Prospect Watcher: Travis Snider

by
April 7, 2009

This season I am debuting a new feature that will hopefully catch on and also help fantasy baseball owners. The Prospect Watcher will breakdown one (or two) rookie player’s hitting performance. The format of the feature will likely evolve during the course of the season as I find out what works and doesn’t work. As well, if you have any suggestions just let me know by posting them here or by e-mailing me.

Toronto Blue Jays 12 Detroit Tigers 5
April 6, 2009 in Toronto (Night Game/Dome)
Travis Snider | LF | Toronto

At-Bat 1:

  • Pitcher: Justin Verlander (RHP)
  • Situation: Leading off the second innings | 0-1 count
  • Result: Double to center
  • Pitch: Change-up | outside and middle (strike) | 85 mph

    At-Bat 2:

  • Pitcher: Justin Verlander (RHP)
  • Situation: Fourth inning, one out, none on | 0-0 count
  • Result: Solo home run
  • Pitch: Fastball | outside and low (strike) | 92 mph

    At-Bat 3:

  • Pitcher: Eddie Bonine (RHP)
  • Situation: Fifth inning, one out, runner on 1B | 0-0 count
  • Result: Ground out, advances runner to second
  • Pitch: Curveball | inside and up (strike) | 83 mph

    At-Bat 4:

  • Pitcher: Nate Robertson (LHP)
  • Situation: Two out, runner on first
  • Result: Strikeout swinging
  • Pitch: Slider | outside and low (ball) | 83 mph

    • * * *

    Pitching Performance of Note: St. Louis Cardinals’ rookie Jason Motte, who earned the right to close games to begin the season with a dominating spring, blew his first save opportunity of the year, which ultimately resulted in a loss for the club. In one inning of work, Motte allowed four runs on four hits. The 4-2 game for St. Louis ended 6-4 for Pittsburgh. Freddy Sanchez, Eric Hinske and Jack Wilson all hit doubles off of Motte.

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    Marc Hulet has been writing at FanGraphs since 2008. His work focuses on prospects and fantasy. Follow him on Twitter @marchulet.

    6 Comments
    Oldest
    Newest Most Voted
    Jason
    17 years ago

    Hi Marc,

    Love this idea/feature. Might I suggest a brief commentary for those of us who didn’t actually see the game? You know, things like “he struck out but it was a great at bat and questionable call by the umpire”….or….”his homerun barely cleared the fence and would be an F9 in any other park”…..

    Just a thought. Otherwise, I’m really excited about the fantasy content rolling out of this site!

    Regards,
    Jason

    1
    NBH
    17 years ago

    This site promotes large sample sizes…are you going to post Travis Snider’s at bats each day? Otherwise I don’t really understand the point.

    0
    Kris
    17 years ago

    People under appreciate small sample sizes because of all of the warnings and doomsday predictions.

    It’s annoying, stupid, and idiotic. While you can’t make sweeping conclusions based on small sample sizes, you can’t just throw the statistics out as if they’ve never happened.

    The events have occurred, and cannot be ignored.

    Anyone who’s done any work in statistics knows that we’re not going to get a definitive answer in baseball. We’re not even going to get a good answer until 3/4 of the way through the season, and that’s just a *good* answer.

    So you work with what you’ve got, and when you’re able to add qualitative analysis, you’re only improving the level of confidence you can put into the statistics.

    20 Games worth of statistics, plus notes from watching the games is probably a hell of a lot more useful than statistics from 40 games without any qualitative analysis.

    That’s the end of my rant. Your eyes can fool you, but if you know what you’re looking for….

    0
    Sean
    17 years ago

    Looks like waiting for his pitch isn’t exactly Snider’s best attribute. Can’t argue with the result though.

    0
    Marc
    17 years ago

    Small sample sizes can be helpful, though, from a fantasy perspective and this is a fantasy tool. People, by viewing this can identify such things are, how is the player swinging this week, how is he doing again RH/LHs… At the end of the year, if you have 20 of these for Snider than you can perhaps notice some trends which create a need to dig deeper into the numbers.

    After reading this, I notice Snider had arguably his worst at-bat on Monday against the LH. If he had been facing a left-handed starter on Tuesday I may have pulled him in favor of someone else. In fact, he did face a LH reliever in his second game of the year and did not have a great at-bat… So now I know to keep an eye on this trend, while not jumping to any conclusions.

    1
    Kris
    17 years ago

    From a fantasy prospective, deciding whether or not a rookie will succeed over a full-season is a crap-shoot. With Snider, we had some stats from last year to work with, but projecting them over a full season is idiotic. This is where small sample size-comes into play, taking a statistic where the margin of error is high, and extrapolating it over a season. Obviously, it magnifies the margin of error. I don’t think people are doing this with Snider, or else he’d be a top-50 pick.

    People are however doing this with Longoria, which is downright scary. Longoria’s sample size doesn’t come close to describing who he is as a player, and extrapolating 400AB into 550AB is stupid-silly.

    Anyways, as is the case with any young prospect, we know he can hit the ball hard, what we want to look at is why Snider is swinging at the first pitch so often. This is what we’re not getting from Snider’s statistics. While we are getting his FP%, what we aren’t getting is that Snider went one pitch go by in his first 3 AB, and it was a strike (he probably swung, I don’t recall)

    The question a fantasy owner has to ask himself is whether or not opposing teams have the book on Snider now. If they continue throwing Snider strikes, he’ll be a huge help to your fantasy squad. If they start throwing him junk, and make him take a walk — then Snider is going to have some issues, and generally won’t help your squad.

    -2