Since the glory days of the 1990s, Cleveland Indians fans
have been clamoring for power bats. What a lot of them don’t realize is that
the definition of a power hitter has changed dramatically since the days when
the Indians were loaded with right-handed and left-handed power in a lineup
that featured Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, and Jim Thome, among others. Now,
hitting 20 home runs in a season is considered by some to be the benchmark for
power. It used to be 30. Or even 40.
Of course, we have other stats like ISO (slugging percentage
– batting average), HR/FB% (percentage of home runs hit out of the total number
of fly balls), and more to help quantify offensive power. The days of PED and
steroid-induced power are in the past. Among qualified hitters from 2013-2015,
six of them hit over 100 home runs. They are Chris Davis, Nelson Cruz, Edwin
Encarnacion, Mike Trout, Jose Bautista, and David Ortiz. Two others, Josh
Donaldson and Chris Carter, hit 94 and 90, respectively. That means that
exactly eight players averaged 30 or more home runs per season from 2013-15.
In today’s high-strikeout environment, with the low strike
affecting run scoring, as August
Fagerstrom and Jon
Roegele have pointed out, as well as the highest average fastball
velocity ever, “power hitter” doesn’t have nearly the same connotation that it
once did. That’s not to say that power does not exist. It’s to say that the
definition has changed and that teams are not going to find these 30+ home run
guys with regularity. We’ve reached a state in Major League Baseball where we
have some promising young sluggers, like Giancarlo Stanton, Kris Bryant, Joey
Gallo, and various others, but it’s time to change the expectations that we, as
baseball fans, have from “power hitters”.
There are a lot of people that believe that the Indians have
no power hitters. The Indians finished 22nd in home runs last season and 13th
in the American League. Coincidentally, the two teams behind them are division
rivals, the Kansas City Royals and the Chicago White Sox. Despite a lack of
home run power, the Indians finished 11th in slugging percentage, ahead of the
Minnesota Twins, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Oakland Athletics, and Chicago
White Sox. To be fair, the Angels and Athletics play in home environments that
suppress power. Minnesota
is not a good power park for lefties because of the high limestone wall and the
chilly conditions for essentially one-third of the baseball season that will
also negate some power.
The notion that the Indians have no power is not entirely
true. That being said, it could be truer than some of us want to believe.
Consider this very basic table lacking in fun bells and whistles:
Player
|
2014 SLG
|
2015 SLG
|
Career SLG
|
2014 ISO
|
2015 ISO
|
Career ISO
|
Brantley
|
.506
|
.480
|
.423
|
.178
|
.170
|
.130
|
Santana
|
.427
|
.395
|
.433
|
.196
|
.164
|
.188
|
Gomes
|
.472
|
.391
|
.442
|
.194
|
.160
|
.180
|
|
.419
|
.410
|
.482
|
.171
|
.187
|
.229
|
These four men have some things in common from last season.
All of them finished 2015 with a lower slugging percentage than 2014. Three of
them finished with slugging percentages well below their career averages. Three
of them finished with a lower ISO than the previous season.
There’s one other big thing that these four men have in
common. As Mike Podhorzer of Fangraphs wrote
on January 14, all four of them rank in the top eight in batted ball
distance decline from the previous season. Gomes was first. Santana was second.
Napoli was third. Brantley was eighth. Gomes,
as we all know, suffered what was termed a “moderate” MCL sprain in the first
week of the season, missed several weeks, and took a while to get back to being
the same player. Santana volunteered to the media that he had been dealing with
a back issue throughout the season. Napoli is
a different story that requires more analysis. Brantley also had a back issue
throughout the first half, but is such an elite hitter that he was able to
overcome some of those injury-related issues.
We’ll start with Gomes, because he had the biggest decline
in baseball by a significant margin. Gomes went from an average batted ball
distance of 289.9 feet in 2014 to 268.2 feet in 2015. His HR/FB% dropped by
over three percent. It’s slightly presumptuous to say that Gomes would have
matched or even exceeded his total of 21 home runs in 2014, but if he had
matched it, the Indians would have gone from 13th in the AL in home runs to 12th. We’re movin’ on up!
It’s obvious that Gomes’s knee injury had an effect on him.
(It also affected his pitch presentation skills, but that’s a conversation for
another day.) In order to try and explain how, exactly, that knee injury
affected Gomes, I reached out to a good friend of mine. Mike Stout, a licensed
athletic trainer at Virginia Tech and his wife, Dr. Stephanie Betts, DO, were
kind enough to consider my questions and provide some answers.
Did the nature of this particular MCL injury make things
worse?
“Being that the injury
was on his back leg, I feel it has a greater effect than if it was his front
leg. Going through a weight transfer with the rotational aspects of the back
knee would definitely put some additional stress on that MCL ligament.”
So it would linger?
“The biggest issue I
see, being a former player (author’s note, Mike was a three-sport varsity
athlete in football, baseball, and hockey before focusing on his education in
college), there is really no way to
“rehab” it efficiently towards the later stages. What I mean is that, over the
course of rehab, they worked on his range of motion, strength, balance, and
everything else typically done during the rehab process. But, is there really a
way to get his knee back to “normal” function without seeing live pitching?
Sure, he saw live pitching during his rehab. But, there’s no way to recreate
game at bats. If I had to guess, it probably took him between 75 and 100 at
bats in game situations to trust the knee fully. I can guarantee there was a
point where all his BP and practice live ABs felt fine, but those first several
times he had to react to a 90 mph slider, shift his weight to stay on balance,
and cover the corners of the plate, things probably felt shaky for a while. Not
to mention simply having to acclimate to missing so much time.”
When we talk about 100 at bats, we’re talking about
essentially one-sixth of a season, and probably more than that for a catcher.
Gomes was hurt on April 11. He returned on May 24. His 100th at bat after his
injury came during the July 3 game against Pittsburgh . In those first 102 at bats, Gomes
posted a .225/.241/.343 slash, with just three doubles, three home runs, and a
31/3 K/BB ratio. From July 4 through the end of the season, Gomes still
struggled from a BABIP standpoint, posting a .241 average with a .287 on-base
percentage, but his slugging percentage climbed to .427. He had 18 doubles and
nine home runs.
You cannot look at a six-week injury as simply being a
six-week injury. Depending on the nature of the injury, it may take another
two, four, or even six or more weeks to get back into game shape. For Gomes,
there should be a lot of hope for a bounce back.
That brings us to Carlos Santana. Santana was supposed to
take major strides forward offensively last season. Playing first base
full-time is easier on the body than catching, and so the hope for Santana was
an increase in offensive production. The result was anything but. A 15.5-foot
drop in average batted ball distance was a contributing factor to a 4.2 percent
drop in HR/FB%.
Santana went from 27 home runs to 19. His slugging
percentage dropped by over 30 points. We were never privy to the
nature of Santana’s back injury, but his slugging percentage against
left-handed pitching dropped by 95 points in a similar sample size. His SLG
against righties was almost equal (.406 from .407). His slugging percentage
when he pulled the ball dropped from .656 in 2014 to .565 in 2015.
Santana is one of the most polarizing players in Cleveland sports. The godless
sabermetric pigs appreciate his value. Those that believe that
sabermetrics are the work of the devil or are made-up statistics do not. It’s
worth pointing out that Santana, in the worst offensive season of his career,
was still 10 percent above league average. That’s not why you’re here and
reading, but it needed to be said.
For Gomes, we have a very clear reason why the power
production dropped off. For Santana, because we don’t know the nature of the
back injury, we cannot definitively say that his power will return this season.
Unfortunately, Eno Sarris wrote
back in 2012 about power declines in hitters and found that hitters
really begin to drop off around age 29. Santana will turn 30 four days after
Opening Day.
On the other hand, Chad Young found
in 2013 that hitters that lose 15+ feet of distance will see some
bounce back the following year. But, the caveat there is that hitters aged
29-32 were found to lose about three feet in distance on average in that age
group.
Certainly there are other variables to a guy like Santana,
being a switch hitter and a patient guy. Santana was ahead in the count in 330
of his batting outcomes last season. He posted a .281/.515/.484 slash in these
situations, with 108 walks. In 2014, Santana posted a .287/.525/.538 slash in
these situations. That’s a big drop in SLG. The Indians were 13th in AL SLG
when the outcome of an at bat was determined with a batter ahead in the count. Santana
was second to Manny Machado in number of outcomes, excluding walks, when ahead
in the count. He was 162nd
in SLG out of 276 hitters with at least 50 such at bats when ahead in
the count. For what it’s worth, Yan Gomes was 119th. Getting into advantageous
counts should benefit Santana in terms of increasing his batted ball distance
and power production, but it’s tough to project if it will actually happen.
Because Santana dropped down from what appeared to be an
abnormally-high batted ball distance in 2014, as Podhorzer pointed out, there
has to be some concern that this may be Santana’s power production for the
foreseeable future. Santana enjoyed a 17-foot jump from 2013 to 2014 and that
resulted in a jump from 20 dongs to 27. Did the back injury do it? Was it
regression? From the outside looking in, it’s tough to tell. As elite as the
on-base skills are, the power simply may not return to that 2014 level, and
that could be part of the reason Mike Napoli was signed.
The Indians bought reasonably low on Napoli ,
who had a horrendous season against right-handed pitching last year. On the
season, 61.8 percent of Napoli ’s plate
appearances came against righties and he posted a miserable .191/.283/.320
slash. The Indians are banking on a bounce back from his .239 BABIP and his 8.3
percent HR/FB%. For his career, Napoli owns a
.243/.340/.464 slash, a .296 BABIP, and a .220 ISO against righties.
In terms of his batted ball distance difference from 2014 to
2015, Napoli ranked third. He went from 302.2
feet per batted ball to 287.6 feet. That 14.6-foot drop coincided with a 1.9
percent decrease in HR/FB%.
Are we talking about a player significantly losing bat speed
in his mid-30s? Are we talking about an outlier of a season? After an
injury-riddled 2014 campaign, Napoli did not
appear on the disabled list at all in 2015. We’ll have to wait and see. Napoli is still an effective hitter in the sense that he
works counts and has a great platoon advantage against left-handed pitching.
In Michael Brantley’s case, there was probably some simple
regression coupled with a bad back. Brantley’s .506 SLG in 2014 was a big
surprise and his 20 home runs were as well. That’s not to say that Brantley
couldn’t climb back up to 20 home runs in the future, but 15-18 home runs with
a ton of doubles probably seems like the best-case scenario in a full season.
With the shoulder injury, a torn labrum, it’s fair to wonder what effect that
will have on Brantley offensively. That is undoubtedly a major concern entering
this season.
There are some segments of the fan base clamoring for Dexter
Fowler, the top free agent outfield bat left on the market. Fowler, despite a
big jump in home runs, actually lost average batted ball distance this season.
In Podhorzer’s list, Fowler was sixth, with a decline of 13.3 feet. Part of the
reason that Fowler isn’t signed yet is because teams aren’t buying into the 17
home runs and the power jump because it comes with such a big red flag. He’s
also a brutal defensive outfielder by the metrics. A drop in power production
coupled with his subpar defense means the chance to severely overpay a player.
In terms of tangible power upgrades for the Indians, Mike
Napoli should be one to Brandon Moss and Yan Gomes will improve in that
department with a healthier season. A bounce back from Carlos Santana seems
somewhat unlikely and the expectations for Michael Brantley should be set low
in his return from a major shoulder operation. That certainly doesn’t paint a pretty
picture for the offense.
But, power is not everything. The Indians will once again be
at or near the top of the AL
leaderboard in BB%. Last season’s Indians were woefully and historically inept
with the bases loaded and struggled with runners in scoring position. Some
positive regression in run-scoring opportunities could make all the difference.
Come to the ballpark to watch elite pitching and good defense.
Just don’t expect to leave with a souvenir unless you buy one.
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