Matt Holliday: Designer Brand, Warehouse Price

An unambiguously true fact: Matt Holliday is an old man in baseball years and in dog years. Another unambiguously true fact: Holliday has been remarkably consistent throughout his career. Hear ye:

• He has hit at least 20 home runs in nine straight years, a streak currently matched only by David Ortiz and Miguel Cabrera;
• His walk rate has hovered between 10 and 12 percent for the better part of a decade, and his strikeout rate has always resided in the mid-teens;
• He has averaged 647 plate appearances per season dating back to 2006;
• And honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a batted ball profile so absurdly consistent.

Yet a slight dip in power and a career-worst batting average (.272, aka what some players can only dream of hitting) in 2014 couldn’t have come at a worse age, and it all has fans and projection systems alike running for the hills, as shown below.

	Year	G	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	AVG	OBP	SLG
Season	2014	156	667	20	83	90	4	11.1 %	15.0 %	.169	.298	.272	.370	.441
Composite	2015	138	581	19	75	75	4	10.6 %	16.6 %	.178	.305	.276	.363	.453
Fans (33)	2015	140	611	19	78	81	4	10.1 %	15.5 %	.168	.311	.282	.367	.450

I’m exaggerating — they are walking for the hills or, at most, slowly yogging — but perhaps I’m not, since I watched Holliday sell for $10 in two mixed-league auction mock drafts. I guess that makes sense, given the auction calculator values him at $9.40 per the fan projections. (Steamer and ZiPS are a bit more bullish at $11.40 and $13.30, respectively.) Anyway, you could consider those mock drafts the incidents that incited this, because Holliday has sold for at least $17 (inflation-adjusted) each of the past three years in my primary league, and I want to figure out what’s up.

The pessimism largely concerns his batting average and playing time, the latter on which his home run total primarily relies. Because of how consistent both his plate discipline and batted ball profile have been, I am inclined to chalk up the dip in average to bad luck on balls in play; indeed, his 2014 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .298 is a career low. However, Jeff Zimmerman noted in July 2014 that Holliday’s expected BABIP (xBABIP) was more than 30 points lower than his actual BABIP during the depths of his slump and tabbed him as a “sell-low candidate.” Bad news, man.

Or is it? I was curious to know how Holliday typically performs against his xBABIP so, using the same xBABIP equation, I calculated Holliday’s recent xBABIPs:

Year	GB	FB	LD	IFFB	IFH	BU	BUH	HR	SH	BABIP	xBABIP	xBABIP-BABIP
2010	212	207	86	22	15	0	0	28	0	0.331	0.290	-0.041
2011	163	119	73	12	5	0	0	22	0	0.330	0.304	-0.026
2012	218	165	89	11	16	0	0	27	0	0.337	0.311	-0.026
2013	200	147	91	20	9	0	0	22	0	0.322	0.307	-0.015
2014	217	180	79	18	11	0	0	20	0	0.298	0.282	-0.016

It’s only a half-decade window, but Holliday has out-performed his xBABIP every year. To expect his batting average to regress farther based strictly on the xBABIP criterion could be deemed foolish. Indeed, the author will exercise his right to do so right now. Moreover, the difference between Holliday’s 2014 xBABIP and his usual xBABIP is roughly 15 more fly balls than line drives (and who knows if some of those could have been classified as line dries anyway?). His line drive rate was the second-worst of his career, but batted ball rates don’t have much predictive quality to them. To attest: Holliday recorded career-best and -worst line drive rates in back-to-back seasons (2007-08).

The margin between Holliday’s BABIP and xBABIP is shrinking, so whatever skill, unmeasured by the equation, that allows him to perennially out-perform his xBABIP is probably declining. Given he’s entering his age-35 season, I am unsurprised. But that unmeasured skill appears to be waning gradually rather than abruptly. In other words, I don’t expect his margin of over-performance to disappear overnight.

Additionally, the composite projection (comprised of Steamer’s and ZiPS’ projections — both of which, in Holliday’s case, are almost identical) expects him to strike out 16.6 percent of the time. There is, undoubtedly, a reason that underlies it, probably relating to an aging curve and/or his elevated K% rates in 2011-12. However, I think it fails to acknowledge that Holliday’s swinging strike and contact rates have improved for four straight years, culminating last year in career bests for each. You can knock him for his chase rate (O-Swing%), which barely improved relative to its peak in 2012, but at least he improved his contact rate on such swings by 2.4 percentage points. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, but I don’t think that warrants an expected bump in K’s. Arguing over a dozen strikeouts might seem nitpicky, but turning 1 to 2 percent of at-bats from strikeouts into batted balls could allot Holliday an extra two or three hits — not a mind-blowing number, but when it comes to batting average, every hit counts.

Meanwhile, fans expect his walk rate will fall 1 percentage point to 10.1 percent, which really seems like a negligible drop until you consider he has walked less than 10.9 percent of the time each year since 2010. Again, I’m nitpicking, but the fans — whose preferences will dictate Holliday’s value in drafts — have laid bare pessimistic expectations for Holliday that fail to align with his peripherals.

Regarding his power: Chris Cwik and Nicholas Minnix previously discussed it at length. Cwik presciently predicted Holliday would return to form after a slow start caused by what appeared to be his lack of pull power:

The declining fly ball distance is another slight reason for concern, but it’s not as if Holliday suddenly lost his pop. There are some age-related risks, but it’s more likely Holliday will start to see his luck turn over the next couple months. By the end of the year, there’s a good chance he’ll look like the same player he’s always been.

And in November, Minnix made a forecast that I will reiterate momentarily:

The end isn’t nigh; it’s just nigh-er. But that’s always true. If Holliday is discounted because the crowd is expecting a more precipitous drop-off, then they’ll create what I’d probably see as an attractive buying opportunity of an otherwise reliable asset.

Holliday’s home run-to-fly ball ratio (HR/FB) dipped to a career-low in 2014, all despite a seemingly unchanged average home run and fly ball distance from the prior season and in light of a shallower average angle on batted balls. The power is still there — not as abundantly as it was a few years ago, but it is. Really no reason for his HR/FB to not rebound based on his peripherals unless his arms fall off or something.

Maybe the fans are right to be pessimistic. Holliday is getting old, but hey, so are Ortiz and Adrian Beltre. I would just much rather play the numbers than try to play prophet. And what the numbers tell me is Matt Holliday is still Matt Holliday, he who smacks at least 20 home runs and hits .290 and steps into the batter’s box 650 times and somehow still manages to steal four bases. And if he does collect 650 PAs, I wouldn’t rule out a return to the 25-homer threshold. If age catches up to him, then fine, so be it — but if it only costs me $10 to find out if he’s still got it, I’ll hardly lose sleep over it. Holliday is a trend who has yet to go out of style, and I’ll gladly purchase him and his perceived age risk on draft day for 25 percent off.