Catching Up With Starling Marte and Joey Votto

Half of Starling Marte’s fly balls have gone for home runs. That’s 10 fly balls, five of which have left the park. A HR/FB sitting at a round 50 percent, more than triple his career rate. As if an extra nugget of impressiveness was needed, four of Marte’s home runs have come at PNC Park, which was the worst park for right-handed power last season. Of course, when you’re averaging 424.4 feet per homer, park factors aren’t as important.

Yes, the necessary and annoying caveat: It’s early! After all, three other players have a HR/FB of 40 percent or better. Most numbers this early don’t mean much. But this one could mean something for Marte. Five homers matches his total through the first four months last season.

A power spike isn’t totally shocking. Marte’s home run and flyball average distance was 13th in baseball last year. While he hit only 13 home runs in 2014, his average homer distance was greater than Nelson Cruz, Jose Abreu and Anthony Rizzo, among others. It wasn’t a one-year thing: In 2013 his 12 home runs flew an average of 405.7 feet.

Amidst the fun and games of Marte’s too-early-to-say-but-possibly-blossoming power is the nagging feeling in some other ways he’s been kind of a letdown. Marte’s BB/K had steadily improved through his first three seasons before falling off a cliff in this young season. Pitchers are attacking his weak spot, low and away, more than ever and he’s countered by chasing those pitches more than ever. Not great. The result is an ugly 15.9 SwStr%, well above anything he’s produced in his career.

There’s always the possibility this doesn’t mean a whole lot. It’s been 15 games. Marte did deal with severe strikeout issues in April last season and his plate discipline got much better in the second half. Still, it is somewhat alarming to see him buck his improvement over the past few seasons so drastically.

Because he has plenty of power, continued extra aggression at the plate would continue to result in a nice home-run boost from Marte. It would also likely deal a death blow to his days of stealing more than 25 bases. It’s an extreme example, but Marte has only six non-HR hits this season, severely limiting his opportunities to steal.

Steamer and ZiPS both projected 14 home runs for Marte in the preseason. That’s now up to 20 for ZiPS and 18 for Steamer. Both systems are also projecting a return to something near his career strikeout rate by the end of the season, as well as 29 and 27 steals. Assuming he gets his plate discipline back on track, a Steamer line of 20 home runs, 88 runs, 70 RBIs, 29 steals, and a .266 average looks like the best of both worlds, and would be quite a boost in value from where he was drafted.

Meanwhile, about Joey Votto…

His current ISO is greater than his ISO from the past two seasons combined. And it’s not even very close. He’s already tied last season’s home run total through 65 plate appearances. You have to go back to May of 2013 to find the last time he hit six home runs in a month. He’s also flashing improved plate discipline while swinging at a career-low rate of pitches outside the zone, which would be a nice little bonus for his performance if he can keep it up.

There’s no glaring outside factor that has skewed results. Seventy-five percent of his plate appearances have come against righties. That’s a little high, not extraordinary. He’s played nine games in parks that enhance left-handed power (one of them being his home park) and six in parks that suppress it.

Last season, Votto injured his quad in May. He came back from the DL and hobbled through some games before returning to the DL in July. It was a messy season, but we can assume the only month when he played healthy was April. Through the end of April he had four home runs, a .183 ISO and a 157 wRC+, meaning he wasn’t bad before he got hurt. If we oversimplify and extrapolate that month, we get roughly his 2013, which was good for 66th overall on Zach Sanders end of season rankings, fourth among first basemen.

I won’t go into a full Votto history, other than to point out he’s either hit at least 24 home runs (five times) or missed more than 50 games (twice) every season since 2008. Steamer projects a total of 22 home runs, while ZiPS calls for 24. Votto isn’t the typical fantasy first baseman and he won’t hit 35 home runs again, but and he was underrated coming into 2015. It’s fairly likely he can repeat his 2013 season, putting him well within the top 10 at first base.