Right now he's .333-.419-.667 vs. Lefties! Only .256-.333-419 vR. His lefty performance is fueled by a .412 BABIP. He's only ..265 vR.
But you know what? Last year he had a reverse split, too: .239-.306-.413 vR/.261-.307-.467.
So he's a weird duck...er, Condor...in that he has weird reverse splits. He's not as good as he seems , this year, because of his inflated vL #'s. But even then, his vR BABIP can bounce up some. I once thought he was a dead pull hitting 20-25 homer guy, who would never hit for average. Now his all around game is better than that. .270-.350-.460 seems pretty repeatable for him. He's whacking the snot out of the ball right now and only slugging .514. Sustaining a multi-season run of .500 seems unlikely.
His neat reverse split has some value in and of itself. It means you can stack him with another lefty (Seager) and it negates any late-inning LOOGY leverage by the other manager.
Think how good he could hit if he didn't have to worry about carrying Andino's and Ryan's bats, too. :)
Oh wait, that was Morse and Morales.
moe
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Q. How likely is it that Michael Saunders is going to bust out? Show your work, Doc.
A. The problem is, whatever "sabermetric stats" you run on Michael Saunders, they're all going to show the same thing regarding his STRIKE ZONE CONTROL.
- 2011 - total humiliation (including 0.21 EYE and a shellshocking 23 OPS+)
- 2012 - battling the league to a defensive draw (0.33 EYE but 110 OPS+)
- 2013 - excellent EYE (0.67) for a power hitter -- so far (and 150 OPS+)
You can compare Saunders to a bunch of hitters like him -- these would (now!) include Justin Upton, Andre Ethier, Adam LaRoche, and even Nick Swisher now. But! Those players would have career arcs that are nothing like Michael Saunders'.
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Q. Why does the career-arc factor prevent pattern recognition?
A. EVERYTHING in sabermetrics is based on pattern recognition. Sandy Koufax had a K/9 that was xx% better than league, and he turned out to be good. Some other pitcher also has a K/9 like Koufax' ... hey, we predict he'll be good.
Michael Saunders is an odd duck -- really odd. In order to CONFIDENTLY predict where he might be going, we'd want other past players who were TRULY similar -- including that key idea, going from zero to hero between ages 23 and 25.
Do you know of any? It wasn't Justin Upton. He was great at 20-21. Saunders was a lost blinkin' cause, sabermetrically, at age 24. Then Upton hit issues later. His arc is weird. Saunders is a rocket ride at red line, headed straight up (at this point).
I'm not going to use Upton, or Ethier, to understand Saunders. They developed differently, and they'll proceed differently. Somebody else will just run a chart with 75-80% contact rates and 150+ ISO. That would overlook the most important factor here, age-arc and trends.
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Q. What is the nature of Saunders' strike-zone progress?
A. In 2011, there wasn't any sense to make of anything -- he was horribly overmatched, and the stats are chaotic. The first-strike % is way out of alignment; they were pouring 0-1 pitches down the middle. The whole picture is just "non Major League." You're measuring a classical song with a ruler.
In 2012, things come into alignment and the key STRIKE ZONE stat is the 76% contact rate. Here is where Saunders falls into alignment with other 75-80% contact rate power hitters -- Justin Upton, Andre Ethier, Adam LaRoche, even Swisher. And his EYE falls in line with theirs, about 0.35 to 0.45 or so -- 50-60 walks, 140 strikeouts or so.
In 2013, Saunders has taken another giant leap, in terms of the strike zone game-within-a-game. He still has the 78% contact rate, but .... now he swings at balls out of the zone only 15% (!) of the time. (This mirrors Kyle Seager's pitch stalking.)
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Q. Do these super-refined stats match the scout's eye?
A. They do, yes. The scout's eye confirms all this. Saunders is no longer "in between." He's "on top" of the pitch sequences, not really surprised by anything. He's being very selective, is able to fight off tough pitches for foul balls, is able to attack with gusto.
But! Don't get carried away. The bad news is that Saunders does NOT have Ichiro's (or Seager's, or Ackley's) ability to swat a mosquito with a willow switch. His contact rate REMAINS at 75-80%.
In this respect he's not comparable to Mark Teixeira, or Albert Pujols, or Joe Mauer. You can't give Saunders credit for a natural HIT tool comparable to Buster Posey's. He doesn't have that.
I wouldn't get lost in fantasies about his becoming Mickey Mantle. His HIT tool limits him.
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Q. Are there players who improved their CT rates?
A. Oh, like Mark Teixeira started with a 75-80% rate ... in 2004, his Plate Discipline profile, across-the-board, was right where Saunders' is now. Including the unbelievable 15% O-Swing rate.
Teixeira evolved from there -- very low OSwing rate -- to develop a very high contact rate and a .300/.400/.550 peak. That would be the basis for Saunders' extreme UP scenario, if you ask me.
But! Teixeira was obviously never a guy who struggled with the strike zone in any way.
If anybody runs 10 comps, based on 3 PECOTA type stats, be very careful not to buy in. Life isn't that simple.
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Q. If Teixeira is the best UP scenario you see, what would be the MID?
A. Well, supposing Saunders keeps doing exactly what he's doing?
His BABIP is not high right now -- at .314, it's probably lower than it should be. His HR/F is not high. He's not getting lucky at all, he's batting .286, on pace for 150 strikeouts ... and his OPS+ is 149.
Prince Fielder's career OPS+ is 145, and Prince doesn't play center field. Here is the career active leaderboard for OPS+. The fact is, that Angel fans and Ranger fans should Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid that Michael Saunders isn't ALREADY the player that he has BEEN in 2013 so far.
Again, there's nothing in Saunders' strike zone management, or balls in play, or anything, that have been lucky. I can't find any reason to believe that his results, in 2013, are soft in any way.
If they're not, obviously you DO prefer his overall game to Josh Hamilton's, salary aside. Hamilton has some real issues with his career arc right now.
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Q. What's the DWN scenario?
A. Guys like Upton have bounced up and down with their results. Upton's SLG:
- Age 21 - .532 SLG
- Age 22 - .442 SLG
- Age 23 - .529 SLG
- Age 24 - .430 SLG
- Age 25 - .600 SLG (this year)
You never know when a "long-lever" guy is going to get fouled up, I don't guess.
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Q. Leaving us where?
A. There is no "correct" sabermetric plot for Michael Saunders' future. We've given you the facets of the chess position that look most critical to us. But can you find other facets that will be more predictive? Knock yourself out. It's SSI. We report, you decide :- )
If Dr. D didn't know better, he would say that Michael Saunders CAN keep doing exactly what he's doing right now.
If he does, well, he's on pace for 9 WAR. .270/.370/.500, with OPS+ at 130-145, that's Carlos Beltran, Evan Longoria, Mike Napoli, playing CF and stealing bases.
.........
Were you aware that Saunders is on pace for +17 runs added defensively? There's the Safeco effect for you. Put a guy in center here, and he's going to look good.
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Q. Carlos Beltran?
A. At least Beltran also followed a weird pattern on his K/BB. As a rookie he had 46 BB's against 123 K's and I figured he was a hacker. He got better and better and at his peak, had years where his EYE was over 1.00.
If I were Michael Saunders I would set myself that standard. I would want a Carlos Beltran career. In 2013 he's been doing it.
As Iwakuma could tell you, if you DO become a star, there's about a year lag before it's recognized.
Cheers,
Dr D
Comments
Always thought of Werth as a Morse-type big lumbering guy. But on closer inspection he has racked up 20 SB a few times, and come close a couple other times. I don't think Morse could do that.
Super athletes for whom the HIT tool developed later?
In SafeCo that's an all-star for a long time.
If the M's had a blue-chip prospect who walked 3 times and fanned 22 times, at age 22, he'd be round-filed by the blog-o-sphere, no doubts there.
Hm, he was actually as late a developer as Raul Ibanez, pretty much. ... interesting comp from a strike-zone standpoint, because he BB'ed 80-90 times at his peak.
Would be interesting to find a list of players who had HORRENDOUS BB/K's at a fairly late age, and then went on to walk close to 100 times. Werth would be first on the list. Adds impetus to the idea of Saunders some day doing that.
.. ya, now that I look, he pulled himself up to the 75-80% contact range, based on being SUPER selective (17% O-Swing).
Great parallel, as far as batters with questionable CT skills who managed them by being selective. Jay Buhner.
His career started in a bumpy way. He was considered something of a platoon player from the wrong side, he had inconsistent performances and spent a lot of time on the DL for the Dodgers for a couple seasons before a couple wrist surgeries derailed his career. He, like Saunders, is a big guy, 6'5" and 225 pounds and has always been considered a tweener outfielder. Like Saunders, he's a high BABiP guy with a .326 career mark(Saunders currently sports a .281 Career BABiP, but had a .340+ BABiP in the minors, Saunders has a better swing than he used to, bats left handed with lots of speed, and is a talented drag bunter,it's going to be much higher by the end of his career). Saunders could take a similar career arc, maybe better since he doesn't seem to have platoon splits (I'm of the opinion that the vs. RHP will match his LHP prowess) and doesn't have near Werth's injury history.
Like Spectator mentions in his article, Saunders career minor league walk rate was 11.8%, and he seems to lay off a convincing amount of edgy pitches.