Lorenzo Cain Hits Lottery

The Kansas City Royals made a surprise run to the World Series this year. Lorenzo Cain was a significant factor in that outcome, relatively speaking. Jeff Sullivan welcomed the center and right fielder to stardom last month. (The anecdote at the beginning is priceless!) The 2014 ALCS MVP kind of arrived.

Fantasy baseball players found Cain to be pretty likable, too. He hit .301 with five home runs, 55 runs, 53 RBIs, and 28 stolen bases. He was the 100^th outfielder taken, on average, around the main roto/head-to-head Webiverse, according to Fantasy Pros. His average preseason ranking from the four horsemen was 82^nd. He finished 37^th, per Zach Sanders’ end-of-season outfield rankings, in roto money earned. That’s tidy profit.

Cain has teased fantasy owners for a few years with the potential to be this kind of asset. The wait is over. Is he this type of commodity going forward, though? If you go with the percentages, then, probably not. And that’s where the smart money will probably lie in 2015.

As Sullivan’s article indicates, a large part of Cain’s real-world value is derived from his defense. That’s good for the outfielder’s playing time; he’s a somewhat safe investment. But he failed, albeit just barely, to qualify for the batting title. Injuries happen, of course, even to stars, but Cain has made them a bit of a habit. His health history is littered with soft-tissue strains in his lower half, far from ideal for a player on whom fantasy owners will expect to run. He did the DL thing again this year, but, thankfully, it wasn’t serious and didn’t linger.

Folks used to hope (maybe they still do?) that Cain would flash the power he displayed in the minors in 2011 (16 home runs in 549 PAs). His MLB home-run and fly-ball distances have declined, naturally, but in only a few years, they’re down to about 260 feet, and they were never great to begin, and most of those batted balls have gone to center and the opposite field. He did show a bit more extra-base power while going oppo this past season, but a power surge is probably not coming, especially while he calls Kauffman Stadium home.

It’s pretty clear, then, that a lot of the fantasy value for which Cain accounted is a consequence of his batting average. He also hit .380 on balls in play. Cain is fairly fast, and he hit more than 50% grounders and more than 20% liners. He’s produced solid xBABIP figures. But he may have just been making up for lost results this past season. He was an obvious candidate for regression in Jeff Zimmerman’s xBABIP values through late July. Cain still carries a mediocre contact rate, and it’s extremely rare that he bunts for a hit, so he doesn’t do much to pad the stat.

There’s one area in which Cain may have made notable progress. In his first two seasons in the league, he hit pop-ups at a rate above league average; in 2013, his pop-up percentage was around 4.5%, which was more than a full percentage point above the league rate. This past season, he popped up on 1.6% of his balls in play, well below league average. Perhaps it’s a fluke, but perhaps there’s something he’s done to his swing plane or approach that has improved his chances to avoid pop-ups. Still, we’re talking 14 sure outs in 442 PAs in 2013 to six sure outs in 502 PAs this year – not enough to explain vastly enhanced results.

Cain did hit much better against fastballs this year than in any previous year. Perhaps that’s evidence of something. But I don’t view it as anything more than a sign that he was a little luckier than usual. Big leaguers can hit fastballs. If there was some improvement in outcomes against breaking or off-speed pitches, then I’d want to investigate more. Really – given what I’ve seen, anyway – it just looks like Cain “hit the BABIP jackpot.” (I like that phrase.)

Cain, 28, finally handed fantasy owners an obvious money-earning season. Folks shouldn’t look at this as another Jayson Werth-type breakout, though. Cain is not quite a full-time player. Health issues still come with the territory. His average on balls in play is sure to regress. That would reduce his opportunities to run. At least, however, there’s a reason to hope that Cain is a little better equipped to hit for average, so the fantasy financial risk could be a touch mitigated next year. He still smells like a future net loss, though.