Gerardo Parra: Career Year or Productive Mirage?

(A: Both.)

Disclaimer: I wrote this post about Gerardo Parra yesterday afternoon because that’s how things work over here on the West Coast. Between yesterday and this exact moment, Eno Sarris and Paul Sporer posted their most recent episode of the Sleeper and the Bust during which, at around the 45-minute mark, they coincidentally discuss Parra. (Er, Parra is the coincidence, not the podcast.)

Basically, Sarris and Sporer say pretty much everything I write here but in fewer words. So if you want to hear a couple of smart dudes discuss Parra’s rest-of-season prospects, tune in. If for some reason you’d rather engage in in what will be a more verbose, occasionally visual, absolutely not visceral experience, proceed:

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For this post, I will let my deluded ramblings — what my National League outfield analysis eventually and ostensibly becomes pretty much every time nowadays — devolve into stream of consciousness. Because this is a sentence I actually wrote but deleted: “I want to talk about Gerardo Parra.” An alternative I considered: “Let’s talk about Gerardo Parra.”

Point is, I’ve started thinking too hard about simple things and my brain is grinding to a halt. Whatever — let’s just talk about Parra. Let’s have an open dialogue about the guy who, for all intents and purposes, is having a career year this season from an offensive perspective.

Parra’s 129 wRC+ (weighted runs created) easily vanquishes his previous high (106) set back in 2011. It marks only the second time his bat has rated better than average, so you’d be lying if you told me his production thus far in 2015 hasn’t surprised you. To attest: a man who, for six years, averaged eight home runs per 600 plate appearances has hit nine in almost half the time.

This is not entirely blasphemous. Parra has optimized his batted ball profile this season, hitting fewer ground balls and more hard hits than ever before. His .174 xISO (expected isolated power) clocks in a few ticks below his current level but would still represent his best slugging year by a substantial margin. Given he’s still running a fair amount, there’s no reason to think he won’t crack double-digit homers and steals. His overall production ceiling is limited because he shares time in the left field with Khris Davis, but he’s still ready to help a fantasy team or two.

Speaking of the timeshare, perhaps a minor reason for Parra’s success this year relates directly to it: he’s finally hitting left-handed pitchers. In regard to plate discipline, Parra’s splits by handedness had never differed much, nor do they now:

	vs RHP		vs LHP
Year	K%	BB%	K%	BB%
Career	16.6%	6.5%	19.0%	6.7%
2015	16.6%	5.0%	17.3%	5.8%

A few walks here, a few strikeouts there — the minor ebbs and flows of a fairly consistent approach. The power, however:

Year	ISO vs RHP	ISO vs LHP
Career	.143	.070
2015	.187	.191

The 2015 incarnation of Parra hits all types of pitching better, exhibiting massive gains versus same-side pitchers. The results are profound, but I hesitate to make grandiose claims or inferences. For one, sample size caveats abound: Parra has faced lefties only 52 times this year. For two, well… I’ll let this heat map do most of the talking:

I actually don’t know if that’s the heat map I wanted to show you. But I had to because it’s hilarious. There are, like, a million 100%s, and that line of perfect contact along the top is incredible. Given the sample constitutes 194 pitches, it’s probably the equivalent of one or two pitches in each square. Anyway, here’s what I really wanted to show you:

Aside from what looks like an occasional home run in one of these dark red spots — in Parra’s defense, he always liked, and still likes, the high cheese — the extra-base hits came infrequently through 2014. Fast-forward to 2015 and a vacuous ocean of numberless blue engulfs a blotch of dark red with highly-decimaled numbers. Parra’s sweet spot, so to speak, now lives very distinctly and consistently up in zone and a little bit in. One hundred and ninety-four pitches still classifies as a small sample, but there’s really no noise here — or it seems that way, at least.

Parra’s sweet spot is interesting, yes, but the fact he even found one to begin with is even more so. Regard, his swing rate (Swing%) heat map versus lefties this year:

It’s a mess. Small samples blah blah blah, but there’s no discernible game plan here. There should be a game plan — you think there would be one, given the ISO heat maps — but there’s not. And that’s why I’m reluctant to declare Parra has transcended the need for a timeshare (regardless of the abilities of his counterpart) and surely why Manager Craig Counsell has yet to permit it. Parra’s four extra-base hits (of 14 total hits) against lefties this year very truthfully happened and we can never take that away from him. But that make the accomplishment any less of an anomaly, and it looks to me like Parra didn’t as much earn the XBHs as much as he simply happened into them. I acknowledge that just because he doesn’t swing often at a certain pitch location doesn’t mean he’s incapable of hitting that pitch location with authority. However, you’d expect that a hitter swings most at pitches he thinks he can hit best. This is my concern, dude.

His true quality of batsmanship, therefore, comes back to the question of his batting average on balls in play (BABIP). My expected BABIP (xBABIP) equation pegs Parra for a .341 xBABIP, largely validating his current .351 BABIP that, if the season ended now, would represent a career-best rate. Parra has always been a high-BABIP guy — .325 career, .305 at his worst — but not necessarily with consistency. In other words, another .300-plus batting average next year asks a lot.

Still, Parra, 28, is theoretically entering his prime; his batted ball profile could actually improve — or, if anything, remain stable and not regress — next year, and he could prove me (edit: and Sarris and Sporer) wrong. But the lifted truck behind us has its high beams blasting into the rear-view mirror and they’re hard to ignore and they’re really bright but if you squint hard enough the bumper sticker says “Six Years of Predominantly Mediocre Offense.” Losses in his batted ball gains will correspond with losses in power and BABIP, reducing Parra to his former self.

For now, Parra is a serviceable fantasy outfielder in that he’ll contribute, albeit modestly, to every standard offensive category. But I am loath to expect he won’t regress next year. Parra epitomizes the hot hand (depending on your definition of hot and, maybe, hand), and I advocate riding it, depending on your needs. But I don’t anticipate valuable production from Parra beyond this season.