Gregory Polanco and Perceived Value

Admit it, you were a Gregory Polanco owner, held onto him all season long, and were disappointed by his performance. Though you felt he wasn’t a bust per se, it sure felt like he failed to earn his cost, right? If you recall, and I promise not to get upset if you do not, the RotoGraphs five ranked him 46th overall among outfielders in the preseason. Now tell me if it surprises you that he actually finished 32nd in value, earning $14.58. Because that is what happened according to Zach Sanders’ calculator.

You see, the problem with the Polanco types is that when you don’t stand out in any one particular category (though I would probably argue that he does in steals), it’s a bit more challenging to find the value. I call these players Placido Polancos, always contributing a little here and there and whose total value far exceeds what you expected.

Or perhaps it’s because Polanco is young, only played in his first full season and came hyped with an intriguing blend of both power and speed. And although he did swipe 27 bases, he only hit nine homers, batted .256, and knocked in just 52 runs. It seems lackluster, even if it was more than enough to earn himself a profit in many leagues. Furthermore, it’s possible that many saw Polanco as the next Starling Marte, but he wasn’t quite ready to reach that level of performance.

So let’s analyze what Polanco was and what he might be. Since he’s a lefty, the immediate question is how well he handles southpaws and if he’s at risk of requiring a platoon partner. Unfortunately, his performance versus lefties was rather pitiful in 2015. He posted just a .234 wOBA, saw his strikeout rate rise 10%, walk rate drop and power evaporate. The good news is he’s only 24. You don’t typically give a player one year to prove he could hit pitchers of the same handedness. So he has time and could figure things out at any point. But man that was a really pathetic performance, which makes it difficult to be optimistic. It probably make sense for daily leaguers to bench him when the Pirates face a lefty starter.

In the minors, Polanco displayed above average power, with a peak ISO approaching .200 and 16 home runs in about three-fourths of a season that same year. His power has taken a nosedive in the Majors so far and he has needed an additional 443 at-bats to reach a career home run total that matched what he hit in 2012. Strikeouts haven’t been a major problem and either has his fly ball rate. The issue comes right down to his HR/FB rate, which stood at ya measly 5.5% this year, a little more than half of what he posted last year.

That’s really interesting though that his HR/FB rate collapsed, because this:

Gregory Polanco Batted Ball Metrics

Season	Distance	Avg Abs Angle	SD Dist	xHR/FB
2014	272.4	20.8	54.9	10.4%
2015	275.1	20.8	58.9	12.6%

So every component that drives his xHR/FB rate either remained stable or increased. And yet his HR/FB rate tumbled. Hmmmmm. It’s true that we probably don’t need xHR/FB rate to figure some sort of rebound next year given Polanco’s age and history. But it does help quell concerns that his power was a major disappointment. What actually seemed to happen is that his homers from 2014 turned into doubles in 2015. His at bats per doubles rate was nearly cut in half (a good thing) this year, so the two categories of extra-base hits simply flip-flopped. This is not a concern and happens often as it’s clear that Polanco still possessed the same power in his bat. I would probably be comfortable projecting a 9.0% HR/FB rate as PNC Park is rather unfavorable for lefty homers (and even more so for righties).

What about his BABIP? Should we really expect a hitter with power and speed and a pretty vanilla batted ball distribution to sit with a career BABIP right at the league average? I would expect a mark higher than that. So let’s consult xBABIP and see what he thinks. In 2014, it calculated a .303 mark, versus just a .272 actual and in 2015, .317 versus .308 actual. Polanco has posted some inflated BABIP marks in the minors, but also some no so inflated marks. So it’s hard to get a good read on his future BABIP skills, but a projection of .305 to .310 seems reasonable, which not surprisingly is higher than Steamer’s forecast.

Fantasypros ranks Polanco 34th among outfielders next year, which implies a slightly worse relative performance than this season, which seems a little absurd to me. Did the outfield crop improve that much?! And where’s teammate Starling Marte? Right up there at 10th. The worse ranked player isn’t always the better value, but in this case, I think Polanco at 34 is a much better buy than Marte at 10. Marte’s SwStk% is far higher and he relies on a high BABIP, both of which give him much greater downside than from Polanco. And all that downside costs more! Obviously, it’s because Polanco’s near term upside is what Marte is already doing, so that’s what got the latter ranked 10th to begin with. All of this is to say that I think Polanco is likely going to be available at a nice little discount and could reap bigger rewards if he could figure out lefties.