Travis Snider in Pittsburgh
Travis Snider is now a Buc, and in the deepest of leagues, he’s probably gone from your waiver wire already. And in the shallowest of leagues, even the biggest fan would have to admit that he’s no sure thing, and that the strikeouts could keep the batting average too low to take advantage of his nascent power. But in the leagues in between, we are stuck wondering how excited to get.
The strikeouts are a problem. Among people his age and younger with his many plate appearances in the big leagues, Snider’s power so far ranks poorly too, though. Among the eight guys with a sub-.200 isolated slugging percentage and all those strikeouts, the only positive signs are Michael Saunders, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Pedro Alvarez.
Snider is coming off one of his better combinations of power and strikeout rate right now, though (17.1% K% and .263 ISO in Triple-A Las Vegas in the PCL). What will the change in leagues do for his strikeout rate? From a game perspective, he gets a new shot at a fresh start — opposing teams won’t have the same book on him, and that might help him make contact more often. Also, he’s moving from one of the best divisions in baseball to one that’s not as good. Except that the average FIP of the teams in the AL East is 4.315 this year, and in the NL Central it’s 4.234. The AL East number is skewed by Baltimore’s 4.77 FIP, though — and the NL East number is skewed by the Cardinals (4.04 FIP). When he’s not facing the Cardinals (and not remembering the Orioles), Snider will generally be facing worse pitching staffs, and that should help. One last thing to note — there are park factors for strikeouts, and Toronto’s (103) is third-worst, and the Pirates (99) is the most hitter-friendly.
Those same park factors tell a different story on the power front though. The Rogers Centre has the seventh-friendliest home run park factor in baseball (105), while PNC Park (94) is the eighth-stingiest. That doesn’t bode well for Snider, who had a .196 ISO in his minor league career (much higher in recent Triple-A stops), but only a .181 ISO so far. Then again, Snider is a lefty and PNC suppresses righty home run power (91) much more than lefty (98).
So the park should hurt his home run power a bit, but help his strikeouts. His division will be about the same when he’s not facing the Cardinals. So, it’s really just about how much you believe in Snider’s development.
He’s talked about making mechanical changes to his batting stance. You can see that he dropped his hands before his swing in the second video below, which is from this year in Las Vegas. The first is from the Futures Game in 2011.
In any case, though he’s been around long enough to accrue 1000 PAs, he’s still not 25. Snider is young and pre-peak. Even the most pessimistic look at power aging curves (provided by Jeff Zimmerman and myself) say that power peaks around 25 years old. With a little nudge in both strikeouts and power, it would be easy to take the ‘over’ on the ZiPs rest-of-season projection (.250/.307/.406). That number suggests a 25.7% strikeout rate and a .156 ISO. He could even walk a little more, looking at those same aging curves and his minor league work. Keep the strikeouts, but up the power to about a .200 ISO, and the walk rate a tad, and you probably have something that looks like .260/.325/.460.
Now we’re talking… tweener. He’s not quite a mixed leaguer with that batting average even if he’s definitely useful in deep leagues because of the power. It might make sense to wait and see in your standard mixed league, unless you are desperate for power.
Thanks to Twitter user Nick Barbour for pointing out Snider’s hands.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Terrible trade this guy is horrible
Good stuff Eno.
A little overstated, I think. Both sides of the debate make good points.
He’s 24 and chunks of his development have been influenced by guys like Cito Gaston.
(in response to Jim)
What makes up park factors for strikeouts?
foul ground and batters’ eye issues?
i can buy batters eye or mound height (cough dodgers), but i’m having trouble with foul ground. more foul ground=more K and less foul ground=fewer Ks (per a sampling of safeco/petco/oakland…fenway)? shouldn’t it be the opposite?
more foul ground=more foul out/pop out chances=fewer chances for K=low Krate.
what am i missing?
More foul ground means less K’s because more foul balls will be caught. If there is less foul ground more balls find the seats.
Snider or Joyce ROS?
Joyce is a first half guy… look at his pre- and post-All Star splits. He still sits against some lefties, though less this year than in the past, and has had more success against them. That said, he’s 28, in prime breakout territory, who knows?
Snider is still developing and doesn’t have enough of a track record to really expect a break out this year, just a hope of more playing time and a new environment to help him work through his issues. He’ll likely still be limited to some extent, he’ll probably get anywhere from 40-70% of starts from here on out depending on his performance.
I’d go with Joyce, if there are really no better options.
Good piece, but I don’t agree that AL East pitching is about the same as NL Central. I think using FIP is misleading because the AL East not only has better pitching but better lineups, inflating that FIP number. Just as a quick sniff test the AL wOBA is .319 and NL is .313.
Can’t you separate park factors for HR by handedness? I think the main reason for that 8th-stingest factor is the deep LF wall, and a pull/middle lefty like Snider wouldn’t be as negatively affected by the switch as a pull righty.
Yes you can and he did in this very article… 91 for RHB’s 98 for LHB’s
I think that must’ve been added after my comment. Correct me if I’m wrong…