Charlie Blackmon Is Doing His Best Matt Holliday Impression

In 2004, a 24-year-old kid from Oklahoma named Matt Holliday debuted for the Colorado Rockies. Just a couple years later in 2006, Holliday received his first MVP votes, finishing 15th in the voting. A year later in 2007, the Rockies went to the playoffs for just the second time in franchise history and Holliday finished second in the MVP voting. In 2011, a 24-year-old kid from Texas (then a clean-shaven baby-faced kid) named Charlie Blackmon debuted for the Colorado Rockies. A few years later in 2016, Blackmon also received his first MVP votes, finishing 26th. The following year, much like Holliday, the Rockies claimed a playoff berth with Blackmon leading the way and finishing fifth in MVP voting. The similarities don’t end there; two players who don’t seem very much alike had very similar stretches in very similar circumstances while playing in the same outfield a decade apart.

Let’s start with the basics.

		G	PA	HR	R	RBI
Holliday 2006-2007		313	1380	70	239	251
Blackmon 2016-2017		302	1366	66	248	186

You can see just how close these two were in everything except for RBI. Of note with the RBI is Holliday often batted third or fourth while Blackmon always hit from the leadoff spot yet fell only 65 RBI short, which according to this article by RotoGraphs’ Scott Spratt denied Blackmon of approximately 10-13 RBI per 600 ABs. From the outside looking in, Holliday just by looking at him seems much more of a HR threat than Blackmon, and 2017’s MLB-wide HR surge definitely comes into play, but a HR is a HR is a HR, and in that regard they are neck and neck. These numbers alone are pretty impressively close, but let’s go deeper.

		BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP
Holliday 2006-2007		7.90%	17.10%	0.264	0.364
Blackmon 2016-2017		7.85%	17.25%	0.249	0.361

For all intents and purposes these numbers are identical, except the ISO which for Holliday is a little higher.

		AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	wRC+	WAR
Holliday 2006-2007		0.333	0.396	0.597	0.419	145	10.4
Blackmon 2016-2017		0.328	0.390	0.577	0.404	136	10.6

Now the final numbers to look at. Again these numbers except for wRC+ are essentially the same. Both players hit for near identical averages, OBP and so on. Blackmon has a little more in the WAR department, mostly because in the two-year timeframe he stole 10 more bases than Holliday and was better in the field. The only real difference between these two at this point is their age and service. Holliday was just 26 with two years of service time in 2006, while Blackmon was 29 and will be a free agent after 2018. So what does this all mean? Nothing really going forward, but the parallels between the two who exactly a decade apart literally made footprints in the exact same spots for the same team and had similar results on their teams seasons was surprising and interesting.