Melky Cabrera Strikes Back
Melky Cabrera has been many things througout his career – prospect, bust, deadbeat, star, cheater, and injured are a few words that describe different phases of his career. After rebounding from a 2013 season that included a scary growth on his spine, Cabrera is now wafting through free agency as a top outfielder. His 81/16/73/6/.301 fantasy line was worth $19, according to Zach Sanders. While he wasn’t a fantasy monster, he was certainly an excellent acquisition for those who drafted him for $1 or picked him up off waivers.
I’ve been on the Cabrera bandwagon for awhile now, having briefly departed as a result of the aforementioned tumor. While most owners take a hands-off approach to PED users, I figure they’ve already done the hard work while doping. It’s easier to maintain the strength one gains from PED use than it is to acquire that strength naturally.
In the case of Cabrera, I’m guessing he lost a good bit of that strength while dealing with the spine issue. My gut says Cabrera simply learned to be a good and balanced contact hitter with around league average power. In other words, I’m not considering his PED history when deciding on an appropriate price tag.
As a hitter, Cabrera brings league average plate discipline with above average contact rates. Overall, he’s nine percentage points better than average at making contact. Incidentally, his swinging strike rate is tiny at 5.1 percent, and he strikes out around 11 percent of the time. That, along with an unimposing .157 ISO, allowed him to post the .301/.351/.458 slash that helped owners in all manner of leagues.
There is good news for owners in a position to keep Cabrera – there is no indication he was lucky in 2014. The bigger issues are – where does he go and where does he bat? Toronto’s Rogers Centre is a hitter and power friendly ball park, so fantasy owners should hope he lands in a similar environment. The White Sox are probably a best case scenario for Cabrera. As for his spot in the batting order, he’s likely to be acquired to bat first or second. From a fantasy perspective, he’s a better two-hole because he can drive in some runs. You’ll also want to hope he’ll latch onto an American League team for the same reason.
This is usually where I highlight problems with the player, but there are few negative indicators. We’ve already seen what he looks like when playing through injury. His power completely evaporated in 2013, yet he still managed an above average batting average. Assuming things never get quite that bleak, we know Cabrera’s floor is still useful (unlike, say, B.J. Upton). He’s entering his age 30 season, which is too early to worry about age. He doesn’t appear to be more or less of an injury risk than the next guy.
In fact, I turned up only one interesting tidbit of information. He’s a pull hitter from both sides of the plate with his power coming exclusively from the pull field. Check it out.
He still sprays the ball around the infield just enough to avoid those BABIP-killing shifts. When batting lefty, it seems like an opposing team should move the second baseman a couple steps toward first and otherwise play straightaway defense. Even the outfield has no need of a shift.
Steamer is more concerned about 2013 than we should be, since it doesn’t know the poor performance resulted from a correctable, career-threatening tumor. As such, I would take the over on 73/13/59/6/.291. In particular, I think he’ll do better in runs scored and RBI. Of course, we have to watch where he ends up and his role. As for a price tag, I think he’ll run between $6 and $15 in most leagues. In a vacuum, I’d buy anywhere within that price range.
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Sorry, I tried to quote a block of text from the article:
“It’s easier to maintain the strength one gains from PED use than it is to acquire that strength naturally.”
I suppose it’s probably a guess, but that’s what trainers have told me. I didn’t come up with it on my own. It is intuitive though as maintenance is easier without any PED usage too.
Seems logical. PEDs make it easier to gain strength/muscle mass. Once you’ve added that mass, it’s there, and while you might stop gaining by going clean, you wouldn’t expect to actually get weaker as long as you keep lifting. That last part is the caveat, though – I don’t know much about MLB strength/conditioning programs, but I imagine it’s hard to maintain an aggressive powerlifting regimen during a baseball season without impacting performance on the field. And if there is any loss of strength during the season, it’s going to be hard to add it back in the offseason without PEDs.
Guys I played ball with that took steroids talked about declining strength between cycles. It usually coincided with the season, where you normally aren’t able to quite maintain strength, but they did seem to gradually lose some after their testosterone levels returned to normal. I’m not a doctor and I don’t know exactly what Melky took or much about how different PEDs might effect your body differently, but that was what I heard around me. Also that was back in the 80’s and 90’s so I’m sure PEDs have changed a bunch.
So as far as Melky goes, IMO either he’s already lost all of the extra PED-related strength he’s going to lose or he’s still on PEDs that can’t be detected right now. I don’t care to speculate either way, but at this point I don’t expect any sort of drop off for 2015 based on PEDs.
“It’s easier to maintain the strength one gains from PED use than it is to acquire that strength naturally.”
Not exactly. PEDs allow you to recover from workouts quicker, with less muscle damage, so you can workout more. If you workout less intensely or less frequently without PEDs, then you would not “maintain the strength one gains.” So it would actually be very difficult to keep the same PED physique sans the PEDs, because the workout regimen would have to be different.
A shining example of this is Ryan Braun’s performance history.
The first part is true, but what trainers have told me is that you don’t just lose the muscle mass you put on once you stop PEDs. You also have to stop workouts. And a workout to maintain needs a lesser intensity than a workout to grow. So a player will still need to work hard at maintenance (probably harder than he would had he built naturally), but it should be possible.
I like Melky as a person and as a ball-player. But I don’t think I would go so far as to say that I’m a fan. I know that folks are trying to re-jig his numbers based on ballpark factors wherever he lands. But doesn’t his (probable) departure also raise the question of leaving a comfortable hammock between Reyes and Bautista? It would seem to me that Reyes had a good enough season to provide distraction often enough for Cabrera. And Bautista had a near MVP (fifth) season as a menace behind him. Plus, there was the extended threat of Encarnacion regardless of Bautista’s result. Surely, the hammock provided Cabrera with a different set of pitches that he might not get in a new locale in a new line-up. A factor in draft prices in 2015?
While I won’t tell you to not consider lineup protection, it doesn’t really show up in the data. If we suspected protection were aiding Melky, the first thing I’d expect to see is an above average rate of pitches in the strike zone. Pitchers actually avoided the strike zone against Melky. Maybe other factors are in play, but that alone is enough for me to dismiss the protection effect.
Granted, I don’t buy into that argument in most cases. I think were we see protection occur is when you get a run of fantastic hitters going back-to-back-to-back. Guys a lot better than Jose Reyes. Like if Jose Abreu, Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez, and Mike Trout batted consecutively in some order. I haven’t seen a lineup that out of hand since the PED era.