Archive for Chris B. Young

It is never too late to improve your team! Here are five players available on the waiver wire under certain thresholds, according to the numbers at CBS Sports, who could be assets for your squad for the remainder of the season.

Under 40 Percent Owned

Chris B. Young (33%) – It has been a brutal season for Young, who currently finds his average beneath the Mendoza line. But he has 4 HR in nine games since his recall from Triple-A, including a 3-HR game. Power like that is usually not sitting on the waiver wire and for those hoping to move up in HR, it is a gamble worth taking that he can hit a few more the rest of the month. Young had 32 HR in 2007.

Under 30 Percent Owned

Wade Davis (24%) – By now everyone is aware of Davis’ major league debut, when he allowed just three hits and one run in seven innings and struck out nine batters. He reached 94 on the radar gun and averaged 92.2 in his first start for Tampa Bay. In parts of two seasons in Triple-A, Davis was 14-10 with 195 strikeouts in 211.2 IP.

Under 20 Percent Owned

Chris Getz (17%) – Back from a strained right oblique, Getz is batting .333 with 4 SB in seven games after being out for nearly three weeks. The average probably will not be that good for the rest of the year but Getz does bring speed to the table. If you are looking for steals down the stretch, he can be a valuable addition.

Under 10 Percent Owned

Tim Redding (3%) – In his last three games, all against teams in the playoff hunt, Redding is 1-0 with a 2.45 ERA with 15 SO in 18.1 IP. He spent a good deal of time this year in the bullpen but Redding should be in the rotation for the rest of the season. He is not as glamorous as a hot rookie like Davis, but he throws strikes and has a chance to pick up a few wins down the stretch.

Is This Guy Really on the Waiver Wire?

Alberto Callaspo (49%) – A second baseman with a good AVG and decent R totals, Callaspo is a starting quality player. Recently he has been on a hot streak with RBIs, too. In his last 15 games, Callaspo has .302-1-10-5-1 line, with eight of those RBIs coming in the past five games.

For all of the club’s touted young hitting talent, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ offense has flat lined in 2009. “Boasting” the third-worst wOBA in the major leagues (the A’s and Giants are one and two, the M’s fourth- it’s a west coast thing), the D-Backs are off the sluggish 12-17 start, with a run differential of negative twenty-two.

Arizona’s center fielder and right fielder offer quite the contrast in terms of making good on that former top prospect status. While Justin Upton has been downright venomous to opposing pitchers, Chris B. Young continues to raise concerns about his control of the zone.

Upton, of course, is a hitting prodigy. The 6-2, 205 pounder dominated minor league hurlers several years older than him, including a 2007 tour-de-force that saw hit bat a combined .319/.410/.551 between High-A Visalia and AA Mobile.

After an understandable bumpy start in the bigs as a teenager (.277 wOBA in 152 PA during the 2007 season), Upton more than held his own in 2008. In 417 PA, he batted .250/.353/.463, walking at an impressive clip (13.2%) while posting a .347 wOBA. His K rate was sky-high (34%), but that’s nitpicking when one considers that most 20 year-old players are toiling in A-Ball or are sophomores in college.

In 2009, Upton is one of the few Arizona hitters not embarrassing himself at the dish. The 21 year-old’s .405 wOBA paces the club by nearly 40 points (Mark Reynolds is second, at .367). Upton has creamed the ball, with a .271 ISO that runs circles around last year’s already-outstanding .213 mark. While he has continued to draw free passes at a decent rate (10.5%), his Kingman-esque strikeout totals haven’t been as much of a problem. He’s whiffed 25.9% of the time, still a high number, but the progress in that department is encouraging. Overall, Upton has compiled 5.1 Batting Runs, which already tops last year’s mark of 4.1.

While Upton has been busy claiming his spot as one of the most valuable properties in the game, Young has been hard at work trying to solve the energy crisis. The solution? Swing and miss enough, and we’ll have all the wind power necessary to end dependence on foreign oil. The former Pale Hose prospect (the principal swag in the Javier Vazquez trade several years back) had a spectacular minor league career, with a .266/.355/.500 line that actually understates his performance, if anything (he slugged .545 in AA and .532 in AAA). However, his performance to this point has left some wondering, “is that all there is?”

Young is in the midst of his third full season in the majors, but his results have cratered. After posting wOBA’s of .331 in 2007 and .329 in 2008, the 25 year-old has managed a feeble .248 this year. Young has always swung and missed with frequency, but his stellar secondary skills (walks and power) were expected to make the contact concerns moot. That just hasn’t been the case to this point:

2006: 7.9 BB%, 17.1 K%
2007: 7.0 BB%, 24.8 K%
2008: 9.0 BB%, 26.4 K%
2009: 5.9 BB%, 32.3 K%

What’s strange is that while Young’s control of the zone would appear to be eroding, he has actually increased his pitches/PA in each full season (2007 to now): 3.8 in ’07, 4.0 in ’08 and 4.2 in ’09. His overall contact rate hasn’t changed significantly, either, hovering between 75-77%.

In 2009, however, it seems as though Young is making worse contact: his Outside-Contact% has jumped from 53.7% in ’08 to 65.3% this season (62.1% MLB average). Conversely, his Z-Contact% (percentage of contact within the strike zone) has tumbled from 85.3% to 79.2% (87.7% MLB average). He’s putting the bat on the ball more often on offerings off the dish, while coming up empty with regularity on the pitches that do cross the plate. Young is also getting jammed more often than any other major league hitter: his IF/FB% is 41.7%, nearly five points higher than second-place Rick Ankiel.

Young’s .238 BABIP surely isn’t helping matters, and given a decent line drive percentage (18.5%), you’d expect that number to climb. Still, Young is going to have to do better than a 0.19 BB/K ratio if he’s going to lean more toward Upton’s brilliance in right, as opposed to Conor Jackson’s similar brand of disappointment in left.

To be honest, I had figured that Diamondbacks centerfielder Chris B. Young would be entrenched as a star-caliber player by this point in his career. A 6-2, 200 pounder with a unique blend of patience, power and athleticism, Young was originally a 16th round steal by the Chicago White Sox in the 2001 amateur entry draft. On the heels of a gargantuan season for AA Birmingham in 2005 (.277/.377/.545, 26 HR in 554 PA), Young was shipped to the D-Backs in a deal that netted Chicago the equally enigmatic Javier Vazquez. The one question that pundits had about Young was his lofty strikeout totals, but he appeared to be making some gains on that front as he climbed the minor league ladder:

2005 (AA): 12.7 BB%, 23.3 K%
2006 (AAA): 11.5 BB%, 17.7 K%

Following a .276/.359/.532 campaign at AAA Tucson that included the reduction in his whiffs, Young made a brief cameo with Arizona and looked poised to post some outstanding numbers as an everyday player in 2007.

However, Young’s transition to the majors did not go as smoothly as expected. His solid plate discipline eroded, as he managed just a 7% walk rate to go along with a lofty 24.8 K%. While he displayed a good deal of pop (.230 ISO), Young’s .237/.295/.467 showing earned him a -0.05 WPA/LI.

2008 brought him some gains in the patience department, as he upped his walk rate to 9%. However, that sinister K rate rose to 26.4% and he posted a .248/.315/.443 line, with a slightly better WPA/LI of 0.24. Young’s 77.47% contact rate placed him in the lower third tier among qualified batters, though it was actually an improvement over his 76.66% rate in 2007. Young also got jammed with alarming frequency, as his 16.8 IF/FB% was the fifth-highest mark among qualified batters. So, what gives?

If a player possesses good secondary skills (walks and power), strikeouts do not preclude success. However, a K rate in the vicinity of Young’s does put a significant cap on his batting average, putting more stress on his ability to draw free passes and pop extra base hits; if you’re only going to manage a .230 average, you better be able to draw walks by the bushel to compensate (lest you post execrable OBP’s like Young has to this point). It does appear that Young made some gains in this department, as he lowered his Outside Swing Percentage (O-Swing%) from 22.87 in 2007 to 20.43% in 2008.

The question regarding Young at this point is, will he draw enough free passes to offset the handicap of a .230-ish batting average? Given his track record, it seems reasonable that Young will draw a few more walks as he matures, but the high K rate is here to stay given his contact rate and his issues with breaking balls. Still, he has the secondary skills and speed (27 SB in ’07, 14 in ’08) to be a fantasy asset. Only 25 heading into next season, Young still possesses the skills to guide him down a Mike Cameron-type career path if he can be a little more selective at the plate.