What’s Wilin Rosario’s Deal? A Perspective

Is Wilin Rosario the high-upside player he seemed to be a couple of years ago (and appeared to remain coming into this season)? Is he just on the wrong side of some bad platoon splits these days (and perhaps screwed for eternity)?

A reader asked questions like these in a comment on a recent podcast, and we discussed them in a subsequent pod. I think the reader did well to get at the heart of the matter. (I added the “screwed for eternity” part.)

The player has a lot potential value because he has a lot of power, even if it’s not reflected in his home run total. The batting average (.245) this season has been disappointing, naturally. Brett Talley’s survey of “The Best Fantasy Hitters of the Past Calendar Year” doesn’t do enough to console 2014 Rosario owners, especially those in redrafters or those who’ve experienced only these last nearly three months.

Talley did point to something that kind of disturbed me: Rosario’s availability. He’s owned in 88% of CBS leagues. In, Yahoo!, it’s 76%; ESPN, 70.6%. I think I have a rough idea of the percentage of leagues out there that contain 10 teams or fewer and require only one catcher. It’s more than I thought. Someone has scrambled to correct his or her haste or is benefiting from someone else’s thanks to Rosario’s recent performance.

At any rate, Rosario, 25, has struck out less often overall this season (20.3%, as opposed to his rates of around 23% of the past two campaigns). But he exhibited troubling chase rates before this year (41.4% last year, 38.4% in 2012). There has been enough to suggest that he’s not the most disciplined of hitters.

	Handedness	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	BABIP	LD%	GB%	FB%
2012	vs LHP	5.1%	17.8%	.348	.381	.759	.411	.325	16.5%	48.4%	35.2%
2013	vs LHP	5.1%	17.4%	.323	.355	.546	.223	.350	21.5%	44.9%	33.6%
2014	vs LHP	3.8%	20.8%	.314	.340	.706	.392	.314	20.0%	45.0%	35.0%

The characteristics aren’t glaringly different depending on which handedness he faces, however, unlike what one might imagine. What’s different is the quality of his contact, it seems, particularly this year.

	Handedness	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	BABIP	LD%	GB%	FB%
2012	vs RHP	6.2%	25.3%	.239	.286	.440	.201	.276	17.6%	45.2%	37.1%
2013	vs RHP	2.4%	25.9%	.279	.299	.461	.182	.341	23.5%	39.3%	37.2%
2014	vs RHP	5.6%	20.1%	.218	.257	.338	.120	.250	12.1%	55.1%	32.7%

His outcomes are changing to correspond with some other indicators. Rosario has hit ground balls more often (52.4%) and line drives (14.3%) and fly balls (33.3%) a little less often against righties. Things like that happen to your batted balls when pitchers know your weaknesses and attack them more often. Perhaps there’s been a change in his swing plane, and that could be bad, but it would then also be fixable, quite likely.

I think he’s still pretty likely to exceed 20 home runs (and could push 25), barring an injury, and he should hit .240 or better in the process. Prior to the beginning of the season, if you’d told me that Rosario would finish with a .250 average, 22 home runs and 66 RBIs, then I’d have told you that I’d gladly be selecting him within the first 100 picks of a two-catcher mixed league.

I don’t see any reason to think that those kinds of numbers aren’t well within his sights. There just isn’t a lot of positive value at catcher, compared to what’s available at other positions. But there’s plenty of negative value at it, and because of that, Rosario is probably still kind of a standout.

At this point, I’d guess that it’s about adaptation for him. This is an opportunity to find out what future projections for Rosario will look like as well, based on his response to some adversity. It doesn’t hurt that he’ll get to make his adjustments in the confines of Coors Field. Yay.

Some indicators could represent reasons to be hopeful as much as others give us reasons to doubt. Both can be a little misleading if we simply assume that correlations will hold true in a particular case. That may not help you, of course.

Still, I think it’s beneficial to view a projection not as, say, a target but as a point, albeit one you consider probable, in a range of outcomes. I adopted that lens after I’d had the chance to work and become familiar with Baseball HQ and Ron Shandler a couple of times a year. Information we don’t have affects a probable outcome, let alone an entire range of them, and that’s especially true of young players. This is why we use indicators that correlate with different types of outcomes and call it predictive. We then seek information that helps us to understand why an outcome falls outside the range or even becomes an exception. It may prove to be an exception, or it may lead to new rules. Is it fortunate or unfortunate that it’s an imperfect process? It depends on how you look at it and what you hope or expect to achieve. I’m not a wizard with statistics, I freely admit, but I have this philosophy, and I’m thankful to learn from others who are kind of wizards with statistics.

I initially thought of that last graf as a side note, but I realized afterward that it became the point of this particular entry.

Most people seem to dislike statements like these. It’s much more understandable from consumers who have raised expectations because of the purpose of the source of the information they consume. It’s harder work to accept that as a response in an arena in which being right is so essential to victory. But I think that, because it’s harder work to digest under such conditions, it’s even more beneficial to do so in preparation for them. I became much better at fantasy baseball, for instance, when I did.

Anyway, as far as Rosario is concerned, he’ll be fine. I think. Hell, it’s quite possible that I just missed something.