Jose Abreu, Queller of All Concerns

Jose Abreu was the newest of a group of Cubans arriving in the Majors Leagues in the last couple of years. The most recent and notable of that group, Yoenis Cespedes and Yasiel Puig, made successful enough debuts that expectations were understandably high for the new kid on the block. Abreu certainly posted eye-popping stats in Cuba. And they were even better then the aforementioned pair. Even his translations were off the charts, but the difficulty in calculating those means we had to take those equivalents with a grain of salt. But now after the completion of the 2014 season, it is fair to say that any concerns scouts and fantasy owners may have had have officially been silenced.

Abreu wasn’t just good, he was one of the best hitters in baseball. His .411 wOBA ranked third among all hitters, his ISO ranked fourth and he tied for fourth most in homers, fueled by a baseball-leading HR/FB rate. In early August, our aptly named FanGraphs author August Fagerstrom dissected Abreu’s performance and how he has handled the various pitches scouts were concerned about.

Scouts had expressed concern that Abreu might have trouble against breaking balls. And although he did swing and miss often against breakers and hit just .220 against them, that also came with a .254 ISO and 11 homers. Another red flag that I personally remember reading everywhere was about his bat speed. The label slapped on Abreu was that he had a “slider-speed bat”. This essentially meant that he couldn’t hit a good fastball. Haha. He hit .376 on fastballs with a .260 ISO. He really only had issues against the curve ball, a pitch he hit .220 against as well like the entire category of breaking balls, but his ISO was just .153. Every other pitch he held his own against, if not hammered it.

Abreu also posted respectable walk and strikeout rates, however, his high SwStk% gives us some pause. He posted the seventh highest mark in baseball, which if not improved upon, increases the risk that his strikeout rate heads upwards next season. Also adding to the risk of a batting average dropoff is the high BABIP he enjoyed. While he did post a solid batted ball distribution, hitting line drives and a below average IFFB%, it’s hard to imagine a .356 mark is sustainable.

Speaking of batted ball distribution, his fly ball rate was just 31.2%. That’s quite low for a monstrous power hitter. So the bad news is that I would project that to rise next year, which is going to take another bite out of his BABIP, all else being equal. The good news is that there’s your home run upside. Yes, even though he hit 36 homers this season, his relatively low fly ball rate suggests that a 40+ homer season is easily within his grasp.

His 305 foot batted ball distance, which ranked fifth on the leaderboard, supports his league-leading HR/FB rate. Now, it would be silly to project a sophomore to repeat a mid-to-upper HR/FB rate, but I wouldn’t expect that much regression. Perhaps a decline to around 23-24%% would be reasonable to project. A jump in fly ball rate would be more than enough to offset a decline in HR/FB rate though.

I think the current Steamer projection calling for a .283 average and 35 long balls with 98 RBIs is fair. While his SwStk% suggests a worse strikeout rate, he made good contact in Cuba and it’s always possible that he’ll make some adjustments in his second year to improve that mark. So a similar K% could be correct, but I’m not sure exactly which way I will lean. Overall though, I wouldn’t be shocked to see Abreu as a first rounder in many leagues. After getting over the initial surprise I always feel at seeing a new name in the first round, I actually don’t think it would be a terrible pick. He’s essentially Edwin Encarnacion with better batting average potential.