Desmond Jennings Does It Again

And by does it, I mean that he doesn’t. Unless we’re talking about disappointing fantasy baseball players, in which case: repeat performance. The Tampa Bay Rays’ center fielder hit .244 with 10 home runs and 15 stolen bases in 542 plate appearances in a dull campaign. He finished the season on the disabled list, of course, so if we extrapolate to 600 PAs, which is about how many he accumulated in the season prior, then he’d have recorded 11 homers, 71 runs, 40 RBIs, and 17 thefts, all of which are about … worse than how many he accumulated in the season prior.

Why does Desmond Jennings continue to disappoint? It’s a valid question. It may not have a simple answer. But, just as well, it might.

Forget two things about Jennings: (1) He seems to have some latent power, and (2) he’s a pretty good base-stealer (88 in 112 career attempts, for a 78.6% success rate). Those things matter, especially when we’re talking about fantasy baseball, but I don’t think that there’s much to analyze about them.

Why doesn’t Jennings, who batted .294 in 2,246 minor league plate appearances, hit for a better batting average?

Per Brooks Baseball, he had this league average “eye” in 2014. He had this steady, patient, or even exceptionally patient approach in 2014. He had those things, basically, in 2011, 2012, and 2013, too.

Jennings, in his four years of significant playing time, has gradually hit ground balls more often and fly balls less often. He’s hit pop-ups less often – his infield fly rate again declined along with fly-ball rate in 2014, leading to a pop-up rate of about 3%, which is a tad below league average, a first for him. He has good speed. (At least I think that he does; his measly two triples this past season helped to depress his speed score to just above league average.)

There’s no certain pitch type that confounds him a lot more so than it does any other right-handed batter. Pitch values pretty much back that up. Shocker: He hasn’t been so good against sliders and changeups. But it’s not like he’s hit only .100 against either of those pitches, enough to where that’s all he sees. The mix of offerings he sees still includes more than 60% fastballs.

I might suggest that Jennings doesn’t hit the ball very hard. But the average speed of his homers off the bat is right around league average or just above it. The average distance of his homers and fly balls isn’t top-notch, but he’s not lagging, down there with those who wield pea shooters.

Jennings doesn’t bunt for hits often. OK, a few more bunts might help. But not a ton.

Jennings has a career average on balls in play of .296 and hasn’t posted one that deviates by more than seven points. Why haven’t the AVG, BABIP, and xBABIP gone up, given all the things he does at league average or, in many cases, better? Mike Podhorzer broached the topic after the 2013 season, in the post cited at the beginning, and suggested that the type of hitter Jennings is might coax us to think that those rates would be a little greater, but that Jennings’ marks seem pretty much deserved. The writer suggested that more line drives and fewer pop-ups would probably help. But the player hit pop-ups less often this year, and that didn’t happen. I think that it’s a bit more complex for Jennings, but it could be a bit simpler for us.

This past year, we could guess that he drove the ball to the opposite field more often, based on his .188 ISO that way. But batted-ball data, loaded with grounders, doesn’t really support that notion. (And it didn’t help his bottom line.) We could say similar things about his results to center last season. But, basically, the data says that Jennings is dangerous mostly when he pulls the ball, and otherwise, he’s not. And he’s not exactly the most dangerous pull hitter in the league.

Jennings’ heatmaps or zone profile clearly indicate that he’s fairly uncomfortable with anything besides middle-away and/or down. That’s not terribly unusual, I don’t think. But he’s also not very good at driving the ball the other way or taking it back up the middle, which are ways to achieve good results against the types of pitch locations he prefers. When batters attempt to pull stuff that’s away, they often roll over and beat it into the ground, for instance.

Jennings’ spray charts indicate, in particular, that he’s hit ground balls to the left or to the right, not up the middle. (You can check all these year by year, too, but the patterns are pretty similar.) He appears to be a RHB against whom defenses can shift, albeit a bit untraditionally. I don’t have the data to confirm that’s what defenses have done against him, and the shifts would probably appear more like subtle changes in positioning rather than actual shifts. Opponents surely have the data that indicates he doesn’t hit balls on the ground up the middle very often, however.

Forget the primary indicators (K%, Contact%, etc.). Those are for when we want to know the easy answer to whether regression is probably coming. He has the ability to outdo his xBABIP, but that and improvement as a hitter, they haven’t come.

It appears to me that Jennings is just relatively easy to attack. There are certain, obvious places in and around the strike zone for pitchers to target. There are certain, obvious places he usually hits the ball. There are certain, obvious things he just doesn’t do. He has great physical ability, but his approach may limit the ways he deploys that physical ability.

Jennings continues to provide pitchers with ready-made ways to pitch to him, and he’s failed to make significant enough adjustments in order to counteract them. If that’s true, then, until he does make alterations, he likely won’t progress as a hitter. He may not deliver another great fantasy season unless he puts on an abnormal power display (like he did in his 2011 debut) or unexpectedly hits for a better average on balls in play. The OBP (and thus chances to run) will lag until that happens. His athleticism is what helps him to be fantasy-relevant. At 28, he’s running out of years for that characteristic to be such a difference-maker.

Those who continue to expect more from Jennings may also continue to be disappointed. He was, on average, the 30^th outfielder drafted and a top-100 pick around the Internet this past winter, according to Fantasy Pros. As Podhorzer mentioned, Jennings finished ranked in the 40s in previous seasons; the outfielder was surely a higher pick then, too.

There may be a buying opportunity in 2015 because of the time he missed with a left knee injury. It’d be because of that only, for this simple thought exercise. It’s not the first time he’s had a left knee injury (see 2012), and this knee contusion thing mysteriously kept him out for much longer than he and the team anticipated, and he’s no stranger to other nagging ailments. Forget all that. Let’s just assume that he’s healthy going into next season. And, say that the discount is several rounds, and he plays a full season, and he delivers the same kind of production. Then, fantasy owners bought him at value, basically. Where’s the profitability?

Jennings is a great talent. He’s not a good hitter. He needs to be a better one if he’s going to give fantasy owners more power and speed and stuff. Unless he does something to become one – and only some news/noise would alert us of that kind of development in advance – I don’t see that happening.