Howie Kendrick: Still Fallback Plan, Not Target

It was a good year to be a Howie Kendrick owner. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim second baseman hit for a quality batting average (.293), as usual. That rate stat has kind of come to define him, though. The fact that he accumulated a career-high 617 plate appearances in 2014 is basically why he delighted fantasy baseball players as the sixth-most valuable man at the keystone sack. He belted only seven home runs and stole a modest 14 bases, but those sums and the playing time resulted in 85 runs scored and a career-high-tying 75 RBIs. Kendrick was, practically, an across-the-board money earner, and that was good enough for him to turn a tidy profit for his owners in most leagues.

Mixed-leagued earnings of nearly $20 and a spot in the top six at any position in a particular campaign don’t mean that a player is one of the best options at that position, of course. Kendrick’s 2014 value was a byproduct of auxiliary attrition coupled with his somewhat greater reliability than normal. The depth, perhaps growing, at second base should plant the Halos’ hard hitter right back into the mix of solid middle-infield options, as the RotoGraphs consensus pegged him this past March, next draft season. The 31-year-old has a tried and true skill set, but it’s limited and in decline.

Kendrick is, granted, one of the more talented batsmen in the majors. He hits the ball fairly hard and to all fields. Prognosticators here and there proclaimed him a possible future winner of a batting title not long after he arrived in The Show. That has turned out to be ambitious thanks in part to a contact rate that has never really matured. But he can stroke it pretty well.

His plate discipline has been steady throughout his career. Kendrick has maintained healthy – not great, but healthy – markers in a couple of columns: SwStr% and Contact%. It’s encouraging that his reach rate dipped back to well below 40% after that surge last year, too. There’s no red flag just yet, but that column may require watching in the long run. Solid, if unspectacular, plate discipline is part of the foundation for his ability to hit for average consistently. He’s reached a point in his career at which it’s eroding, but it seems likely to remain slow.

He boasts other, moderate assets, too. Kendrick went yard 18 times in 2011, fueling hope, albeit pretty ambitious, that he was raising his mean power performance a tad. He’s regularly displayed slightly better than average speed, and his team has permitted him to put it to use, as his total of 14 thefts in four different seasons attest. Obviously, he was a bit of an all-around performer before this season rolled around.

Kendrick hasn’t delivered to his fantasy seasons quite as hoped in some seasons, naturally, but he’s been a reasonable target in as an MI who could swat 10 to 13 homers and swipe 10 to 13 bases. This past season may have been the last in which we could view him as such, though. His ability to reach those levels is in peril going forward, made a tad more dangerous by the relatively lucrative year he and his owners just enjoyed.

Kendrick’s batted-ball data has historically provided an observable foundation for his hitting success. Line drives are good. Ground balls aren’t bad. He’s regularly hit for a high average on balls in play, and they’ve been supported by high xBABIPs. He’s one of only three qualified major league hitters in 2014 not to have hit a pop-up. He doesn’t hit those. His fly-ball rates have hovered around 21% for three straight years, too. That stuff is awesome for the AVG.

The FB% doesn’t sound too good for Kendrick’s power, though. It’s kind of bottoming out. The combination of that and his waning ISO (.113, 142, and .104 in each of the past three years) indicates that noteworthy power production is in the rearview. Angel Stadium isn’t going to aid the cause, either.

The locations of his batted balls this season seem to stress the point. Kendrick’s ISO to left field fell below .100 for just the second time in his career. His ability to drive the ball up the middle is where it was really noticeable, however: a sub-.100 ISO to center for the first time since his rookie season, and in previous years, he was never very close to doing that. To the RHB’s credit, his oppo power appears to have been on the rise, its ISO approaching .200 this past season. We can this visually from his spray charts from the past three seasons, particularly on balls in the air (line drives, fly balls, and home runs).

Source: FanGraphs

Source: FanGraphs

Source: FanGraphs

It’s possible that Kendrick is evolving into a hitter who relies more heavily on his above-average ability to go the other way. Perhaps those most recent batted-ball locations are just results of the way opponents pitched to him in 2014, however, and he went with it. Either way should allow him to survive in the long run. But either defeats some hope that moderate power will still be an asset of his.

Kendrick’s ability to hit for average should ensure that his opportunities to run remain plentiful. His age, however, dims future projections in that category. Even ignoring his career-low stolen-base attempt percentage (attempts divided by opportunities) last year, his SBA rate has declined in the last few, and he’ll turn 32 in 2015. The Angels now feature a pretty power-packed lineup, too. That development isn’t likely to influence Kendrick much, but the club has clearly placed a little less emphasis on the theft.

Kendrick obviously has the tools to remain a formidable fantasy aid. His plate discipline and batted-ball distributions essentially ensure that, even if each is slowly waning. But those areas plus some other gauges show that power and speed are less likely to be part of the package anymore. Health hasn’t regularly been on his side, either, with his previous run-ins with mild to moderate injuries to both the upper and lower bodies. This past season’s level of PT is within the realm of possibility again, but it’d be an unwise projection, with something in the neighborhood of 140 games’ worth of it remaining a reasonable estimate. His 2015 Steamer projection – .280 AVG, 10 HR, and nine SB in 621 PA – is a little light in AVG for me and a touch generous to his PT, but it reflects an overall acknowledgment of his receding skills well, I’d say.

It was a great year to own Kendrick. He’s begun to derive even more his value from volume, though, and his one very good skill. There are, as there were before, too many good second basemen to go after him heartily. Someone in your league will probably select him before you’re ready or pay more for him than you’re willing. Send that person a thank-you note. Kendrick is still a consolation prize at second base or a high-end MI, largely just because he’s on a team with a good offense.