POTD Edwin Encarnacion
EDWIN ENCARNACION
This is a rare spot of disagreement between expert M's denizens so lemme jump in too, spikes sharpened and crusted with dry mud. Dr. D is well aware that he also is targeted for $20M trade termination. All's he's sayin' is that he's hopin' circumstances converge to hold up the trade until (at least) July.
Ron Shandler (Baseball HQ) writes the best post-Jamesian player handbook, available for $10 digital download, and he sez (in essence, not literal quotation):
- Slow start & finish to year disguised another great season
- Power trend, and expected Hit trend, lookin' real good going into age 36 season
- Several things SUGGEST a GENTLE decline from here: age (trite - Dr. D) K trend, K:BB trend
- If decline is worse than we expect: then disaster season results in missing 30 HR, 100 RBI
Let me read that last sentence again, wouldja. That isn't something you'd say about Boomstick?!
They project him for .260/.350/.500 with 31 HR and 101 RBI for this season, a $21 value in $260 roto. ZIPS has the lowest projection I've seen, at 118 OPS+. Sounds pretty Oaklandish to moi.
.....
The main reason I respect Shandler & crew is that they do it James' classical way, if not even in a more focused interpretation:
- they isolate to component skills (e.g. K:BB not ERA and, dear saber friend, also not SEIRA or WAR)
- they THEN survey these skill nuclei to years-long tendencies, trendlines
- they have done it 1000's upon 1000's of times and so have their intuition developed therein
Edwin Encarnacion is a great, great hitter -- lifetime EYE of a screamin' 0.65 and lifetime flyball ratio well above average, making HR's impossible to avoid. Granted, that EYE dipped to 0.48 last season, counting the bookend slump months -- which compared decently to Mitch Haniger's 0.47 in 2018.
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WHY NOT STICK WITH BOOM, Dept.
#1. Prob'ly they're going to trade EE. Dr. D isn't predicting otherwise. He's merely hoping otherwise.
#2. This "reimagination" smells to me partly like kicking the can down the road two years (Paxton for Sheffield) ... but also partly like opening a window in a dank clubhouse cellar. We strongly suspect that the 2018 M's had early arrived at a bad place psychologically, in part because they played way over their heads and then got gutkicked anyway.
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I'LL TAKE 'IM, Dept.
His most-similar batters, lifetime are Frank Howard - Gil Hodges - Willie Stargell - Jack Clark - Mark Teixeira - Ndamukong Suh one through five. Hey amigos, what would you say to getting a time-capsule Frank Howard in here for a 1-year rental waitng on JRod and JKel? Well, Suh... that may just be a bad picture up top.
One through five. You gotta be a legendary name to be anywhere near EE's 1000 R, 1200 RBIclass.
(Amusing side note: at age 26, EE's number one comparable was one Kyle Seager.)
You bet. Encarnacion is old. It is precisely as a ONE-year rental that the Mainframe has interest. As Kikuchi was able to spin Dr. D 900 degrees until, dizzy, the more he looked the more he liked, so does EE accomplish that for 2019. A lineup feels different with an MLB(TM) cleanup hitter out in the sidecar.
Or not,
Jeff