Trade Analysis: Diaz & Bauers
The Indians, Rays and to everyone’s surprise, Mariners made a trade last week with the following final results:
- Rays get Yandy Diaz and Cole Sulser
- Mariners get Edwin Encarnacion, 77th pick, and $5M
- Indians get Jake Bauers, Carlos Santana, and $6M
For my analysis, I’m going to focus on just Diaz and Bauers. Both have shown great potential but their minor league results have not yet translated to the majors.
Yandy Diaz (NFBC ADP Rank: 475)
With Jason Kipnis and his $17M contract likely to play second and Jose Ramirez at third, Diaz wasn’t guaranteed to play in Clevland. He is now in Tampa.
An analysis of Diaz begin with a look at his extreme StatCast data. Of the 480 players with at least 50 balls in play last season, Diaz ranked 57th in Hard Hit% (batted balls over 95 mph) at 44%. He can put a little zip on the ball. Just look at those arms:
Yandy Diaz: the most jacked player in baseball who's not hitting home runs. I'm hoping the Rays can change that. pic.twitter.com/e3SLMFhFCU
— Eddy Almaguer (@EddyAlmaguer) December 13, 2018
So how the hell does he have a career .083 ISO?
His problem is that most of his batted balls are on the ground. Of the same 480 players, he ranked 451 with 4.4-degree average launch angle. As Al Melchior just wrote about, the key for a batter’s success is the combination of hitting the ball hard AND in the air.
His results were even more skewed in 2017 with a 0.0-degree launch angle (461st of 466) and 50% HardHit% (5th). He was able to raise his launch angle some but not close to the ideal value of around 20 degrees. He tried to raise it some during the past offseason and got the 4-degree increase. Maybe there can be more improvement and Tampa can get it out of him. Maybe not.
His hard ground balls regularly go for hits with a .351 BABIP in the majors but just a 5% HR/FB%. The lack of homers along and no stolen bases make him a one trick pony.
As for his fantasy value next season, be careful not to pay for any launch angle improvement before it actually happens. Who knows when/if it will come. Besides the needed improvement in airing the ball out, he also doesn’t have a set position and may move around the diamond (OF, 1B, and 3B in 2018) while spending some time on the bench. It’s the Rays. Pay for the projection and enjoy anything beyond.
Jake Bauers (NFBC ADP Rank: 267)
Bauers moving made sense for both clubs with Tampa being set in the outfield (Pham, Kiermaier, and Meadows) and the Indians needing help there with Michael Brantley now a free agent and Bradley Zimmer on the shelf for some time.
He has some prospect pedigree and was ranked in the back half of Baseball America’s top-100 prospects in 2017 and 2018. An issue with Bauers is that he has no carrying trait and an average bat is not going to cut it at first base.
As an outfielder, he has the potential to be a decent contributor. Last season he stole 16 bases and hit the same number of homers between AAA and the majors. While the stolen bases are nice, he was only 16 for 28 between the two levels this season. The Indians may start giving him the red flag if he doesn’t improve.
In the minors, his batting average ranged from .263 to .296 but dropped to .201 in the majors because of a 27% K%. Most of the damage came in the season’s 2nd half with a 31% K%. Additionally, he couldn’t find a way to hit lefties (.176/.276/.319) and had some issue with the shift. He pulled the ball over 50% of the time. Recently, I found hitters who pull the ball over 45% are less likely to meet their projections.
Finally, he may not play full-time depending on who else they bring and if he continues to struggle against lefties. He’s a tough player to get behind with so many question marks and few answers. I’d prefer not to count on him for production at his current price.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
As a Rays’ fan, I can tell you that Bauers was extremely disappointing. He is a poor outfielder and, as Jeff said, can’t hit enough to play 1B. I guess Cleveland really wanted to get rid of Encarnacion — and replace him with Santana.
Fair, although at age 22 and with only 323 big league at bats it might be a bit early to conclude he can’t hit enough to play 1B. I’m a bit surprised his OBP isn’t mentioned (.368 at AAA) which has been good in the minors and he did take his walks with Tampa.
As a Cleveland fan I can tell you Yandy Diaz has been disappointing. This isn’t the first offseason he’s tried to work on this launch angle either, this is Ben a focus for multiple years and he’s finally shown some marginal improvement. We’ve all been waiting to see his pure raw power translate and until that happens, he’s a one-trick pony singles hitter with pretty much average defense.
both teams basically gave up on projects but I like getting the 23 year-old over the twenty-seven-year-old, especially since bauers fits a need more
Any data on extreme GB % and HH% players on artificial turf?
“He has some prospect pedigree and was ranked in the back half of Baseball America’s top-100 prospects in 2017 and 2018. ”
Actually his Baseball-Reference page shows that Baseball America ranked him 45th going into the 2018 season.
He is listed even better than that on his Fangraphs page – 43 overall (and went UP to 39th in the mid-season update from June 11th)
Since that ranking he’s made the ML as a 22 year old, keeping his BB% (13.6%) and increasing his ISO (from 3-year run of consistent 147 in AA/AAA, up to 183 in the MLB) while producing at a nearly average rate (95 wRC+) – again, as a 22 year old
There seems to be a bit of revisionist history going on with Bauers when people talk about this trade, and it’s very odd.
I guess it is to try and make sense of why the Rays would give Bauers & 5 million for a 28 year old non-ranked guy (merely 12th in Indians system) and a pitcher that was left unprotected for the RuleV
Bauers was ranked as a good prospects and he can take a walk but his Ks steadily went up as he went up in levels and his power inproved but not enough to project as a regular at 1b with a 25% k rate.
If he would still have the great K-BB-% rates from A ball a 180 ISO would work but if it is 25% he needs to raise his ISO a lot to play.
And he’s never been a 180 ISO guy in the minors; his career best was .166 at high A ball. He looks like a future James Loney type.
I see more raw power and speed than James loney but that’s not a bad comparison.
He’s a 50 FV overall vs Diaz at 45 FV plus bauers has tapped into his raw potential much more much quicker.
Diaz is a guy with 50 ranked raw power but his peak ISO was .136 in 2016 in AAA
The bad thing about yandy is that he loses his power when he elevates. Other hard hitting not enough elevators like hosmer still have good homer per flyball ratios (20%) but diaz is at a terrible 5%. His EV on flyballs supports that, grounders and liners are like mid 90s for him but flyballs just upper 80s.
He ia not just lifting enough but if he lifts it is chopped under and overspun.
So he would not just have to raise his LA but also drastically add his swing to add more power to his lifted balls. Also it doesn’t help he is absolutely unable to pull air balls.
Changing him would be a pretty big project. I mean daniel Murphy said he basically just aims more for the bottom of the ball but for diaz it is more complicated because his swing is so choppy.
This is extremely on point as someone who has followed Cleveland for years. He’s got a weird choppy swing which has helped him go through the system without launching the ball because he hits it hard and play, but for him to be anything more than a slap hitter with marginal speed he will have to completely retool the swing which has already been attempted
The kid got pull happy with 6 homers in July. He said so in an interview on The Athletic after the trade. We’ll see if he can get back to his smarter ways in the minors.