counting categories. If he continues to make marginal improvements at the plate, he could allow that batting average creep past league-average.

All of this, and Hamilton will probably come at a discount in 2016. Given his struggles at the plate and the Reds’ poor production, fantasy owners have finally seen — well, they already saw it once, but they’ve finally accepted — that he’s a one-trick pony. But this pessimism could allow buyers to invest in what could be more production and less risk (barring injury, of course) at a lower cost. Hamilton finished last year 88th overall, and FantasyPros has already pegged him as their 81st pick overall for 2016. That leaves almost zero downside if you expect him to improve over last year. I think you’d be crazy not to.