Alex Liddi: Proceed to Level 202 Scan (Dean Palmer comp)
... I knocked off the Liddi "POTD" in a cursory fashion, having watched him for one game and having spent about 10 minutes thinking about him.
Liddi fanboyz were quick to declare unto me the Cheney word more perfectly, notably Lonnie and Malcontent. Lonnie assures me that the Wells-type scatter chart doth not apply, and Malcontent presses the differences with just as much gusto:
If you let go of Liddi's April and look at his season in progress, Liddi was much better than his overall season suggests, his post April OPS was .857 (compared to his overall .821), his strike out rate was 25.9% instead of 27%. In fact, his strike out rate fell every month:
APR 35.9%
MAY 28.0%
JUN 27.0%
JUL 25.9%
A/S 23.4%That's pretty dramatic progress, it doesn't exactly make him Dustin Ackley, but those last 2 months and change hold real promise if he can maintain and build on them.
And I have to disagree with the Adrian Beltre comparison, in his worst season, Beltre struck out 118 times, that's likely to be a career low over a full season for Liddi. I like Matt Williams a bit better for comparison. Still not enough strike outs, but he had percentages near 25% early (ages 21-23) and relied almost exclusively on his impressive power for production neither walking, hitting for average, or stealing bases, which also figures to be Liddi's most likely route to being a productive hitter.
All points cheerfully conceded. With Beltre we were just tossing out the .260-25-90 idea, nothing more.
Williams also averaged only 118 K's per year over his career, so if we're seeking greater precision in our hitting comps, then Dean Palmer is probably the prototype.
Palmer batted .250/.325/.475 over his career, 60:160 EYE, providing 30 doubles, 30 homers and not much else. He was a fine ballplayer.
Or, a bit more modest, within this template, is our original Jose Valentin statline -- 120 to 140 strikeouts, 30 homers and 25 doubles.
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=== EYE Ain't Everything, Dept. ===
For those amigos riding minors K/BB a bit too hard, consider Dean Palmer's minor league EYE ratios. He fanned 558 times vs only 160 walks in the minors, batting only .242 there.
Retreating to K% as such is too simplistic, because if Palmer had chosen to walk more, he'd also have fanned more. The point is, the EYE is 0.30 -- in the minors -- with tons of whiffs and a .240 batting average.
Also in the majors, at Liddi's age exactly, the Rangers let Palmer flail away for a .181 AVG in 300+ at-bats. The next year he was also a .229 hitter with an embarrassing EYE.
But it didn't mean that Palmer was hopeless: the next year, at age 24, he slugged .503 with 33 homers in the AL. He finished his career averaging 33 homers per 162 games.
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Alex Liddi is the same type of hitter as Dean Palmer, and probably ahead of him on an age-arc basis.
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=== Are We Not Men? We Are DEVO, Dept. ===
Though Mr. Liddi is certainly not devolving as a ballplayer, that is.
The progression throughout the year is a point I hadn't noticed, and is a huge chip in his favor. As we're sitting here talking about it, Liddi looks better and better to me.
As with Casper Wells, you're talking about a player whose physical attributes give him an unfair advantage. IMHO that has the effect of increasing his chances of winning.
You can compare a 94 mph pitcher and an 88 mph pitcher. The slop-baller simply has to execute everything perfectly to the Nth degree -- his footwork, his leveraging, his game plan, etc etc. However, the Michael Pineda type can be sloppy and it can still work out for him.
Alex Liddi has a linebacker's lean body mass, and he moves extremely well at 3B, and that means he just doesn't have to put a perfect swing on the ball like Ichiro and Ackley and Seager do. Liddi is a "horseshoes and hand grenades" athlete.
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Suppose that Alex Liddi is Dean Palmer.
Do you want that at 3B? Thirty homers, a slick glove, and other than that --- > mostly a .240 hitter with a bunch of strikeouts?
I'll take him over Chone Figgins and a .188/.241/.243 pitcher's line. As Earl once put it, sort of, "Once every fifteen at-bats, Dean Palmer did a whale of a lot to win me a ball game."