G-Moneyball pointed out Brandon Wood as a cautionary tale on Nick Franklin, and buried in a 75-hour workweek, we asked if anybody cared to comp their K:BB:PA.
Matty did us the favor:
At 19, Brandon Wood K'ed 117 times and walked 46 times in 535 PA (478 AB)
That's a K/AB of 0.245, a K/BB of 2.54 and a BABIP of .293 (that's in A ball, where the league average BABIP is .335!)...he wasn't making real solid contact even when he did make contact.
Nick Franklin at age 19 fanned 120 times and walked 49 times in 556 PA (496 AB)
That's a K/AB of 0.242, a K/BB of 2.45 and a BABIP of .321 (in a league with an average BABIp of .328)...There's no problem with Franklin making good contact...and his K/BB peripherals are a notch better than Wood's at the same time. Franklin is pretty clearly ahead of Wood.
It's gotta be hard for a big swinger like Wood to BABIP .293 in the low minors, even if he's trying. :- )
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=== Evil Captain Kirk Dept. ===
Still, those K:BB:AB are as mirror-image as you are going to find. Run Wood himself, through his age-19 season again, in a computer sim, and he won't give you as surgically-precise a reconstruction as Nick Franklin just did.
Brandon Wood and Nick Franklin, that's a whale of a good comp by G. Bearing in mind that Wood is, of course, a right hand hitter, and has to deal with the sinker-slider game from 75-80% of the game's pitchers.
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Needless to say, you take 100 Woods, Franklins and Shlabotniks (with the same K:BB:AB) and at 25, you're going to see everything from Vlad Guerrero to ... well, to Brandon Wood.
As noted several times in the thread ... there are any number of reasons for an 0.40 EYE or 0.25 K:PA or what have you. Juan Gonzalez fanned 431 times against only 145 walks in the minor leagues, and it wasn't because he wasn't going to hit.
We well remember a James comment on Igor in the late 80's as he was coming up -- remember, this was before EYE was a common tool -- and Bill said of the minor-league Juan Gone:
He's going to be a cleanup hitter. Just the same, he's not my kind of player. His strikeout totals are going to be enormous, and he won't have the OBP to make up for it.
Or somesuch. James' point, talking to a very raw audience in 1988-1990 who barely appreciated OBP, was that Gonzalez was going to be a legit All-Star, but in a template that James at the time was educating the public against.
An EYE of 0.40 for a blue-chipper isn't a death sentence. It's one piece of evidence against him. When the kid is playing way over his level, in a first year, it's not a very important piece. If Franklin is, two years from now, at an 0.30-0.40 EYE in AA, some of the sheen will be off.
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=== Dr's Prognosis Dept. ===
Wood serves as the 10th-percentile outcome for this kind of player, in my view. Not 1st-percentile: Wood did make the big leagues. G-Money's point is as solid as a rock: some 19-year-old hotshots turn into Brandon Wood.
If Pitch got a minute, it would be interesting to hear what the pitcher-batter problem has been on Wood.
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While the K:BB:AB -- the strike zone management -- are delightfully exact, let's bear in mind two points:
- The 19-year-old Franklin outhit the 19-year-old Wood, by far. Franklin hit 280/350/480 with 22 homers ; Wood hit 250/320/400 with 11 homers.
- Brandon Wood is one of the most highly-regarded prospects of the last 5-10 years.
Wood was a #83 BA prospect after his age 19 season; then he hit 40+ homers the next year and became the slam-glam kid, a #1-5 BA prospect.
As Matt noted, the strike zone management between Wood and Franklin was exactly, exactly the same. But Franklin, at age 19, did loads more with the ball when he connected.
After Wood's admirable age-19 season, he tore baseball to shreds at age 20. Wouldn't mind seeing Franklin go for 40 jacks next year.
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Cheers,
Dr D
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