As far as breakout years are concerned, Rougned Odor did a bang-up job in 2016. His 33 home runs as a 22-year-old regular gave his baseball card a hefty amount of pop, but not as much as he gave Jose Bautista during their infamous run-in at second base.

I am not generally a fan of fisticuffs on the field, but this incident was and remains a touchstone for the 2016 season. However, in becoming so it may have, to the casual fan at least, reduced what was a solid season for one of the league’s youngest players to no more than a single moment. But Odor has, in fact, done more baseball things since that fateful afternoon, and the past couple of seasons paint a fascinating picture of a player who may not have improved overall, but one who has changed a whole lot and could very well have his best years ahead of him.
Over the past five years, he’s become a fixture at second base for the Texas Rangers, never appearing in less than 114 games during that span and accumulating a total of 7.2 fWAR. Save for his abominable 2017 campaign, which resulted in -1.2 fWAR, his career, despite no shortage of deep slumps and hot streaks, has been shockingly consistent: he’s totaled exactly 2.5 fWAR in three of the past four seasons. His career has played out much more interestingly than those identical numbers suggest, however, namely in that each campaign has played out quite differently (part of the fun of WAR!). The most pronounced changes, however, have occurred since that breakout 2016.

Though he posted identical fWAR totals in 2015 and 2016, the latter year was his first with at least 600 plate appearances, which helped him make quick work of his career-highs in the fan-favorite counting stats, namely home runs (33), RBIs (88), and stolen bases (14). A healthy-yet-not-unsustainable .297 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) anchored a solid .271 batting average, and 70 extra-base hits made for an impressive .502 slugging percentage. A paltry 3% walk rate kept his on-base percentage below .300 (.296), which limited his overall offensive production and kept his wRC+ at 103 (the league average is set at 100.) The 6.1 offensive runs above average remain a career high, but despite being 2.5 runs better than average on defense in the year prior, his -3.5 mark in 2016 remain a career low. Read the rest of this entry »

On a quiet Sunday afternoon earlier in July, the non-contending Texas Rangers made a splash into the trading market, acquiring veteran outfielder Austin Jackson, reliever Cory Gearrin, and prospect Jason Bahr from the Giants, in exchange for cash considerations, or a player to be named later. At first glance, the acquisitions raise eyebrows, as the AL West cellar-dwelling Rangers added big-league talent to a roster that is highly expected to undergo a complete reconstruction at this year’s trade deadline, just over three weeks away.

The move was thought to add Jackson to an up-and-coming squad of outfielders, in a transaction that wouldn’t be conducive to regular playing time for the 31-year-old journeyman. Gearrin was an added bonus in the trade, representing an experienced quality middle-relief option for Jeff Banister, with 1 1/2 years of club control remaining. However, Rangers GM Jon Daniels immediately clarified any controversy over his intent behind the move, stating  “Our primary motivation in the deal was acquiring Jason Bahr. He’s a guy we look at (as) a little bit (of an) undervalued prospect.”

Daniels further emphasized the insignificance of the acquisition of Jackson to the Rangers’ future plans, saying “we’re looking at talking to other clubs about the possibility of a trade. We’re not yet certain when he will report, or if there is potential for a second move.” To even the most intense baseball fans and avid prospect enthusiasts, the name Jason Bahr might not ring a bell, but it’s clear that Daniels envisions a bright enough future for the right-hander that he was willing to take on the spare parts from the Giants. The move appears to be a salary dump for San Francisco, as well as a route to clear playing time for prospects Ray Black and Steven Duggar, who were both called up directly following the announcement of this transaction. The focus of the trade is clearly the 23-year-old Bahr.

Jason Bahr had a roller-coaster ride of a collegiate career at Central Florida, starting out as a Redshirt Freshman, before being given a dearth of innings in his second campaign, and ultimately being cut from the roster in the following season. Bahr was given a new lifeline when UCF underwent coaching staff changes, and he ran with the new opportunity to contribute, notching 98 strikeouts in 60.3 innings, while appearing mostly as a reliever for the Knights. In just one season, Jason Bahr’s professional baseball dreams had gone from a long-shot to reality, as he was selected in the 5th round of the 2017 draft by San Francisco. A lanky 6’5″ right-hander, the Rangers are gambling that Bahr will add some strength to his 190-pound frame as a late-bloomer, but it’d be abnormal for a pitcher to still be growing into his frame in his age-23 season. This move could pay off to be a savvy acquisition by Jon Daniels, as he is essentially buying an undervalued prospect while he is on the rise. A similar deal transpired back in June 2015, when the Diamondbacks shed the $9.5 million salary of Bronson Arroyo to Atlanta by packaging it with young pitching prospect Touki Toussaint, a 19-year-old fireballer who lacked control at the time, in exchange for utility infielder Phil Gosselin. Three years later, Toussaint has developed into one of the games’ top pitching prospects, and is now on the brink of his MLB debut, as the move seems poised to pay off for Atlanta.

Jason Bahr is a project for a Rangers organization that can afford to take a flier on such a raw pitcher. While he generally sits in the low-90s with his heater, Bahr has exhibited the propensity to fire into the mid-to-upper 90s with the pitch as a reliever. In 13 starts for Single-A Augusta, Bahr accumulated a 2.75 ERA/2.93 FIP, backed up by an exemplary 11.53 K/9, ranking him 1st among all qualified SP in Single-A, in addition to a quality 2.75 BB/9, before earning a promotion to San Jose (A+). Bahr continued his dominance with San Jose, earning a 1.69 ERA through three starts, but these numbers are likely skewed by a LOB % of 100 % and an unsustainably low induced BABIP of .209. The chart below chronicles Bahr’s combination of missing bats and avoiding free passes. Out of all 516 MiLB pitchers to throw 60+ IP in 2018, Bahr ranks tied for 15th in K-BB%, a likely reason Daniels was so enticed by his skillset. The white dot shows Bahr’s promising ranking among his peers, in terms of K-BB% and FIP.

With an athletic delivery, Bahr has a high ceiling that is heavily contingent on the improvement of his still-developing secondary offerings. The development of his changeup has lagged behind the curveball’s progress so far, but if Bahr is able to establish one that is even average, giving him three serviceable offerings, he should be able to stick in the back-end of a big-league rotation. Depending on how much Bahr fills out and develops over the next year or two, the Rangers could have anywhere from a middle-leverage reliever to a late-blooming middle-of-the-rotation arm on their hands.

Rougned Odor had a disastrous 2017. Yes, he played all 162 games, which is not bad, and he hit 30 homers, which is not bad, but everything else was really, really bad. His slash line (.202/.254/.397) looks like that of an aging backup catcher. He was dead last in wRC+, behind even Jose Peraza. Behind even Dansby Swanson. Behind even Alcides Escobar, for God’s sake.

There have been 258 player-seasons where the player was in the lineup for all 162 national anthems. Odor’s was the eighth-worst as measured by bWAR (-0.2); in only 11 of these seasons did the player “achieve” a negative number. Most of these were either light-hitting middle infielders (players like Neifi Perez, the guy Alcides Escobar wanted to grow up to be) or aging diplodocuses (diplodocii?) like Pete Rose, still munching palm fronds (but no longer hitting much) at age 41. There are, however, two young power hitters among those 11, the 22-year old Ron Santo and the 25-year old Matt Kemp. Those with stock in Odor, Inc. will look to these seasons for inspiration, but they provide only limited hope.

Take Santo first. His poor 162-game season (at age 22) came a year after his first full year in the majors in 1961, a successful year in which he hit 23 homers, had an .841 OPS, and a wRC+ of 119. In 1962 Santo seemed to (very uncharacteristically) lose the plate. His walk rate dropped, his strikeout rate spiked, and his power plummeted. He hit only six fewer homers in 1962, but his ISO dropped by 60 points. (One can almost hear the retrograde Cubs coaches of the time telling Santo he needed to swing more and to stop being so patient.) The power would return in 1963, and the patience in 1964. Santo would never again have a walk rate below 10% until his depressing denouement with the White Sox in 1974.

Kemp’s career followed a somewhat similar path. The Bison had already assembled two effective offensive years before taking a long stride backward in 2009, his age-25 season. A far different player than the patient Santo, Kemp was always more of a close-eyes-and-swing-hard type, but the Ks really overwhelmed him in 2009, as his strikeout rate jumped almost 5% to 25.4%, the highest he would ever have in a fully healthy season. Some of Kemp’s retreat, however, could also be attributed to bad luck, however; he had the lowest BABIP of his career that year. And to be fair, other advanced metrics are not as harsh on him as bWAR — fWAR gave him a nice round zero that year, while his wRC+ checked in at 106, hardly encouraging for a supposed power-hitting outfielder, but hardly disastrous either. Kemp would go on the next season and win the MVP not win the MVP because Ryan Braun would — by assembling similar offensive rate stats as Kemp in 60 fewer plate appearances while playing poorer defense. With Kemp coming off a severely disappointing season and Braun not yet coming off his steroid exposure, this is perhaps more evidence that MVP awards are indeed path-dependent.

But I digress. The topic for today’s class is Rougned Odor, and one can see some similarities between his career track and those of the two power hitters just described. He’s coming off two solid years as a regular, and at age 23 is still young enough to turn things around and build a successful career. His team, i.e. the people who should know the most about him, thought enough of him to keep running him out there day after brutal day for the whole season, never benching him or sending him down. Chicks and everyone else dig the long ball, and like Santo and Kemp he’s clearly got that.

Not all the auguries are pleasant, however. Odor lacks even Kemp’s patience: his walk rate went up in 2017 to a still Rhode Island-sized 4.9%. Odor has the eighth-worst walk rate among active major leaguers. Odor’s career strikeout rate of 20.9% is better than Kemp’s, but his strikeouts ballooned to over 25% in 2017. Only Javier Baez, who recently filed a patent application on the letter “K”, had a higher rate among qualifying second basemen last year. This could be a good thing, though, in the sense that both Santo and Kemp had strikeout spikes during their bad years, which they both corrected, and Odor could too. Like Kemp, Odor also had a bad BABIP year, 50 points below his career number. Some of Odor’s next season, assuming he plays, will be a dead cat bounce; however bad Odor is, he’s almost certainly not as bad as the 2017 Odor.

But the lack of walks leaves him little room for error. And his minor-league track record is less impressive than those of Santo or Kemp, both of whom amassed an OPS of over .800 in the minors, and proceeded to do the same in the majors. Odor’s career minor-league OPS is .784, which is good but not great. Admittedly the statistical analogy is imperfect, but Whit Merrifield OPS’d at .784 in the majors at the keystone this year, good for ninth among second-base qualifiers. Advanced metrics yield a similar conclusion: Odor had a 106 wRC+ in his best season (in 2016). That’s Yangervis Solarte’s career mark, placing YS 16th among active second basemen. The signs, such as they are, don’t point to a Santovian, or even Kempian career, but rather a player whose upside is that of a first-division starter rather than an All-Star.

The Rangers would probably take that. They don’t have an obvious replacement for Odor at second, with Jurickson Profar’s career now a tire fire and Willie Calhoun apparently not fit for purpose at second. Hanser Alberto? No, probably not. Odor has shown he can strike out less, and indeed in the minors his strikeout to walk ratio was just a little over 2:1, much better than the 5:1 rate he’s shown at the majors, a rate that has washed out players like Wilin Rosario and Will Middlebrooks. If Odor can hold or build on his gain in patience (albeit from a very low base), lower the whiffs back to at least his career rate, and get some balls in play to go his way, he can return to his playable previous form.

And yet. It wasn’t long ago that the Rangers looked like a hotter, humider version of the Dodgers: a very good major-league team that could stay very good for a very long time by retooling on the fly rather than having to tank and rebuild. Remember these guys?

Baseball America’s Top 10 Rangers Prospects, 2012

1. Jurickson Profar
2. Martin Perez
3. Mike Olt
4. Leonys Martin
5. Neil Ramirez
6. Cody Buckel
7. Jorge Alfaro
8. Christian Villanueva
9. Rougned Odor
10. Matt West

To use a colloquialism I am given to understand is occasionally employed in Texas, that’s a lot of dry holes. Perez has become a serviceable league-average starter. They turned Alfaro (and most of what is now the Phillies farm system) into Cole Hamels. They gave Matt West the opportunity to explore the ancient and mysterious wonders of Japan. But that’s about it. Odor may yet break out and become a superstar — the Matt Kemp future is not completely out of reach. But the Rangers’ more achievable goal is to turn Odor into Yangervis Solarte. There are, to be fair, worse possible outcomes.

But, once upon a time, there were also better ones …

It’s no secret that Jonathan Lucroy is having a subpar season.

The two-time NL All Star was projected to be a top-three catcher in 2017.  Before the start of the season, Steamer pegged his value at 3.6 wins above replacement, while ZiPS had him at 3.2.  His .242/.297/.338 line and 66 wRC+ in 306 plate appearances as a member of the Texas Rangers produced 0.2 WAR.  No one really expected that.

Lucroy was eventually traded to the Colorado Rockies.  The Rockies, who had the worst catching tandem in baseball, instantly viewed Lucroy as an upgrade, while many other playoff-bound teams would have viewed him as a liability.  With the hitter-friendly environment of Coors Field and poor pitching staffs among the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres, the team figured that Lucroy would return to his All-Star form once again.  Although he has not returned to being the power threat that he once was, he has changed his game ever so slightly, such that he might have become the game’s best-hitting catcher.

His basic stat line is not reflective of his plate discipline as a member of the Rockies.  His slash line has gone back up to near his career average (.279/.384/.377), but what is most impressive about him is his actual hitting ability.  Always a good contact hitter, he has changed his game to be more selective, get more contact, and put the ball in play.  His 92 percent contact percentage ranks first in baseball since the trade, and his 88 percent contact percentage of pitches outside the strike zone also ranks first.  The result: a high walk rate (12.3 percent) and fewer swinging strikeouts (6.3 percent of plate appearances resulting in a strikeout).  All of this while swinging at fewer pitches outside the strike zone (18.6 percent) and fewer swings in general (38 percent).  You may be asking “Why isn’t he leading the league in hitting with numbers like that?”  Well, the answer is rather simple.

While he is making more contact than anyone in baseball, most of the balls in play are hit to the defense.  This season, he is hitting more ground balls than ever before.  As a Rockie, 50 percent of the balls he has hit in play have been ground balls, well above his career average of 42.8 percent.  As a result, he has hit fewer fly balls (28.7 percent) which has led to fewer home runs (3.2 percent HR/FB).  This explains his lack of power this year.

He has hit the ball in the wrong place more this season than any other.  For his career, Lucroy has had a tendency to drive the ball up the middle — that has not changed much this season — but this season he has hit the ball softer than in any previous season.  His average exit velocity (85.0 miles per hour) is more in line with middle infielders and outfielders than catchers.  In fact, he has the fourth-slowest average exit velocity among all qualified catchers.  His average exit velocity last season was 87.6 miles per hour, and it was 88.6 in 2015.  Without the wheels of a speedy outfielder or infielder capable of beating out a ground ball (or at the very least forcing the defense to rush the throw), a ground ball for Lucroy is as good as an out.  Just as the saying “baseball is a game of inches,” it’s a game of miles per hour, too.

Fewer ground balls are going through the holes in the infield, and fewer ground balls are becoming hits.  His batting average of balls in play as a Rockie is similar to his career average (.308 as a Rockie and .306 for his career), but his RBBIP — percentage of balls in play that go for a hit or an error — is .318.  While it is above league average, it is well below his RBBIP numbers of both his All Star seasons and 2012, when he hit .320.  Has Lucroy been entirely unlucky with his balls in play?  No; pitchers have pitched to him largely down and away, which has resulted in a horrible contact percentage on those pitches, and he has also regressed slightly in every season since 2015.  But if Lucroy can keep his contact percentage up, hit fewer ground balls, and stay selective at the plate, then he could be one of the best-hitting catchers in the game again.

While there is almost zero skill when it comes to the amount of RBI a player produces, through the creation of an expected RBI metric I have found a way to look at whether or not a player has gotten lucky or unfortunate when it comes to their actual RBI total.

I hope I don’t need to do this for most of our readers, because it’s 2014 and you’re reading about baseball on a far off corner of Internet, so you obviously are more informed than the average fan who consumes ESPN as their main source of baseball information, but lets talk about why RBI, as a stat, and why it is not valuable when you look at a players’ talent. The amount of RBI a player produces are almost—we’ll get into the almost a little later—entirely dependent on the lineup a player plays in. If a player doesn’t have teammates that can get on base in front of them in the lineup, there aren’t very many opportunities for RBIs; that’s the long and short. Really, RBI tell more about the lineup a player plays in than the player himself.

Intuitively, this makes sense.  The more runners there are on base, the more chances the batter will have for RBI, and the more RBI the batter will accumulate. When I said, “The amount of RBI a player produces are almost…entirely dependent on the lineup a player plays in”, lets be a little more precise. My research took the last three years of data (2010 to 2013) and looked at all players that had 180 runners on base (ROB) during their at bats over the course of a season. Over the three seasons, which should be enough data—it was a pain in the ass to obtain the data that I did find—ROB correlated with RBI by a correlation coefficient of .794 (r² = .63169), which is a very strong positive relationship.

But hey, that doesn’t mean that you can be a lousy hitter get a lot of RBI. That would be like if you threw a hobo in the Playboy Mansion and expected him to get a lot of tail; all the opportunity in the world can’t mask the smell of Pall Malls, grain alcohol and a lifetime of deflected introspection; trust me, I worked at a liquor store for three years in college, and I know.  In the same sample of players from 2010 to 2013 as used above, the correlation between wOBA—what we’ll use here to define a player’s ability at the plate—and RBI is .6555. So there is a relationship between a player’s ability and their RBI total, but nowhere near as strong as the relationship between their RBI total and their opportunity—ROB.

However, when we combine a player’s opportunity—ROB—with their talent—wOBA—we should get a good idea of what to expect for a hitter’s RBI total. Here is the formula for the expected RBI totals based on the correlations between ROB and wOBA, and RBI: xRBI =- 85.0997 + 262.7424 * wOBA + 0.1918 * ROB.

When you combine wOBA and ROB into this formula you end up with a correlation coefficient of .878 and an r² of .771. Wooooo (Ric Flair voice)!!!!!  With the addition of wOBA to ROB we increase our r², from .63 with just ROB, by fourteen percent.

2013 Expected RBI Leaders

Click Here to See xRBI Leaderboard

Let’s think about why Chris Davis’ xRBI is so much lower than his 2013 actual RBI total.

Davis had 396 runners on base while he batted in 2013, which is 140 ROB less than Prince Fielder who led the league with 536 ROB; Davis’ opportunity was limited.

Davis’ RBI total was considerably higher than what his opportunity would suggest his RBI total should be, and one of the reasons that he outperformed his xRBI total by so much was because of the amount of home runs he hit. Davis, or any batter, doesn’t need a runner on base to get an RBI when he hits a home run. But beyond home runs there is another reason why Davis and other batters outperform their xRBI totals: luck.

Hitting with runners on base is not a skill. A batter has the same probability, regardless of the base/out state, of a hit. Lets forget pitcher handedness and Davis’ platoon splits at the moment. With a runner on second base and two outs Chris Davis will get a hit .272 (27%) of the time—I averaged his Steamer and Oliver projections for 2014 together. Davis, and Alfonso Soriano for that matter, who was the only player to outperform his xRBI by more than Davis in 2013, was lucky and happened to have runners on base the majority of the 28.6%—Davis’ 2013 batting average—of the time he got a hit in 2013.

To put Davis’ 2013 136 RBI season into perspective, in the last five seasons there have been eight players to record 130 or more RBI in a season. Of those eight players, only two—Ryan Howard (2008-9) and Miguel Cabrera (2012-13)—were able to duplicate the performance the following year.

While the combination of ROB and wOBA has allowed us come up with a reliable xRBI, the next step, to increase the reliability of xRBI and account for players who produce a large amount of their RBI from home runs (i.e. Davis), is to include a power component in xRBI: HR/FB ratio.

Devin Jordan is obsessed with statistical analysis, non-fiction literature, and electronic music. If you enjoyed reading him, follow him on Twitter @devinjjordan.

If Kevin Youkilis is the “Greek God of Walks,” does that make Cliff Lee his mortal enemy? It’s an interesting query to ponder, considering Cliff Lee’s complete refusal to walk batters this season. At this pace, Lee is set to shatter the single season record for K/BB ratio. Given that the record for highest K/BB isn’t as universally celebrated as the single season home run or RBI leaders, let’s take a closer look at Cliff Lee’s historic season.

The current record holder in K/BB rate is Bret Saberhagen, who posted a K/BB rate of 11.00 over 24 starts in 1994. By comparison, in 13 starts this season Cliff Lee’s current K/BB rate sits at 14.83. While the list of K/BB leaders is littered with players from the 1800s, recent players on the list include Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, Ben Sheets, and Carlos Silva. Since it’s difficult to compare players from the 1800s with players today, let’s take a look at how Lee stacks up against the recent control freaks.

Player               GS     K/BB     K/9     BB/9     FIP    WAR  WAR/GS

Cliff Lee            14    15.17    7.27     0.48    2.58    3.8    0.27

Bret Saberhagen      24    11.00    7.26     0.66    2.76    5.2    0.21

Curt Schilling       35    9.58    10.97     1.15    2.40    9.7    0.27

Pedro Martinez '99   29    8.46    13.20     1.56    1.39   12.1    0.42

Pedro Martinez '00   29    8.88    11.78     1.33    2.17   10.1    0.35

Ben Sheets           34    8.25    10.03     1.22    2.65   8.0     0.24

Carlos Silva         27    7.89    3.39      0.43    4.18   3.0     0.11

Greg Maddux          33    8.85    6.85      0.77    2.43   8.2     0.25

A quick look at the table reveals the true dominance of Cliff Lee this season. On a per start basis, Lee is set to post a better WAR than every pitcher on the list except Pedro Martinez. While WAR/GS is a crude way to predict Lee’s WAR going forward, it does tell us how incredible his performance has been in the first half for the Mariners/Rangers. It’s also worth noting that even though he struggled in his Rangers debut, Lee did not give up a walk, increasing his K/BB rate while decreasing his overall BB/9 on the season. Despite a K/9 rate in line with Saberhagen, Lee is on pace to best Saberhagen in every single category in the table. Outside of the big strikeout guys (Schilling and Martinez), Lee may actually outproduce every other player in the table.

Even though K/BB leader isn’t a highly distinguished title, it’s certainly a sign of a player’s dominance in a particular season. No pitcher in the history of baseball has shown the amount of control Lee has exhibited this season. Since Lee’s strikeout rates are only above-average, you might expect batters to make a lot of contact against Lee, leading to more hits and a higher WHIP. This hasn’t been a normal season for Lee, however. The lefty has posted a WHIP of 0.95 this season, the top mark in the league. Some of that can be attributed to luck, but his current BABIP of .291 is actually fairly close to his career average of .305. With the recent trade, however, it’s going to be tough for Lee to match or improve on his numbers going forward. Leaving Safeco (and the Mariners defense) and moving to Texas will affect Lee’s numbers slightly. Despite that move, Lee still has a chance to complete one of the finest seasons by a pitcher. Even if Kevin Youkilis is Cliff Lee’s mortal enemy, I think it’s safe to say that every hitter despises Lee, especially this season.

*This article was originally written for FoulPole2FoulPole.com.