The Marisnick Mirage

Jake Marisnick was a third-round pick for the Toronto Blue Jays in the 2009 Draft. After honing a do-everything centerfield profile for two seasons in the low minors, he began popping up on industry Top 100 Prospect lists reaching as high as 28 in 2012 with a low of 79 prior to 2014. In mid-November of 2012, he was a key piece in the mega-deal between Toronto and Miami after a two-level season that saw him rip through High-A before the rich talent of Double-A stymied him en route to a .622 OPS in 55 games.

He repeated Double-A in 2013 with his new club and enjoyed much better results (.860 OPS in 67 games). Results which were enough to earn him a call to the bigs in late-July, but he couldn’t get it going with the Marlins. His strikeout and walk skills were identical to Double-A, but he languished with a .478 OPS in 118 PA thanks in part to a .232 BABIP. Marisnick would find himself being dealt again in 2014, this time in a smaller, but still substantial deal. The Astros acquired him with some minor leagues (including #6 overall pick from ’13 Colin Moran) for Jarred Cosart, Enrique Hernandez, and a minor leaguer.

Marisnick had spent 14 uninspiring games with the Marlins prior to the trade, but a solid 89-game stint in Triple-A when he wasn’t with the big club maintained his appeal and allowed him to be the centerpiece of a solid deal with the Astros. Houston immediately inserted Marisnick into the lineup and gave him two months of playing time. He was better with the Stros, if only because the bar had been set so low as a Marlin (25 OPS+ in 54 games).

He put together a .272/.299/.370 line in 186 PA, with modest power and speed offerings (3 HRs, 6 SBs; paced to 10/20 in 600 PA) that were well off the pace of his minor league work (14 HRs, 34 SBs per 600 PA). Of course, it is a bit unreasonable to expect a guy to instantly match his minor league at the big league level so there was still time for Marisnick to develop, but the flaws were starting to show in his game, namely: patience, or a lack thereof with high strikeout rates and low walk rates.

He had a 26% strikeout rate and 4% walk rate through his first 355 MLB PA, well off the 18% and 7% percent marks we saw in 2051 minor league PA. Though just 24 coming into the season, there wasn’t much buzz around Marisnick. He was seen a guy with too much swing-and-miss and not enough power to justify it. There was some speed upside, but finding an empty-ish 20-25 SBs isn’t that hard. Although, I will say David Wiers was ahead of the game pointing out that it might be more of 30-35 SBs in which case the emptiness around it is less important.

Marisnick had a blazing hot April and it looked like even Wiers had sold him short. Marisnick was sporting a .379/.422/.621 line with a couple homers, 12 runs, 10 RBIs, and eight stolen bases in 65 PA. Getting crazy with the extrapolation game, he was headed toward an 18 HR, 103 R, 86 RBI, and 69 SB season. Obviously those would all come down, but there was some excitement generated by Marisnick’s hot April because of the skills that accompanied the run. In fact, let’s bump it out to May 4^th because he started a five-game strikeout-free run on April 30^th and it really highlighted the change we’d been seeing to that point.

Adding the extra four games doesn’t change the bottom line much. He was still sporting a .366/.410/.606 line and he added both a homer and stolen base, but the important numbers in his line were 10 and 5. And that’s strikeouts and walks. Through 23 games, he was toting a 13% K rate and 6% walk rate in 79 PA. By this point, we were past the stabilization for strikeouts which was more important in the equation the walks. Now that only means that what we saw was real, not that he was guaranteed to maintain it going forward. However, even with some regression, it was looking like a skills change we could believe in.

The snapping of that five-game no-strikeout streak started a 15-game run (that’s still going) during which he’s had just four strikeout-free games and six multi-strikeout games (after none through the first 23). Marisnick is sporting an obscene 36% strikeout rate during the downturn and it has cratered his production with just a .180/.200/.200 line in 53 PA. The worst part is that there hasn’t been any major adjustment by the opposition underlining the cold streak.

It’s not like he was just feasting on fastballs and so he stopped getting them or anything. He was crushing just about anything (small hole v. changeups, but only 7 PA) in those first 23 games, especially breaking stuff, and now he’s hitting absolutely nothing (sub-.500 OPS against every pitch type). He was a bit above average on his hard/soft split through May 4^th (64% hard; 62% is average) and now he’s a tick below (61%) in these last 15 games.

There haven’t been any sweeping changes from a location standpoint in the approach v. Marisnick, either. He’s getting virtually the same percentage of pitches in the zone (down 0.6% in these last 15) and they’re getting him inside a little more (up from 26% to 28%), but that’s really it. They are working him low in the zone more often, but he didn’t do his early damage on pitches up so that doesn’t really look like a cause for the slide. The opposition is beating him in the middle of the zone which is exactly where he did his best work early on.

He had a 1.359 OPS and 6% strikeout rate on pitches in the middle third of the zone in those first 23 games. He’s got a .205 OPS and 45% strikeout rate on pitches (mostly fastballs) in the same location over his last 15. Maybe his fast start was an unsustainable hot streak and this is an unsustainable cold streak leaving him somewhere in the middle. He still has a .289 AVG and .766 OPS with paces of 13 HRs and 39 SBs – very useful numbers from a fantasy outfielder. But maybe the start was an unsustainable and the cold run is a precursor to showing he’s really just the guy we saw in his first 105 MLB games (.564 OPS with a pace of 7 HR/22 SB over a full season).

I’m a little torn right now because of just how good that first sample was in terms of making contact. We have two wildly disparate samples without similarly disparate changes in approach or pitch distribution that might help us understand why the performance has fluctuated so much. I will say that I don’t actually think he’s just the .564 OPS guy we saw in his first two partial seasons, but I’m dubious that he can even hold his current .792 OPS the rest of the way, let alone show more of his April working down the line.

If he somehow can – and given the variance in predicting a single number, I’m considering anything between .770-.810  as “holding” his current level – then he’s Charlie Blackmon with a little less power and a little more speed. He’s more likely to carry an OPS in the lower .700s with 12 HRs and 25 SBs, so like 2013 Nate McLouth. Value him as such going forward unless we see a drastic turnaround in the recent strikeout trend.