As the season winds down and rumors start to float about what kind of moves might be made heading into next season, it’s time to take a look at what the Dodgers might do prior to the 2014 season.
While we’re not overlooking the end of this year—the team has a legitimate chance to win the World Series for the first time in 25 years—front offices are always prepared to act the moment the season ends, so a quick primer on what might happen is useful.
In Cuban sensation Yasiel Puig’s first 21 games, he hit .420/.453/.716 for an OPS of 1.170. While that window is admittedly an example of choosing arbitrary endpoints, it’s as good as any small sample at getting a point across. We all know that Puig had an insane first month; in his first 30 games, his OPS was 1.155. For the season-to-date, his OPS is still above 1.000—1.024, to be exact.
The 21-game mark was not an accidental choice, however. On June 25, Puig played his 21st game, and I published a second-half projection article in which I called his walk rate “famously low.” At that point, it was 3.7 percent.
Coincidentally also on June 25, Eno Sarris published an article on FanGraphs called “Selling High on Yasiel Puig” in which he expressed some concern about Puig’s absurdly low walk rate.
Sarris was not the only analyst to raise these issues; Zach Stoloff did so on NESN.com, Ray Flowers on BaseballGuys.com and Tristan Cockcroft on ESPN mentioned that “he has averaged just 3.24 pitches per plate appearances” up until the point that article was written (on July 3).
And everyone was correct in raising that concern.
Of the top 50 qualified hitters in baseball (according to FanGraphs’ wOBA), the only hitter with a walk rate below that 3.7 mark is Adam Jones’ 3.1. Only two other batters are even with one full percentage point: Jean Segura (4.2 percent) and Torii Hunter (4.1 percent).
On the other hand, of the 50 worst qualified hitters, five have a walk rate below or equal to 3.7 percent: Alexei Ramirez (3.2), Alcides Escobar (3.3), Jeff Keppinger (3.7), Starlin Castro (3.7) and Salvador Perez (3.7), and another four are at or below Segura’s 4.2: JP Arencibia (3.8), Matt Dominguez (3.8), Erick Aybar (3.8) and Zack Cozart (4.2).
Granted, there is a slight confirmation bias in these numbers—wOBA heavily values on-base percentage, and walk rate is a main component of OBP (along with batting average). But OBP is a part of offensive production, so the point holds: It’s exceedingly difficult to succeed offensively with such a low walk rate.
Things have changed
Although it’s unlikely he heard the criticism, Puig’s walk rate has increased. Since June 26, his walk rate is 8.6 percent, and that has pushed his season rate up to 6.6 percent.
The number of players who succeed at that mark is far larger. Notables such as Adrian Beltre, Carlos Beltran, Allen Craig and Yadier Molina have walk rates below 6.6.
At this point, we don’t really know what Puig’s true walk rate is; he just doesn’t have a long enough career for us to accurately determine it. But the improvements and changes he’s made have been real.
Puig has made tangible adjustments
Below is a table detailing his swing percentage at respective pitches in each month he’s been in the big leagues. As you can see, he has swung at fewer pitches as he has gotten more comfortable in the big leagues.
By itself, swing percentage doesn’t tell us much. Passivity is not the same as patience, and if Puig had been taking strikes just for the sake of taking pitches, then that would not be a good sign.
But, as the following two graphics show, Puig’s decline in swing percentage corresponds to a decline in pitches he’s seeing in the strike zone.
Puig will likely never be known as a patient hitter. Batters who demonstrate his kind of free-swinging mentality don’t change overnight into Joey Votto. But, he doesn’t need to put up a 15% walk rate to be productive. Just these slight increases are enough to take his swing rate from dangerous to acceptable.
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After helping the San Francisco Giants win the 2010 World Series, Juan Uribe signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for three years and $21 million. The deal was panned from the outset, with critics complaining that it was too long and for too much money. There’s even an article from December 2010 in which ESPN’s Jon Weisman explains why Jamey Carroll was better than Uribe.
And for much of his contract, all of that was true. Each of the last two years, Uribe has been terrible. In 2010, he posted a .204/.264/.293 line; in 2011, it was .191/.258/.284. But so far this year, he’s been much better, to the tune of .260/.354/.390.
So what’s changed? Two things: His power has returned, and his walk rate is way up.
The return of his power isn’t that surprising; he was always known as a power-hitting shortstop. During his peak with the White Sox and Giants (ages 24-30), he had only one season in which he hit fewer than 16 home runs. For those seven years, he averaged 22 home runs per 162 games and had a .185 ISO. For his entire career—even factoring in the last two terrible years—his ISO (SLG-AVG, a measure of how many of a player’s hits go for extra bases) is still .167.
This year, his ISO is .130, which is still below his career level and by a significant amount (more than two standard errors). Because he has such a lengthy track record of power, the fact that it has returned after 474 poor plate appearances (in 2011 and 2012)—while not a given because of his age—is not shocking.
Whether or not it will continue is another question. In general, power surges come from increases in home run-to-fly ball rate as an inordinate number of fly balls leave the park. Uribe’s HR/FB rate, though, is 8.8 percent, nearly a full percentage point below his career level of 9.7 percent, and he has only three home runs thus far this year.
He’s also hitting fewer fly balls in general, so it’s not even that the lower HR/FB is masking an increase in volume. He’s hitting more ground balls than he ever has in his career, and ground balls have a better chance of finding holes and going for base hits than fly balls do.
Is this sustainable? Maybe, but we don’t know for sure. Last year, Russell Carleton of Baseball Prospectus published an article that studied at what point rate statistics stabilize.
If we assume that Uribe’s success is driven from his newfound ability to hit the ball on the ground, then the fact that he has put more than 80 balls in play this year (the sample size Carleton pointed to at which ground ball rate stabilizes) indicates that this new 45% GB rate is indicative of Uribe’s true talent.
However, if we believe that for whatever reason Uribe’s power has simply returned this year, then there we cannot draw any conclusions. The number Carleton pinpoints for the stabilization of ISO is 160 at-bats—a number that Uribe has not yet reached this season.
The other big change in Uribe is his walk rate, and this provides a more definitive look at his success. Uribe is walking in 13.1 percent of his plate appearances in 2013, which is more than double his career rate of 5.8 percent.
Carleton’s study found that walk rate stabilizes at 120 plate appearances, a number that Uribe has already reached this season. This comes with a caveat, though, as Carleton points out in his very next article: This “stabilization point” indicates only that the rates will reflect the current talent level of the player. It does not claim that the player’s talent level will remain the same for any specified length of time.
Therefore, while we can say that over those 120 plate appearances the 13.1 percent walk rate really does reflect Uribe’s skills, it does not guarantee future performance because—to quote Carleton again—“by denominating time per year, we ignore the fact that a baseball player lives a day-to-day life.”
The question I’m attempting to answer here is whether or not Uribe will be able to keep up this walk rate through the rest of the season. The numbers certainly point towards the answer being yes, but perhaps Uribe has found something that works, and he will lose whatever “it” is after taking four days off for the All-Star break.
Or maybe new Dodgers hitting coach Mark McGwire has found a way to get through to Uribe in a way that previous hitting coach Dave Hansen was unable to, and this is a totally legitimate skill change. I don’t know.
What I do know is that Uribe’s sample size this season is large enough to truly indicate a skill change.
I find it difficult to predict what he will do going forward, because the idea that a 33-year-old free-swinger has suddenly become a walk machine—his 13.1 BB% ranks 19th among all hitters with at least 140 plate appearances—seems far-fetched. However, there is at least a good chance that Uribe has discovered a new way to be productive.
With a struggling offense, the Dodgers lineup needs all the help it can get. Uribe has been a useful member, and Dodger fans certainly hope he will be able to continue the strong performance.
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One week into the season, the Dodgers sit in third place in the NL West, one game behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies.
So far, the team has allowed just 10 runs in six games, demonstrating the strength of its pitching staff. It has certainly been an impressive start, but there are some things to watch for as the season progresses.
Here are the six best early-season storylines.
Friday night was the much-anticipated debut of Zack Greinke in Dodger blue, and it went very well. He pitched 6.1 strong innings, striking out six and allowing just two hits without conceding any walks.
Greinke dominated a Pittsburgh Pirates lineup that has some high-end talent in it, led by last year’s third-place finisher in the NL MVP race, Andrew McCutchen, who was held to just one hit.
There was some trepidation on the part of the Dodgers heading into the outing because Greinke had been struggling with some elbow inflammation during spring training. Indeed, he made only 92 pitches, despite the fact that he was cruising through the game.
He was as sharp as can be expected in his first start, locating his fastball well and generally staying around the strike zone. He began the game with his fastball velocity hovering around 91 or 92 and mixed in his mid-70s curveball effectively. His combination of pitches enabled him to keep the Pirates off-balance all game.
He was efficient from the get-go, making just nine pitches in the first inning and getting five of his first seven outs on ground balls before picking up his first strikeout. He would then go on to strike out four in a row, though, as he settled in. His fastball picked up some late life, and he was able to effectively begin to mix in his changeup.
As the game went on, he moved his fastball in and out and varied his pitches well on his way to his six strikeouts.
He got enough support from his offense to win the game, as an Andre Ethier home run propelled the Dodgers to a lead they would never relinquish, and the initial one-run cushion was all Greinke would need.
This was a very encouraging start for Greinke and the Dodgers, and it would have been even if there hadn’t been lingering injury concerns. As it is, he demonstrated why FanGraphs has him as the eighth-most valuable pitcher over the last three seasons.
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The offseason has been abound with rumors that Dodgers right fielder Andre Ethier might be traded. GM Ned Colletti repeatedly squashed them, but reports surfaced that both the Texas Rangers and Seattle Mariners were interested.
The Dodgers seem content to head into the season with a starting outfield of (from left field to right) Carl Crawford, Matt Kemp, and Ethier. And on the surface, they should be.
As recently as 2010, Crawford put up a seven-win season, by fangraphs.com’s WAR metric. Kemp finished second in the MVP voting in 2011, and Ethier, while never reaching those heights, has been solidly above average for every season of his career.
However, the Dodgers are currently locked into their outfield through 2017, as that is when both Crawford’s and Ethier’s contracts expire.
Crawford is probably not tradeable. It’s been two years since he was valuable at all, and he’s coming off Tommy John surgery and played in just 31 games last season. Even if the Dodgers could somehow find a trade partner, he likely wouldn’t fetch very much in return.
Ethier, on the other hand, is a different story. While none of the rumors really specified what the Dodgers wanted in return, it’s a perfectly reasonable assumption to say that—given his more current track record and cheaper contract—he has more value than Crawford does.
Ethier supporters would likely argue that given his consistent production (an OPS above .800 in six of his seven seasons), the Dodgers would be hard-pressed to find a suitable replacement. And while in the short-term that may be true, a slightly longer-term approach shows that they would be better off with the extra roster spot. This past offseason, Nick Swisher and Josh Hamilton were available, but the Dodgers didn’t have a place to put them if they made an offer.
In 2014, Jacoby Ellsbury, Curtis Granderson, Carlos Beltran and Corey Hart will be free agents, and the Dodgers’ deep pockets would enable them to go out and sign one of those veterans.
An alternative route would be to hand the job to Cuban outfielder Yasiel Puig, who Baseball Prospectus’ Jason Parks recently ranked as the 79th-best prospect in baseball. While Puig undoubtedly isn’t ready yet, the assumption is that at some point soon he’ll be a productive member of the big league roster.
The idea here isn’t to say that Ethier is a bad player. He’s certainly not—he’s posted a WAR above 2.0 each year of his career—but he does have limitations. He’s not a great defender, as seen by baseball-reference.com’s defensive metrics, which have him worth -45 runs over the course of his career, and he has always struggled versus left handed pitching.
Over the course of his career, Ethier has posted a .649 OPS against lefties, as compared to .913 against righties. This brings to light another problem, which is that Crawford also struggles against lefties, with a .688 OPS. It’s very difficult to manage a lineup with two everyday players that struggle against left-handed pitchers.
In the end, trading Ethier would give the Dodgers some badly needed roster flexibility. As it is, they are locked in to long-term contracts at most positions, and Ethier has enough trade value that swapping him would be worth it in the long run.
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