Projecting Bryce Harper’s Plate Appearances

While projecting a player without any experience in the Major Leagues is difficult enough, we do have processes that help us come to a reasonable estimate of the player’s current talent level. Use some major-league equivalencies to equalize his Minor League numbers, weight the years, add a little boost, take a little off — whatever the details are, we’ve made progress in this arena. Not a ton of progress — a simple Marcel monkey of a projection is still just about as good as any other projection — but some progress.

What’s missing is a way to project playing time. Or at least, a commonly accepted and readily available process for projecting playing time. It’s difficult to do — there are so many moving parts. What will his manager think? How much will a small sample outburst in Spring Training (by the player or his competition for playing time) mean to his front office? Who will get injured? How much does his team value his arbitration years — will he come up with the team because they need his bat now, or will he go to the Minor Leagues to preserve years of control down the line?

All of these are factors in playing time. And, with a rough look at the schedule and at the team, we can actually try to put a number on these possibilities. Let’s try it out with Bryce Harper.

There are already many confounding entries on Harper’s player page. He’s a highly-regarded prospect with great low-minors numbers and a tepid debut in Double-A. He’s spanked the Arizona Fall League a couple times now, and he’s made real progress in his most worrisome category (strikeouts). Despite some real concerns about his makeup (literally and figuratively), Harper has also made progress in that arena, forgoing the eye black and toning down some of the take-out slide, in-game toughness.

With 147 Double-A plate appearances, he could be ready or he could need more time. One team might look at his body of work and say, if he shows it in the spring, he can make my team. Another team would look at him at say, he’s 19, hasn’t played much in the high minors, and needs more seasoning, so let’s give him a full year down there — it’ll even help us keep costs down in the future. A third team might say, well, he needs to go down for a little bit, but if late June comes and he’s killing Double-A and is no longer a Super Two arbitration candidate, we can give him a look. One team might feel all three ways about the same player.

Notice anything? We’re coalescing around some dates here. There’s the first day of the season for the team that wants to push their prospect and needs the player. There’s late June for the more conservative penny-pinching team that still needs help. And then there’s September for the team that wants to take it as slowly as possible. Can we give percentages to these days for Bryce harper?

Day One (600 PAs)
Harper kills it in spring training and the team sees enough out of Jayson Werth in center field, and enough health from Stephen Strasburg, that they decide to go for it. They call Harper up to the bigs from day one and install him into right field, only to be replaced by Roger Bernadina late in games and from time to time to keep him fresh. This has been discussed, so it’s a possibility, but not a probability. Let’s call it 10% likely, but you can use your own number.

Late June (350 PAs)
The team likes what they see from Harper, but they aren’t sure that 2012 is their most important year. With an eye on their window, they decide that they’d like to see a little bit from their prospect, and try to avoid Super Two arbitration raises, so they wait almost until July to put Harper on the field as a starter. Maybe they don’t like Werth in center and it takes a little time to figure out their center field situation. This seems probable, even — if Harper is killing it, the fans will want to see him. Let’s call this 40%.

After the All-Star Break (250 PAs)
This isn’t a very natural moment from an arbitration perspective, but it does seem like the break provides a moment for the team to re-asses. Injuries also seem to come to a head around the break. Maybe not likely, but it’s not impossible that Harper joins the bigs around the break. Another 10%.

September One (100 PAs)
The day rosters expand is a very natural moment for a player on the 40-man roster to come up. Harper will have had a full year in the high minors, his arbitration situation won’t be dire, and the last month of the season could provide him an easy first look at the Major Leagues. This is a catch-all for the prospects that didn’t make it earlier in the season but that the team wants to see more of. Let’s give it the rest: 40%.

Now you add em all up:

10% 600 PAs
40% 350 PAs
10% 250 PAs
40% 100 PAs
————-
= 265 PAs

Of course this is guesswork like any other, but there is at least a whiff of process about this. And process is repeatable and trackable. You could try this with your own likelihoods and PA thresholds and refine them every year, and you’d be able to add serious value to projections, which cannot be as intuitive about playing time projections. Once the new CBA takes hold, the plate thresholds in the middle will be more obvious, and now that we have this process, we can do some research about when prospects are called up.

Lastly, you can’t take the number it spits out as gospel. There’s still a 40% chance it’s 100 PAs and a 40% chance it’s 350 PAs, and both of those are significantly different outcomes. But, if you were bullish on Harper, and filled out a similar worksheet that produced 300 or 350 PAs, you’d have to use that playing time projection to reel in your optimism. It can serve as a stark reminder that betting on a player that has never played in the Major Leagues is an iffy proposition.