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AVG HR around 389 feet when you include last year, but its only 8 HRs total.
I'm not crazy about this skillset panning out in Safeco, but if Wells can give you a 120 OPS+ with good D in LF thats a very valuable piece.
Q. Safeco? A. Well, Is He a Good Hitter?
Q. When's the last time you saw a guy with Casper Wells' profile (dubious EYE, medium PWR, spotty minors performance) do well in the Safeco?
A. Valid question. It's also my question. I would hope that the M's saber crew did their homework here.
Let's address the question with nuance.
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Q. If you overlay Wells' fly balls and homers onto a Safeco grid, how do they come out? Does Wells have marginal power?
A. As far as I can tell, his eight ML homers (home and road) would have all gone out of Safeco, easily. See this chart and this chart.
Wells' average HR distance this season has been 396.5 ... short of what Nelson Cruz, Justin Upton, and Jose Bautista get. But equal to what Jayson Werth and Brennan Boesch get, and well above what Miguel Olivo gets.
See Miguel Olivo's chart. He has 14 homers this year, all pulled to left, all going out of Safeco, and Wells certainly hits the ball harder than Olivo does.
It's not so much that Safeco Field instantly destroys right hand homers; the ball goes out of Safeco if you crush it. It's that Safeco drags RH hitters' confidence down over time.
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Q. Adrian Beltre was destroyed instantly.
A. Adrian Beltre was also an NL-AL transition.
Richie Sexson was not destroyed instantly; he hit very well at Safeco until he aged prematurely (out of baseball entirely). Mike Cameron, a somewhat similar hitter to Wells, had two real good years at Safeco to start with.
Edgar was great at Safeco; Bret Boone was.
Where Safeco really worries you, is (1) in Y3 and beyond, as with Gutierrez, and (2) with marginal hitters (like Figgins) in the first place.
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Q. Is Wells a topspin hitter?
A. He isn't, no.
Topspin hitters get high GB's and high HR's. Wells hits the ball on a line and in the air. He's something like Mike Cameron that way - not quite as much so.
At the same time, I wouldn't compare Casper Wells to a guy like Franklin Gutierrez. Guti now is leaving his best shots in medium center field, about 325 feet. Wells gets ahold of the ball, it's like Olivo - way over the OF's heads.
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Q. Safeco won't affect Wells much, eh?
A. Sure it will. It will directly rob him of 20% of his Seattle taters -- that's 3 per year if he's a 25-homer man -- and another several doubles a year.
The real worry is Y3, Y4, when the depressing effect of the home park may shoot down his confidence.
Mike Morse came up and hit .300/.380/.450 at Safeco in his first few hundred AB's before leaving. Dustin Ackley just hit an HR and double today to center field, and is ripping it up. Mike Carp is slugging .650 since his callup.
Let's not confuse the 2010-11 problem. The basic problem in 2010-11 has been lousy hitters.
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Q. Does Wells have marginal power, or Sexson power, or what?
A. Wells is a VERY physically powerful hitter, like Jay Buhner or Mike Morse ... but he takes a compact swing.
The intersection of [brute strength] and [reduced windup] isn't marginal power, nor Nelson Cruz power; it's better-than-average power.
Casper Wells isn't Nelson Cruz, but he certainly has plus power, more power than (say) Olivo has shown us this year. He's not going to have a problem clearing the wall when he connects.
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Q. Bottom line?
A. If Zduriencik were paying us to provide a Wells-vs-Safeco recommendation...
We'd say, if Wells is a marginal hitter, Safeco is the thumb on the scale against him.
It's probably not a huge factor in the short term. But I wouldn't go building my 5-year plan around this guy batting cleanup in Safeco, if Wells is a lukewarm talent overall. Along about year 3 or 4, you may well see a disappointing trend in his career arc.
Try to "carry" a dubious hitter, try smoke-and-mirrors offenses?!, and Safeco's going to let you know about your mistakes real quick. You're not going to hide a questionable hitter here.
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But as Bill James once said, what a team needs is not this kind of hitter or that kind of hitter. It needs good hitters, period.
The big question is whether Casper Wells is a good hitter.
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BABVA,
Dr D