Hideki Matsui Inks with Angels
The Angels have found Vladimir Guerrero’s replacement at DH. The Halos have reportedly come to terms with Hideki Matsui on a one-year, $6.5M deal, pending a physical.
The 35 year-old lefty batter had a strong bounce back year at the plate in 2009. Matsui’s troublesome left knee caused him to miss a big chunk of the 2008 season, as he took just 378 trips to the plate. Godzilla didn’t strike much fear into opposing pitchers in ’08, posting a .348 wOBA and a .131 Isolated Power that were well below his established level of play.
But this past year, Matsui mashed to the tune of a .378 wOBA and a career-best .235 ISO in 528 plate appearances. Adjusting his wOBA for his home ballpark and league, Matsui’s wOBA was 33 percent better than the big league average.
With a busted wheel, Matsui posted a 1.36 ground ball/fly ball ratio in 2008. That was his highest rate of grounders to fly balls since his “rookie” campaign in the states in 2003. Matsui had a mild 9 HR/FB%. In 2009, Matsui lofted the ball more (0.90 GB/FB ratio), and popped a home run on 17.4% of his fly balls hit.
Matsui is a dead pull hitter. New Yankee Stadium wasn’t an offensive paradise in its first year in existence (the stadium depressed offense by 3-4% compared to a neutral ball park), but it certainly did have its fair share of big flies (1.26 HR park factor).
For what it’s worth (perhaps not much, considering we’re talking about one-year park factors and one-year home/away splits), Matsui actually hit better on the road in ’09. His OPS was 57 percent better than the league average away from Yankee Stadium and an OPS 12 percent better than average at home.
Matsui turned in an excellent offensive season in 2009, but it’s not a good idea to just expect a repeat performance next year. Here are Hideki’s 2010 projections:
CHONE: .262/.348/.432, .341 wOBA
ZiPS: .277/.360/.464, .359 wOBA
Bill James: .282/.367/.475, .366 wOBA
Fans: .283/.370/.482, .370 wOBA
Keep in mind that the expected level of offense in baseball for the 2010 season influences these projections. In other words, Bill James might project a higher line for Matsui, but the Bill James system generally projects a higher run-scoring environment overall. Matsui’s Bill James line might look more impressive relative to the other systems, but the baseline for what constitutes league average offense is greater as well.
The logical general consensus, though, is that Matsui will regress in 2010 but remain an above-average batter.
Don’t draft Matsui expecting a repeat performance of his gargantuan 2009 season. But he could still be a quality contributor in 2010.
A recent graduate of Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for Fangraphs, The Pittsburgh Sports Report and Baseball Analytics. His work for Inside Edge Scouting Services has appeared on ESPN.com and Yahoo.com, and he was a fantasy baseball columnist for Rotoworld from 2009-2010. He recently contributed an article on Mike Stanton's slugging to The Hardball Times Annual 2012. Contact David at david.golebiewski@gmail.com and check out his work at Journalist For Hire.
How accurate are the ESPN Park Factors? I’ve read and heard from multiple sources that they used to be pretty bunk, but I haven’t kept up so maybe they’ve improved in the last year or two.
They haven’t improved AFAIK. THT has run a couple of good articles about park factors that I linked to here, as well as this; it’s obviously early to be using New Yankee Stadium as a basis for anything, but fortunately we have several years of data for Matsui in the old stadium (and various others). We’re really waiting on HitFX to give us definitive park factors, but in the meantime I’m looking forward to Fangraphs publishing the latest version of the park factors they’re using, as Mr Appleman promised.
Personally, I expect Godzilla to take over from Vlad as the Mariner Killer for the Angels (especially in Safeco, with its short RF… though we also have the prospect of Ichiro running up the wall to take the odd one away from him too…. good times for both sides of the Pacific).