Prince Albert and the Angels Infield
I’m really good at burying the lead, but this time it would be silly to. Because any analysis of the Angels infield absolutely must begin with Albert Pujols. The future hall of famer (let’s hope, I feel like nothing is obvious anymore given the state of the BBWAA) used to be as consistently great as one could possibly ask for. He was arguably the best hitter in baseball at points and wOBAd between .404 to .461 for 10 straight seasons. Damn.
But his performance begun an accelerated decline thereafter and he did the unimaginable in 2013 — post a wOBA only slightly above the league average. Even scarier, his wOBA was actually below average for a first baseman! It would be easy to blame injuries on his recent struggles (and yes, struggles is more of a relative term here), but what health issues contributed to his poor(er) performances in 2011 and 2012? His power has disappeared as he’s lost 25 feet of batted ball distance since 2010 and 13 since 2011. His foot is apparently 100 percent, so we’ll find out exactly how much his health played a role.
Everything is trending the wrong way though. His walk rate has collapsed (though that perfectly coincides with a sharp drop in intentional walks), his strikeout rate and SwStk% have been increasing, and his ISO has tumbled. But, he’s still only 34, which is not totally over the hill, and although his current skills are a far cry from vintage Pujols, they still remain pretty darn good. So after all the negativity, I feel like he might be a good value in drafts this year.
Now we’ll move back to behind the plate, where Hank Conger slowly began stealing playing time away from Chris Iannetta. It was a strong first half that earned him the extra playing time, but he fell back to Earth in the second and suffered a power outage. That should mean that the two will likely battle again this year with no clear-cut first stringer. Neither catcher is all that good defensively, but apparently Conger is a good pitch framer. Offensively, Iannetta continues to contribute much more positively than it appears with his walk heavy game. Once a power force, his ISO has dropped now for four straight seasons. Still, at the moment you have to assume Iannetta will contribute more offensively, which should be enough to give him slightly more playing time with relatively even defensive skills.
Howie Kendrick mans one side of the middle of the diamond as usual, and I still scratch my head as to why many considered him a future batting champion. Obviously those people were looking at Kendrick’s .369 batting average in a half season at Triple-A in 2006 and completely ignoring the fact that he required a .409 BABIP to do it. Not surprisingly, he’s only hit .300 twice and sports a career .292 average. His combination of home runs and contact simply isn’t good enough to contend for a batting crown. It’s odd how his HR/FB rates have fluctuated so greatly, though maybe it’s not so surprising given his low FB%, so lots of randomness happens when dealing with small numbers.
Kendrick’s double play partner will once again be Erick Aybar, who is currently trying his darnedest to become a zero-category contributor. He never had much power, but he used to be counted on for good speed and now that may be coming to an end. He’ll be 30 this year and sometimes players just abruptly stop stealing bases. He doesn’t do enough of anything else, so he’ll either enjoy a speed rebound and reward his fantasy owners with some semblance of value, or be confined to AL-Only leagues.
Rounding out the infield is David Freese, who was acquired in the interesting trade that sent defensive wiz Peter Bourjos to the Cardinals. I have never been a Freese fan, but his batted ball distance and resulting xHR/FB rate suggest a power rebound is likely. Of course, it didn’t necessarily require a hardcore equation to figure that as you could guess given his previous two seasons. It appears that he’ll open the season hitting fifth behind Mike Trout, Pujols and Josh Hamilton, which should afford him tons of RBI opportunities. I’m flip-flopping here and calling a player that had typically been overvalued one who should yield a profit for a change.
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
In a 12 team snake draft, where do you think Pujols will be going?
My guess is he won’t last beyond the 3rd, though I saw him go in the 4th of a MDC draft the other night.
Pujols in the 3rd/4th? That’s crazy, though probable for where he’ll go on average.
it’s been said before, but could pujols be 36 instead of 34. Came up at “21” already hitting .330/.400/.600. Had his offensive peak at “23”. His power peak came at “26”. What normally happens during people after a peak type year is they have an off year due to plain regression at “27”. Had a bounce back season at “28” and has been declining since then pretty steadily.
now go and add 2-3 years to those numbers and the narrative now plays out like any other player
The last 3 years the Dominican Republic has reportedly been cracking down hard on forged birth certificates. It’s obviously still possible, but I like to give Pujols the benefit of the doubt.
It’s a Saberist union rule that you absolutely must not entertain any notion that Pujols is older than his stated age. I think they boot you out if you do, blacklist you from writing for any Saber sites. Akin to how Joe Sheehan and BP screamed bloody insults at anyone who suggested Barry Bonds just might be doing steroids back in the early aughts. And for the exact same reason, harder to feel superior to the goobers when you acknowledge that every once in a great while they’re right and we’re wrong on something.
I suspect they’ve also all gone back into their archives to airbrush out any possible references to Poz’s article re Pujols’ age. It opened my eyes, no way an open-minded person can read it and then CONCLUDE with certainty that Pujols is as old as he claims.
you know what would be even scarier. Is if he:
A) Is older than stated age.
–and–
B) Also took steroids prior to them testing for it.
–and–
C) built a hall of fame career on his ability to train harder than anyone else because of steroids.
–then–
D) when testing starts, he stops taking them all together and begins to slowly lose the pharmaceutical edge
–but–
E) he knows it only takes one team to pay him $250 MM
–and–
F) he will fade into obscurity, but walk into the hall of fame based on the first half of his career.
All the while playing the innocent philanthropist who was attacked by the media and his home town team.
Dude sounds alot like Gustavo Fring
I think it’s more of a sabrist union rule to not think things without, you know, evidence.
Citing Pujols’ country of origin is at best circumstantial, at worst nationalistic.
I’ll quibble with your C), Pat G. Plenty of other guys using, so even if Albert did use, he was still on an even playing field whatever % of the time.
Good, I’m glad this is the SABR rule. It has afforded me, and others who assign a nonzero chance that Pujols just might be older than advertised, an advantage over the last few years.
Travis L, please continue to ridicule this position by calling me a nationalist pig, and I’ll keep smiling and taking your money.
wow i just reread this and i apologize for the stroke in this sentence
“Regression can explain the off year at “27” which is common for players coming off a career year.
Why the unnecessary hate for Kendrick? He’s “only” hit .300 twice and “only” has a career average of .292. Not to mention this is at a weak-hitting position in 2B.
I think it is a reflection of the very high hopes that many (including myself) have had for years. Despite the fluctuating power, Kendrick has consistently been a top 10 2B, but not the perennial all star that so many expected.
I didn’t detect any hate. Just some perspective as to how absurd the batting champ expectations are/were regarding Kendrick. There are still Angels fans who still think he was supposed to be a batting champ and don’t like him because he didn’t fulfill their unrealistic expectations.
Re Freese’s xHR/FB and possible power rebound: Isn’t the big a tough place to hit HRs and isn’t the AL West (with it’s 3 cool marine layer* parks) much harder on HR totals than the NL Central? Would we expect Bourjos to hit HRs at a higher rate in St Louis than he did for the Angels?
*I believe that humidity increases batted ball distance only if you hold temperature even, but Oakland, Seattle and Anaheim’s humidity significantly cools temperature, unlike Arlington’s.
the “…Big A a…”
At the next upgrade, please install an edit function.
Angel stadium had a 95 RHB HR park factor less year, but Busch was even worse at 90
Busch is also a difficult stadium to homer in, one of the toughest in the game for RHB.
Beaten to the punch. Additionally, PNC Park is the toughest in the game for RH HR, so the NL Central wasn’t a skip in the park for Freese.
In the NL you have:
-Busch and Angel’s Stadium being almost a wash for RHB,
-PNC could be considered the Colesium NL Central equivalent
-then you have Miller Park and Arlington comparing pretty well
-and subsequently Minute Maid and Great American matching well
-and lastly the Mariners would comp most like Wrigley especially with the walls in now.
I don’t know the stats, but I’d imagine Freese would hit better in the AL West overall for power.
All of you guys are awesome. I offer lazy speculation, Podhorzer, Abcess and Mr. Blake deliver helpful, cogent responses. And no one insults me. Is this the Internet?
Seriously, thanks for being you.
Now that the OF is open again, yes the Big A is a very difficult park for RHB to hit HR’s in. When it was enclosed, the Big A was more of a big HR park. There are some little detailed differences that make it harder as well. One big one is the high wall in RF. When the stadium was enclosed, that high porch in RF was there to house the extra seats for LA Rams games. During Angels games, they just put the RF wall in front of it, and you could see the seats hiding under the RF porch. The RF wall was standard 8 foot wall, so hitting it over that wall was a HR. You didn’t have to hit it up onto the RF porch like you do now. That is taking away a number of HR’s from hitters there. But it is actually easier to hit HRs there than it was in the 1960s and early 1970s. For some stupid reason, the fences were a mile away and no one could hit a HR out of the Big A.
You too, thank you.
Burying the lede
AND
his performance began
Sigh. Yes, I’m that guy. It’s my fault for letting it bother me, but poor grammar simply kills my ability to read this. There may be more errors after “begun,” but I couldn’t finish this piece. Maybe some other time.
I started reading this article and felt the same way. Then I laughed and thought about Mike shooting things. Mike is a skilled shooter of things.
I don’t think grammar, spelling, etc. corrections should be negative. You shouldn’t present them as such, and the author shouldn’t take them in a negative manner. These guys manage to churn out quite a few articles and accidents happen.
I’m sure we can all agree that MOAR CONTENTZ is better than MOAR COPY-EDITING.
When you catch an error, you should react as if you’ve run into a chap with his fly undone. You can politely point it out or you can ignore it.
It’s perfectly acceptable to spell lede lead. I’ve seen this argument many times and editors for major papers call it lead so who the hell am I? Sorry that it prevented you from finishing an article about fantasy baseball though, you crazy person.
“Lede” and “lead” are both perfectly acceptable. You didn’t have to be that guy.
We’re all aware a Prince Albert is a dick piercing right?
Would that make the Orioles interested or no?
The excitement around Kendrick and future batting titles was more than just AAA in 2006. Between 2002-2005 Kendrick hit .359 with a .385 BABIP across exactly 1300 PAs, and he’s had a .340 BABIP in the majors. His issue is plate discipline: Contact% just under 80% and O-Swing% just over 35%.
One other thing I remember scouts raving about when he came up was the flatness of his swing, and how it should (in theory) contribute to produce line drive after line drive. You have to be able to make contact first though before you can hit line drives.
Kendrick got sent down when he was struggling in 2009. When he came back up he hit .358. That made me think he could win a batting title, but he seems to be very streaky. He would have to stay hot for more than 1-2 months which he has never managed to do.
I like how they’ll be paying Pujols $30 mil when he’s 41, but hey I guess in 2021 that’ll be seem to be merely chump change by then, right? And maybe they’ll be able to get out of it as LA should be underwater by then thanks to global warming and/or an earthquake.
Or maybe the baseball commissioner will just decide to suspend him for a year or two at age 39 for the integrity of the game or something…
“Howie Kendrick mans one side of the middle of the diamond as usual, and I still scratch my head as to why many considered him a future batting champion. Obviously those people were looking at Kendrick’s .369 batting average in a half season at Triple-A in 2006 and completely ignoring the fact that he required a .409 BABIP to do it.”
This is selective, to say the least. Howie didn’t only hit .369 in half a season of Triple-A, he hit .360 in 399 minor league games, consistently hitting over .350 at every level. Then in 2007, his second year in the bigs, he hit .322 at age 23 (albeit in 88 games), so a batting title seemed very possible.
So I don’t think it is a head-scratcher that a player hitting .360 in almost 400 minor league games and hitting .322 in the bigs at age 23 should be a contender for a batting title in the majors. The question is more like, why WASN’T he?
Compare the following:
Player A: .360/.403/.569 in 399 games
Player B: .347/.391/.520 in 175 games
Both players arrived in the big leagues at age 22. The first, obviously Kendrick, has a lifetime BA of .292 and has never come close to a batting title; the latter has a lifetime BA of .338 and won eight batting titles (OK, its obviously Tony Gwynn).
Now obviously minor league numbers don’t tell us everything, but one would think that Howie’s Hornsbyan line would result in more than what he’s done. I think the key here, and what sabermetrics don’t–cannot–touch is human psychology. Howie just doesn’t have that spark to turn his incredible hand-eye coordination and formidable batspeed into a batting title. Part of the problem is his propensity to chase balls low and away. A little more self-discipline and his career average could be 20 points higher, with a batting title trophy or two in the closet.
Batting average isn’t a skill. It’s a result. Therefore, you must analyze its components, specifically, a batter’s strikeout rate, BABIP and home run rate to determine a hitter’s batting average potential.
Kendrick’s career minor league BABIP was .391! Do you think anyone expecting him to be a future batting champ had a clue of this number? It’s doubtful. But that’s all you needed to know to be sure he wouldn’t come anywhere close to his batting average once he reached the Majors.
> Kendrick’s career minor league BABIP was .391! Do you think anyone expecting him to be a future batting champ had a clue of this number? It’s doubtful.
I knew at the time that his BABIP was high, but he had over 1600 minor league at bats. At a certain point, even if you acknowledge a sky high BABIP needs to come down somewhat, you have to think it’s the player.