Javier Baez’s Unique Skill Set

The Javier Baez era has begun. Perhaps it did so a bit sooner than most had anticipated. Baez came up as a shortstop, but someone named Starlin Castro had solidified himself at the position in Cubby Land. So in 2014, Baez was pushed over to second base to accelerate his path to the Majors. He had just defensive wiz Darwin Barney in his way there, so it was clearly the path with the least resistance.

Baez debuted with the Cubs on August 5th, despite an unspectacular season at Triple-A. While he did swat 23 homers and post an impressive .250 ISO, a mark which is especially so coming from a middle infielder, his wOBA was a mere .354. That’s not terrible, of course, but hardly the level you expect to see from an elite prospect that our own Marc Hulet described as “[having] all the ingredients necessary to be an all-star for the Cubs” when ranking him as the top prospect in the organization heading into the year.

So what caused such a mediocre performance? It obviously wasn’t a lack of power. Instead, it was simply the inability to make contact. He struck out 30% of the time, which resulted in just a .260 batting average despite all the dingers and a .322 BABIP. He also failed to offset the high strikeout rate with a strong walk rate, as he took first base just under 8% of the time. He’s never been much of a walker, though a good sign is the fact that his walk rate did improve as he climbed the minor league ladder.

Before we get to his Major League performance, you must understand how unique Baez’s skill set is. He combines immense power with lots of strikeouts, which is fairly normal, but is quite impatient, drawing a below league average rate of walks. That’s not normal. Usually high power guys strike out a lot, but also walk at an above average clip. Over an arbitrary past 20 years, here is the list of players who have walked 8% of the time or less, struck out at least 25% of the time and posted an ISO of at least .150. These filters are actually conservative as Baez may prove to be more extreme. Out of 3,036 player seasons, only 21 hit all three filters:

That’s a very interesting list of names. Overall, the group averaged an unweighted wOBA of just .332, which is above the league average, but not significantly so. They batted just .255 as well, which means these types are unlikely to contribute positive value in batting average. They have lots of power though, which boosted their RBI totals, but a low walk rate means their runs scored marks are probably not as high as they could have been.

But these minimums might actually be asking a little too much of Baez in 2015. After all, he struck out an astounding 41.5% of the time with Chicago, driven by a crazy 19.1% SwStk%. That strikeout rate is easily the highest of any qualified batter since 1995! Relax the minimum plate appearance level to just 200 to actually include Baez in the group and what do we find? He still leads baseball and finds himself tops among 6,837 player seasons. Amazing.

Since he didn’t show a whole lot of interest in taking a free pass in the minors, it should have been no surprise that he walked just 6.6% of the time in the Majors. That’s far too low of a mark to offset the damage of a 40%+ strikeout rate. Even a league average BABIP isn’t going to be enough to lead to a respectable on base percentage with that low walk rate.

The one positive we thought we could count on — his power — was also surprisingly disappointing. While he did post an impressive 17% HR/FB rate, he supplemented that with just six doubles, which resulted in his middling .155 ISO. It’s pretty shocking he hit just six doubles considering he hit fly balls at an inflated 45% clip. His batted ball distance finished at 288 feet, which would have ranked him 73rd in baseball, right behind an impressive group of sluggers in Chris Carter, Adam Jones, Anthony Rizzo and Edwin Encarnacion. So perhaps his power wasn’t actually that disappointing after all.

Baez swung at pitches outside the zone far too often, made significantly less contact with those pitches than the average batter, and oddly swung at less than the average at pitches actually inside the strike zone. He hit too few line drives and too many pop-ups. Essentially, aside from the occasional power, nothing went right when Baez stepped inside the batter’s box with the Cubs.

Since he does have some speed and Steamer projects 18 steals, at least he’s not a power-only contributor, where you’ll get nothing from him when he’s not hitting it out of the park. I still think I would take the under on both the homers (29) and steals that Steamer is currently projecting. There’s seemingly far too many things he must improve on during his sophomore season to confidently project nearly 30 homers already. And will he get on base enough to attempt the 28 steals being projected? He’ll have to get that contact rate in order in a hurry if that was to happen.

Baez has quite the unique set of skills and he’ll be an exciting player to follow next season. Since his debut was a bit disappointing, he may not be as overvalued as I would have imagined given his top prospect status. Still, he’s going to be a make or break type player on fantasy teams and it’s highly unlikely he’ll find his way onto any of mine.