Unlikely Pairs: Santana and Choo

This is the second installment of my Unlikely Pairs series. Last week I looked at Mike Trout and Freddie Freeman and their elite offensive production. This week we’ll be aiming a little lower in the draft, and maybe it will be more controversial.

Domingo Santana v Shin-Soo Choo.

These two players are on opposite ends of the career spectrum. Santana, 25 years old, just put up great numbers in his first full season in the majors.  Domingo Santana is a bit of a late bloomer, having spent full seasons in both AA and AAA, both with the Astros, prior to advancing. His AA season was particularly mediocre, as he suffered deep drops in both walk rate and batting average. The following season, age 22 in AAA, his walk rate and batting average both bounced back, but he was only given a total of 18 major league plate appearances. In mid 2015, still in AAA, he was traded to the Brewers as part of the Carlos Gomez/Mike Fiers trade. In 2016, Santana injured his elbow and missed most of the season. So, 2017 was his first real chance in the majors, and he certainly ran with it, hitting 30 homers, stealing 15 bases, and achieving 126 wRC+.

Meanwhile, Shin Soo Choo, 35 years old, enjoyed a bounce back year after an injury plagued 2016 campaign.  Choo established himself as a solid and reliable player in 2008, and put up consistent 20 HR, 80 R, 60 RBI seasons from 2008 through 2015 with two exceptions.

In 2011 Choo was charged with a DUI, which appeared to affect his play. This was then exacerbated by an injured thumb and oblique. Then in 2014 Choo suffered an ankle injury early in the season, followed by a bone spur in his elbow that required a season ending surgery.

And that brings us to his 2016 season, which was a bit of a nightmare. He suffered injuries to his calf, hamstring and back before finally suffering a fractured arm after a hit by pitch.

Shin Soo Choo does not appear to have lost skill over the past few years, rather he has suffered through occasional injury plagues seasons. Furthermore, none of the injuries appear to be chronic or severe. An injured thumb, a few pulled muscles, and a hit by pitch. The ankle injury is probably the scariest thing in this portfolio, but it occurred three years ago and doesn’t appear to be a significant problem.

Choo has maintained consistent walk, strikeout, and power numbers. His stolen base figures have dipped since the ankle injury, but he still managed to swipe 12 in 2017.  While Choo is certainly aging out of his prime, and his defensive metrics are showing as much, he is under contract through the 2020 season. The Rangers have 63 million reasons to give Choo every chance to produce on the field.

Power Production

You’ll notice that Choo missed most of the 2016 season, the first year of this new “juiced ball” era. In 2017 he hit 22 home runs, which was in line with his career norms. You might wonder how these two things relate. The league home run numbers are up about 20%, but Choo’s home run total remained the same. Does that mean Choo’s power numbers have decreased by 17%? (for those following along at home, 1 – [1/1.2] )

Well, xStats wants to jump in to say ehhh, not so fast. xStats gave Choo 27.7 home runs. That is a lot! It is actually closer to a 30% boost from his career norms than the 20-22% you’d expect from the new ball.

So, why didn’t Choo hit 27-28 homers this year? Below you’ll see a table of Choo’s non-home run BIP sorted by their expected home run rate. Choo had 89 balls in 2017 that had at least 1% chance at being a home run, these are the top 10.

There are a few very high home run probability batted balls in this group. I grabbed gifs for two batted balls at the top of this list. First, the ball with a 87.8% chance.

The ball bounced off the top inch of the wall. Oof. Next, the 79.8% ball.

It short hopped the wall. Maybe it doesn’t look at close to a homer as the previous ball, but keep in mind how many things factor into the flight distance of a ball. Temperature, wind, backspin, elevation, etc, etc. All of these things can add or subtract a few feet here and there. Baseball can be cruel.

These batted balls add up over time, and a little bad luck here and there can make a big difference in how people perceive the season. The batter’s ability to create high value contact is certainly a skill, but there are many subtle features of the game that the player has no control over. xStats attempts to address these issues by granting players league average success rates for each batted ball.

Examining the xStats

I’ve spent most of my time here talking about Choo, and you may be curious where Domingo Santana fits into everything. Well, yesterday Justin Mason posted the results of our early mock drafts. If you haven’t already, you can view them here. In these drafts, Domingo Santana had an ADP of 82.25, and Shin Soo Choo 224.5. I want to explode those numbers, though. I made a table of their draft positions below.

There was a consensus for Santana’s spot in the draft, between positions 71 and 89. An 18 point spread.

Choo, however, had much less consensus. If you ignore the top pick, he is resting between 209 and 293. Yikes. The top pick (is was me!) took him 139. From 139 to 293, now that’s a large spread.

I want to state upfront that I believe Domingo Santana is well placed in this draft. I was disappointed I didn’t land him. This is the primary reason I haven’t said much about him up to this point. There is consensus on his value, and I agree with the consensus. He is the foil in this little examination.

First, let’s compare the expected slash lines of these two players in 2017. Hopefully, these slash lines are removing as much “luck” as possible from these two players.

These expected slash lines are nearly identical. I mean, just look at them. Choo has one more expected home run with 29 more plate appearances. But his expected home run rate, 1 xHR per 23 plate appearances, almost perfectly cancels that out. In each of these five metrics, these two players are functionally identical.

If you don’t recognize a few of these stats, I wrote an explanation of them in my first Unlikely Pairs article. In essence, though:

VH% (Value Hit rate) represents the fraction of plate appearances that result in a batted ball that is a near automatic extra base hit.

PH% (Poor Hit rate) is the fraction of plate appearances that result in a batted ball that almost always translates to an out.

OUTs is a complete offensive metric which combines weakly hit balls, strongly hit balls, expected home run rate, strikeout rate, walk rate, and hit by pitch rate. Lower is better.

The Value Hit and Poor Hit rates differ substantially between the two batters. As do the strikeout rates. However, keep in mind that Value Hits are near guaranteed hits and Poor Hits are near guaranteed outs. If you combine the VH% with BB% and PH% with K% these batters are actually quite similar.

Of course, the OUTs stat combines these strongly and weakly hit stats in a bit of a more sophisticated manner by weighting their relative values. The result? The batters are nearly identical in that stat as well.

Domingo Santana had a great first year in the majors, and there is a general consensus that he will very likely continue his performance into 2018. He contributes batting average, home runs, stolen bases, runs, and runs batted in. That’s a complete player, and he deserves to go towards the top of the draft.

However, Santana had a bit of a lucky season in terms of power. Nothing too crazy, but maybe his true talent is closer to 25 home runs than the 30 he hit. At least in 2017, power can certainly develop, especially with developing plate discipline and experience.

At the same time, Choo was unlucky in terms of power production. Perhaps he, too, was closer to a true talent 25 home run guy in 2017.

Both of these guys scored and batted in ~80 runs, both registered double digit stolen bases, and both have expected batting averages hovering around the .270 mark.

This brings us back to the elephant in the room: playing time. Domingo Santana is certainly going to play, but Shin Soo Choo is a bit of a question mark. His defense is rapidly waning, but his offensive production appears to be stable. In 2017 he DHed 65 games, compared to 77 games in right field. I imagine he will play 70, 80, maybe even 90 games at DH in 2018. If you’re ever worried about his playing time, remember that he has an ace up his sleeve, his 63 million dollar contract. That should be enough money to buy him regular playing time.

Going Forward

In the future, Domingo Santana is absolutely a superior player. But let’s set that aside and focus on today. Right this moment, which player has greater value? Personally, I side with Domingo Santana. But by how much? I drafted Choo on 139, so that should be a hint. Maybe 139 was a bit too aggressive, though. Allow me to elaborate on my mindset at the time:

I was in the 9th round of the draft, and my prior three picks were pitchers. At the time, Ender Inciarte was at the top of my queue, but he was snagged a just before my pick. At this point, I had two names on my mind, who I believe are roughly equal in value to Inciarte.  First, Kiermaier. Second, Choo.

I also considered Brad Zimmer and Edwin Diaz. Diaz I held off on, hoping he’d fall back to me. Spoiler, he didn’t. I considered Mazara, but I feel Choo is superior. Ozzie Albies and Andrelton Simmons were also on my list, but lower priority since I already had second and shortstop filled.

So, I opted for Choo. It is a reach, but I feel it is a justifiable reach, due to the xStats data I posted above. I feel he can contribute batting average, home runs, stolen bases, RBI and Runs. I especially value the combination of good batting average and stolen base totals with the good RBI and Runs. I expect him to finish with .270/10/80/80 in each of those categories, respectively.

Speaking of which, I have an xStats projection for these two batters.

Both players are reigned in by the projection system, which is very conservative in nature. This is in large part due to a relatively small sample size (it is a three year projection) combined with both players missing the majority of 2016. Even after heavy regression they are both projected as above average batters in terms of both wOBA and OUTs.

You probably feel that I reached with the 139 pick. Similarly, I feel the 293 and 256 are far too low. I’m still undecided on his true value, but I hope this sparks debate.