Justin Smoak, Finally For Real?
Back in the spring, each of us here at RotoGraphs participated in a “Ten Bold Predictions” series for the upcoming season. As you can imagine, there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek in all of those, because you don’t want to say something blatantly obvious like “Miguel Cabrera is going to be great”, for example, but you also want to stick with something that may vaguely be realistic, too.
We’ll probably recap those for everyone following the season, and I’m the first to admit I have some real clunkers in mine. But we can get into the rest another time, because for now, I want to focus on this one: my “bold prediction” that Justin Smoak would be a top-15 mixed league first baseman.
That was based on the combination of a scorching September (.428 wOBA in 101 plate appearances), the switch to a lighter bat which preceded it, and the move to bring in the fences in Seattle. Smoak’s not going to reach that threshold, so in that regard, the prediction is a bust, and for a while he wasn’t even rosterable — he hit just .237/.333/.309 with a single homer in April, and was still showing a sub-.700 OPS (.240/.350/.344) by late May when he injured his oblique and landed on the disabled list.
Smoak missed most of the next three weeks while Kendrys Morales and Mike Morse manned first base, but since returning on June 18, he’s started 24 of the team’s 28 games as Morales has returned to the designated hitter role and Morse has been injured himself. Since his return, believe it or not, he’s been excellent; he homered in his first game back and five more times since, hitting .306/.387/.551 through July 23. Over the last 30 days (again through July 23, as I write this on Wednesday afternoon) Smoak has a top-20 wOBA of .419, topped only among first basemen by Allen Craig, depending on whether or not you consider Buster Posey a first baseman.
|
BA
|
OBP
|
SLG
|
OPS
|
|
|
April
|
.237
|
.333
|
.309
|
.643
|
|
May
|
.246
|
.377
|
.404
|
.780
|
|
June
|
.265
|
.359
|
.529
|
.888
|
|
July
|
.328
|
.403
|
.563
|
.965
|
But we’ve been teased by Smoak before, haven’t we? Is this just another hot month? In April of 2011, he hit .284/.393/.527, raising hope he was the real deal, then disappointed tremendously for most of the two seasons following that. That said, I’m starting to lean towards this being something approaching legitimate. Not only did Smoak tear up the league last September, he’s been steadily improving each month in 2013, as you can see in the table at right.
If anything, it’s the lousy April of this season that looks like the outlier, because over the last calendar year, Smoak is hitting .272/.366/.439 with 15 homers. That’s the #13 wOBA among first basemen in that span, and if that doesn’t seem especially exciting, know that it’s better than Albert Pujols, Nick Swisher, Adam LaRoche, and Anthony Rizzo have managed in that time.
So what’s changed? That lighter bat sure seems to have helped, as he’s putting up a career-high 23.8% line drive rate, up from 18.2% last year and a dismal 13.1% in 2011, and has seen a nearly commensurate decline in his ground ball rate. He’s also swinging at nearly 6% more pitches inside the zone while offering at fewer outside it, and if that seems like a pretty obvious way to success, it’s so very often easier said than done.
Smoak’s recent successes haven’t made him a star, and he’s still not likely to develop into everything the Mariners thought they were getting when they parted with Cliff Lee for him. But he’s finally showing signs that he might actually have a useful career, and that’s progress. It’s still possible to get in on the low end if you’re buying into Smoak, because he’s owned in just 27% of ESPN leagues (thanks in no small part due to an 18% boost in the last week) and 12% of Yahoo! leagues. If the price is a mere waiver claim, that seems like more than a reasonable opportunity cost.
Mike Petriello used to write here, and now he does not. Find him at @mike_petriello or MLB.com.
Smoak’s July BABIP = .426
Still looks to me like Smoak’s 2013 is fueled by a 33% BABIP that is much higher than his 27% career BABIP. Strikeouts are actually up a bit (but so are walks) and HR/PA and HR/FB is about the same. I’m not convinced that there is a real change here.
Career high LD% seems like a pretty straightforward explanation for increased BABIP, doesn’t it?
Yes and no. The higher YTD line drive % explains why the YTD BABIP is higher. Given that there is little persistance in batters’ LD% (i.e. it’s mostly luck for most batters), the higher YTD line drive % doesn’t explain to my satisfaction why we think Smoak’s BABIP will continue to be high.
July’s been high, but for the season, he’s got an xBABIP of .325, so his .333 BABIP isn’t too crazy. Additionally, he had an xBABIP of .308 in the 2nd half of 2012 to his BABIP of .270. Like you said, it’s via his LD% — 22.7% in the 2nd half of ’12 and 23.8% so far this year. Hard to buy the jump in LD% as it takes ~.15-2 years to stabilize, but he’s at least sustained it for a decent span.
Can you show me where it’s been found that LD% is a function of luck? I believe it’s a pretty stable skill, even if it takes longer to stabilize than some.
First read that LD% for batters is mostly luck in an article by David Gassko in The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2007, pp. 157-158. Gassko writes that “line drives are largely random from year to year” and that there is a year-to-year correlation of 0.13 (where 0 represents completely random, 1 represents perfect correlation and by contrast GB is at 0.73). Subsequent research by others, most notably Colin Wyers, indicates that there is significant scorer bias in classifying batted balls as FB or LD so that much of the year-to-year correlation of LD% that we do see is actually a home scorer or ballpark effect. I’m not claiming that there is no skill represented by LD% (Joe Mauer is a good counter example) but that a higher LD% in two thirds of a season is not likely to be anything more than random variation.
I’m an amateur when it comes to most of these stats. But isn’t it kind of silly to be diminishing a young former-top prospect, that has struggled in his first few years in the bigs, by bringing up the fact he struggled in his first few years in the bigs when he appears to be putting it all together? His slash line looks remarkably similar to his minors line.
Maybe it is silly.
On the other hand, maybe it is silly to believe that 2013 represents a breakout at the MLB level when Smoak’s home run power and K/BB ratio haven’t changed much.
Dude, you have to stop replying to people smugly talking out of your ass like this. His batted ball distance on HRs and Fly Balls this year is up 12 feet, moving him from 121st in MLB last year to 31st in MLB this year. I’m surprised the article didn’t mention it actually.
H2H points league – Smoak or Dunn ROS?
Smoak in points leagues.
He’s at career lows in GB% and IFFB% (yeah, 2011 was lower, but everything else sucked that year). Since IFFB% stabilizes after about half a season (I believe… hard to find) its legitimate that he is squaring up the ball with more consistency this season. His IFH% is about double his career average though, partially affected by his IFFB%, but I don’t think enough to completely explain it. Even if his HR/FB and FB% don’t increase, a sustainable increase in LD% will pull up his ISO through more XBHs. Theoretically, something like a .350 OBP and .150 ISO are sustainable… right? I don’t feel like doing that wOBA conversion right now though…
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/when-samples-become-reliable/ says that IFFB% is 70% stabilized (30% regressed to league averages) after 500 plate appearances, pretty much what you recalled.
I could be wrong but I think he is already cooling off now.
I love this website, and have learned an awful lot about fantasy baseball strategy from it, but this is the second article on Smoak in a week which does not include the fact that he is useless against lefties, considering the data is already available on the site.
From a fantasy perspective, it would be a boon if writers would include splits in their otherwise very useful articles.
Data for team splits would be fantastic too, to help us decide which pitchers to spot start.
Smoak has been terrible against lefties this year (.480 OPS), but he hasn’t really shown a split at all over the last three years (.678 v. rights, .693 v. lefties). Given that splits stabilize after about 2000 PA, I think it is a bit silly to try and make conclusions about 80 PA against lefties.
It seems like the peoblem here, though, is that Smoak isn’t in an offense that allows him to produce RBIs and Runs and he will never steal. I’d say 160 is his RBI plus R ceiling, and he’s not a real power hitter.
The Ms have been hitting better of late – #2 scoring offense in the majors in July, only trailing Detroit.