Forensic Accounting 2: Pick Hits and Muscular Boys

“I had rather be right than President,” famously stated Henry Clay, even as he was (1) going out of his way to be wrong, in order (2) to become President, a ploy that (3) still didn’t work. We ourselves had rather be trapped in Tartarus with only George Steinbrenner and Bill O’Reilly for company than President, but we’d rather be right than pretty much anything else. And there’s an extra frisson of pleasure for us if we happen to be right when most other people aren’t. So it pains us not only when we are outright mistaken, but also when we are less than certifiably correct, and the consensus comes closer to the mark than we do.

We are nonetheless committed to giving you a precise assessment of the accuracy of our in-season opinions. The opinions in question are those with respect to what we call Pick Hits (if they’re players we suspect you don’t own but might want to) and Muscular Boys (if we suspect you might own them and won’t miss them, should you need to clear a roster spot). To keep ourselves contrarian, our Pick Hits aren’t owned in more than 25% of Yahoo leagues, and our Musts to Avoid aren’t owned in fewer than 50%.

Our opinions probably can’t be described as comically erroneous, though go ahead if you insist. But we are forced to admit that only one of them demonstrates the preternatural shrewdness to which we aspire. Otherwise, once we mentioned them, the guys we mentioned did pretty much what the common run of pre-season predictions envisioned they’d do, however well or badly they’d done theretofore.

We are undaunted, though, and at the very end of this installment, we roll out our latest Pick Hit, Tomas Telis, whose promotion by the Rangers we hoped for last week. Our wish was granted. First, though, the bookkeeping. The dates in parentheses are the dates on which we identified these guys; the stats are this season’s, starting with those dates.

Pick Hits

Jake Marisnick (April 22nd). 181 AB, 18 R, 15 RBI, 4 HR, 8 SB, 3 CS, .221 BA, .266 OBP. Buoyed by his past minor league success, his hard-contact improvement in the second half of 2014, and his superb spring, we thought Marisnick would be a mainstay in the Astros’ lineup and hit about .270, with perhaps 10 home runs and 20-plus stolen bases. Instead, he lost his center field job to Preston Tucker, went on the DL, and hasn’t hit well since his return. He’s doing about what everyone besides us thought he’d do—a little worse, actually—with about the same strikeout and hard-contact rates as in past seasons.

Brett Oberholtzer (May 12th). 38 1/3 IP, 2 W, 2 L, 2 QS, 44 H, 17 W, 19 ER, 27 K, 1.59 WHIP, 4.46 ERA. Only one of his eight starts was really bad, but only one of them was really good, and now he’s in the minors. We haven’t given up hope on him, and can imagine flagging him again if he returns to the bigs. The difference between what we thought he’d do and what he did is largely attributable to his ballooning walk rate. This sudden spike has happened to him a couple of times before, in the minors, and he’s always managed to correct whatever was wrong. His starts at Fresno since his demotion suggest that he’s doing so again.

Jose Urena (May 19th). 39 1/3 IP, 1 W, 4 L, 4 QS, 39 H, 17 W, 16 ER, 19 K, 1.42 WHIP, 3.66 ERA. We expected a bit better, because, like the rest of his rooting section, we keep thinking he’ll convert his 97 MPH fastball into strikeouts. As you see, it didn’t happen. But he didn’t pitch badly at all, and may attract our interest again, if he finds himself with a team that can get him more than 14 runs in 7 starts, which probably isn’t the 2015 Marlins.

Welington Castillo (May 26th). 1118 AB, 15 R, 15 RBI, 5 HR, .261 BA, .328 OBP. This one worked out even better than we’d hoped. When last we discussed Castillo, he’d just been traded from the Cubs, where he was the third-string catcher, to the Mariners, where he was the second-string catcher, but figured (we thought) eventually to work his way into some sort of job-sharing with Mike Zunino. Our expectations were modest, and our reasoning wasn’t abstruse: Zunino is overused, and Castillo’s a good catcher and at least as good a hitter as Zunino. We failed, however, to reckon with the fabled acumen of the Mariners’ brain trust. Castillo played one game for Seattle, then got shipped to the Diamondbacks in the Mark Trumbo trade. He won the Arizona job by virtue of having a pulse, and then started channeling Yasmany Grandal. Meanwhile, if you don’t own any of the three Seattle players and want a sadistic chuckle, check out the June/July stats for Trumbo, Zunino, and Castillo’s replacement Jesus Sucre.

Jefry Marte (July 15th). 15 AB, 2 R, 3 H, 1 HR, 4 RBI, .200 BA, .250 OBP. So far, so not too bad. Brad Ausmus seems to like the idea of having Marte in the lineup against lefthanders, in which role we think Marte will thrive. Hope you followed our exhortation and had him last week against J.A. Happ, whom he destroyed. Hope you didn’t have him this week again against J.A. Happ, whom he didn’t destroy.

Musts to Avoid

Mat Latos (April 22nd). 4 W, 3L, 7 QS, 72 2/3 IP, 62 H, 19 W, 30 ER, 64 K, 1.12 WHIP, 3.72 ERA. Latos’s first three starts of the season were so awful that we figured the guys who noted his declining pitch velocity were on to something. The pitch velocity is still down, and it’s not like his post-April stats have healed the sick, raised the dead, and made the little girls talk out of their heads, but he’s performed roughly to consensus preseason expectation, which means he’s had some value.

Anthony Gose (April 29th). 216 AB, 30 R, 10 RBI, 1 HR, 10 SB, 6 CS, .273 BA, .318 OBP. We weren’t exactly wrong about what this guy would do, but we were wrong about what its effect would be—so far. Gose had a very fast start this season—an artifact, we felt, of his otherworldy April BABIP of .500. Invoking his career OBP of .302 and 30% strikeout rate, we surmised that he’d hit a slump and lose his job. He had an epochally horrible June–.169/.213/.183, with no RBIs in 71 at bats—but kept his job, and now he’s hot again. We defiantly insist this can’t continue. Gose’s BABIP, even excluding his hot April, is .364, which figures to go down, and his batting average and OBP figure to go down with it. His SB rate is nothing special, and his fielding stats suggest that he’s not doing what got him the center field job in the first place. We expect another slump, and don’t think the underperforming Cabreraless Tigers will be able to carry his bat the way the underperforming Cabreraful Tigers could. And as before, Rajai Davis is ready to take Gose’s job whenever he’s done with it, or it’s done with him. Will that happen soon enough to make him worth jettisoning now? Who knows?

Ian Kennedy (June 4th). 2 W, 4 L, 5 QS, 45 1/3 IP, 42 H, 11 W, 15 ER, 37 K 1.17 WHIP, 2.98 ERA. Kennedy’s had a pretty soft schedule since June 4th, and some of the 9 unearned runs he’s given up since then are due to his decompensation once his fielders got things rolling. So perhaps he hasn’t pitched as well as his numbers suggest. But still: could we have been more wrong about him? We concluded that the Ian Kennedy of 2014 (a pitcher who could get left-handed hitters out) had vanished, and the Ian Kennedy of 2012-2103 (a pitcher who couldn’t) had returned. As of June 4th, lefties’ slash line against him was .297/.366/.637, which over the course of an entire season would make Lefties Against Kennedy the MLB MVP. Now, the slash line is .245/.311/.511—but for the occasional home run, he’s been unhittable against them. We were lucky: we had enough dead spots on our roster that we didn’t have to unload Kennedy when we went shopping, so we’ve still got him. If you listened to us, we apologize.

Melky Cabrera (June 10th). 131 AB, 12 R, 15 RBI, 3 HR, 1 SB, 0 CS, .313 BA, .366 OBP. It looks like we got this one wrong. We concluded that Cabrera could no longer hit (1) fastballs, and (2) left-handed pitching. He’s still having trouble with fastballs, but he’s started to hit left-handers again, just like he used to (Melky’s OBP against them since we slagged him is .450 in 40 plate appearances, which elevates him roughly to his norm for the season). Is the old Melky back? His power seems to be gone, probably for good, but he can apparently still hit.

So in light of the foregoing, why would you listen to us about Pick Hits or Muscular Boys? Beats us. But just for yuks, bear with us as we add Tomas Telis to the Pick Hit list. Telis is a 24-year-old switch-hitting catcher, just promoted by Texas to replace the injured Carlos Corporan on the roster. We first mentioned him during the pre-season. He’s being labeled a back-up catcher, just like Corporan. We see him the way we saw Welington Castillo: as a guy who could easily find his way into a job-sharing arrangement with supposed first-stringer Robinson Chirinos, and maybe even become the undisputed starter. Chirinos is 31 years old, and essentially a career minor-leaguer. He’s a right-handed hitter with a slash line of .214/.304/.429, which means he’s got some power but that’s about it. He’s nothing special at throwing runners out (30% caught-stealing rate), and ranks near the bottom of the league in pitch-framing. Telis doesn’t have much power, but he can hit: .291/.327/.404 at Round Rock this year, .345/.377/.489 last year. (In 2013 at Round Rock, Chirinos was .257/.356/.400.) The knock on Telis has always been his catching skills. But he’s been throwing out 48% of would-be base-stealers this season, as opposed to 18% last season, so he seems to have figured something out. Has he also learned to frame pitches? We don’t know; but how bad would he have to be at it to neutralize his other advantages over Chirinos? Can the Rangers possibly see themselves not only as contenders, but also as contenders whose contention depends on having Chirinos in the lineup? We propose not, and we’d make Chirinos an official Muscular Boy if he had enough Fantasy owners to qualify.

Next week, we’ll forbear posting on our customary Wednesday, preferring to wait until Saturday or Sunday, August 1st or 2nd, on the theory that we might have something to say in the wake of the July 31st trading deadline that everyone else isn’t saying. If you can’t stand the unaccustomed wait, please stop by @birchwoodbroth2 on Twitter.