Cameron Maybin is Way Too Underowned

The Cameron Maybin Propaganda Machine (my and Sammy Reid‘s Twitter accounts) is alive and well, spurning hype for the ESPN Player Rater’s 17th-best outfielder. It feels like he hasn’t gotten much fanfare — he’s still only 62% owned in ESPN leagues with scarcely any mentions this year from FanGraphs and RotoGraphs writers. I wrote about Maybin once but more than two years ago.

A lot of Maybin’s merits — well, once his single merit: his speed — remains intact. A preseason scouting report might’ve said if Maybin could stay healthy and earn the favor of his employing team, he could rack up 30 stolen bases while flirting with double-digit power. Prior to the Juiced Ball Era™, his was the kind of power-speed combo over which fantasy owners would typically drool on draft day yet somehow come to underappreciate on Sept. 30. It would have been fairly easy dismiss Maybin’s 2016 because of an inflated batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and what appeared likely to be a timeshare with Ben Revere or… Michael Bourn? or… it’s much less painful not thinking about his left field partners in Los Angeles of Anaheim.

Dismiss no longer, friends, the former consensus top prospect. Maybin’s born-again speed and his position atop the Angels’ batting order are too valuable to ignore. His full-season (650-plate appearance) pace: 14 home runs, 113 runs, 45 runs batted in, 55 stolen bases, a .257/.353/.400 triple-slash line. That’s immensely valuable, as the Player Rater suggests. Prorating can be a reckless exercise, but little in his peripherals suggests we should expect much, if any, second-half drop-off.

It’s difficult to predict stolen bases — Maybin’s pace has recently slowed, but attempts ebb and flow as the season wears on. I wouldn’t blame you for taking the under on his prorated pace. But what’s the under? Fifty steals? Forty? Thirty-five, even? Those are all plenty valuable from the preseason’s 70th-ranked outfielder. As for his power, his hard-hit and fly ball rates (Hard% and FB%) are the best we’ve seen from him since his last half-season with the Padres in 2014. As with speed, power fluctuates during the season. Maybe we’ve been fortunate to benefit from unusually solid contact that will wane, and maybe we will see his rate of home runs per fly ball (HR/FB) decline a few ticks during the dog days of summer. He has cracked double-digit home runs only once, so, again, taking the under isn’t a ridiculous concession. However, the balls [hand-clapping emoji] are [hand-clapping emoji] juiced, so you could make just as much of an argument to throw anything you’ve ever known about home runs out the window. Maybe a dozen home runs is actually well within reach.

Moreover, Maybin’s production not just this year but spanning the last calendar year — nine home runs, 86 runs, 41 RBI, 30 stolen bases, a .265/.353/.402 triple-slash — suggests he has produced consistently prior to the past three months. There are discrepancies in the power and speed, yes, but (1) the Angels run way more often than his former team, the Tigers, and (2) juiced balls plus better contact equals [that one shrug emoji]. While his table-setting role correlates with only a slight uptick in attempts by batting order position, it’s not like batting first will hurt his attempt rate, either.

On top of all of this (it’s not an Alex Chamberlain post unless the lede is buried outrageously deep), Maybin has made a legitimate improvement to his offensive game, chasing one-fourth less often and, for the first time, bringing his chase rate (O-Swing%) under 20%, let alone 25%. Selectivity goes both ways — he’s swinging less at in-zone pitches, too — but Maybin has seen his walk rate (BB%) rise 3.5 percentage points thanks to all the bad pitches he’s now watching instead of chasing. His contact rate has dipped slightly — something one might attribute to his power (“power,” with air quotes) surge — but the fewer swings has kept his swinging strike and strikeout rates (SwStr% and K%) stable. Overall, he has experienced significant on-base gains. The gains look like deficits relative to 2016, but a normalized BABIP reflects a smarter hitter who is less reliant on batted ball luck.

What might be craziest about all of this, though — or maybe not, I don’t know, it’s just an aside, but it’s fascinating to me — is that Maybin has only attempted one bunt this season. One! From someone who, on a rate basis, should have been expected to lay down at least five of them by now. Maybin is a .371 hitter on bunts, likely thanks to his speed, which equates to two additional hits. That’s eight points of batting average that push him ever closer to his career .321 BABIP and farther up the Player Rater.

It’s important to revisit the caveats to Maybin’s value — most notably, his path to playing time and his health. To attest to the latter: he already hit the DL! We’re all good in that regard. Right? That’s how that works. Nothing to worry about here. (In all seriousness, I’m reluctant to overstate his propensity for injury.) As for anticipating a timeshare, he may have a legitimate threat to playing time in the reborn Eric Young Jr. Yet it’s hard to imagine Young sustaining his own pace — in power, in batting average — through the end of Mike Trout’s DL stint. Maybe the power (“power,” again, with air quotes) is legit; Young’s peripherals certainly paint the picture of someone suddenly selling out for it, with a huge dip in zone contact (Z-Contact%) and a resulting spike in strikeouts. Question marks abound, because the power may not be real, and the BABIP, despite has speed, certainly has never been due to his generally poor contact quality.

Thus, assuming Maybin crowds out Young for playing time in left field upon Trout’s return, and assuming he got his obligatory DL stint out of the way, it’s hard not to dream on a nice 12-homer, 40 (45?)-steal, .250/.345/.380 season from Maybin. We only get about one of those (or better) every year, so it’s no small feat. And there are more reasons to buy Maybin rather than doubt him. If you’re in an American League-only format, I can understand hedging your bets by selling him before he risks re-injury. Yet at the same time I think someone fearful of another injury might be catastrophizing a bit.

I anticipate that Maybin sustains much of the status quo, which also means I anticipate him hanging with the top-25 outfielders for the rest of the season. I’m fine with dying on Maybin’s hill; his newfound selectivity and his move to the best coast underscore fundamental and philosophical improvements to his game. They have manifested in what’s shaping up to be a career year for a guy accustomed to disappointing.