Is There Any Hope For Mike Moustakas?

Remember when Mike Moustakas tore it up during this year’s spring training? He batted .429, which ranked third among all spring trainers, reached based at a .522 clip, good for second place, and slugged .768, ranking him fifth. Combined, he finished third in OPS. Not surprisingly, that performance led fantasy owners to dream of what could be and fueled lots of sleeper talk.

But aside from the fact that we have proven time and time again that spring training statistics offer almost no predictive value for many reasons, Moustakas had been a spring training MVP before. And that happened just the season prior! In 2013, he posted a 1.147 OPS, ranking him ninth in the league. That obviously didn’t turn out to be the precursor for a breakout either.

So another season has gone by and Moustakas finished 32nd in value among third basemen. He struggled so badly this time around that he was even demoted to the minors for a brief time. He ended up spending just a week and a half down on the farm, but that was because his replacement, Danny Valencia, landed on the DL.

There are the seeds of a good hitter and fantasy contributor. He doesn’t swing and miss often, which has resulted in pretty good strikeout rates for a supposed power hitter. Plus, he hits more fly balls than grounders, which all else being equal, would boost his home run total.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t walk a whole lot, which means his ability to get on base is largely dependent on his batting average. And that itself is reliant on his BABIP. And there’s our first issue. Check out this gruesome trend:

Yuck. During his rookie campaign, he peaked with a league average BABIP. And then it was all downhill from there. His BABIP issues are actually three-fold. He’s a fly ball hitter and we know that fly balls drop for hits far less frequently than grounders and liners. Like many fly ball hitters, he is also prone to the pop-up. But prone might actually be an understatement. Over the last four years, he has hit the second most infield fly balls in baseball. But he has recorded nearly 700 fewer at-bats than the four-year leader Ian Kinsler! So yeah, pop-ups and fly balls are a perfect recipe for a low BABIP.

But wait…there’s more! Moustakas is a lefty, and guess what? He’s pulltastic. Look at all those fun green blobs between first and second base!

Though my data is from mid-September, at the time Moustakas had faced the 13th most shifts in baseball. And you have to imagine that at that point, he also easily had the fewest at-bats of anyone surrounding him on the list. So add the infield shift to his fly ball and pop-up tendency and you immediately see why he has struggled so mightily collecting hits on balls in play. Unless he changes his swing to less of an uppercut and goes the other way more frequently, he’s never going to get his BABIP up to respectable levels.

Earlier, I touched on his fly ball rate actually being a positive for his home run potential. While it does hurt his BABIP and batting average upside, obviously it’s good for his power. But, that fly ball tendency is really only beneficial if you possess a whole lot of power. So far, Moustakas hasn’t shown that he does.

Amazingly, his HR/FB rate reached a career high this season, but that was just a mere 9.4%, which is below the league average. His batted ball distance has ranged from a low of about 267 feet to this season’s high of 282 feet. The latter mark is a bit above the league average, which alone suggests some marginal HR/FB rate upside. But it’s just not enough to take advantage of his fly ball rate and it ends up hurting more than helping him. And considering that Kauffman Stadium has a 93 left-handed home run park factor, it’s hard to imagine a sudden power breakout.

Moustakas’ defense has generally been good, though this season his UZR/150 fell precipitously. It’s likely that his fielding ability has been the only thing keeping him in the lineup. Well, and his former top prospect status of course. Since he still can’t hit lefties, he’s really just a platoon bat at best. I can’t imagine him having that much more of a leash and he could begin to lose playing time next year again if he starts off slowly. But because of those seeds I described above, it’s difficult to completely give up hope. I would still be tempted to take the gamble cheaply in an AL-Only league, but there’s absolutely no reason to waste a roster spot in anything shallower.