A Jason Heyward Comp: Jeff Bagwell? Nobody?
It’s obvious that Jason Heyward’s .277/.393/.456 debut was impressive, especially since it came at the tender age of 20. When it comes to his walks, it was just a hair short of record-breaking. His 91 walks last year were the the third most walks in a debut since 1960. Heyward will obviously be a boon to his team if only for that great walk rate, but are there are any other players that broke in with similar plate discipline stats that can show us a similar debut and can therefore tell us something about Heyward’s possible future development path? Or is Heyward unique?
Well, there is a player in the news right now that might just be somewhat comparable: Jeff Bagwell. Bagwell may have to wait to get into the Hall, but he debuted with 75 walks at 23 years old. That’s the most walks in a rookie season put forward by a player younger than 23 since 1985 (other than Heyward’s of course). We also know, with the benefit of hindsight, that walks would feature greatly in his game going forward, as he steadily upped his contribution in the category from 75 to a peak of 149 in 1999. His plate discipline came well-formed and was refined over time, and the similarity seems to suggest that Heyward will have many .400+ OBPs – Bagwell had seven, with two more over .397.
But what might a Bagwell comp mean for Heyward’s power? Bags famously wielded a light stick in the minor leagues (he hit only eight home runs in 212 minor league games, with a .436 SLG and a .115 ISO), but in his major league debut, he hit 15 home runs and showed a .437 slugging (.143 ISO). Heyward hit 29 home runs in 238 minor league games (.508 SLG, .190 ISO), and debuted with 18 home runs, a .456 SLG, and a .179 ISO. These aren’t perfect comps here, but Heyward won’t complain if he ends up with Bagwellian power eventually.
Braves fans in the projections, however, seem to expect the power to arrive more quickly than this comp would suggest it’s coming. Bagwell hit 449 home runs, but he hit only 53 in his first three seasons. In that 1994 season, his age 26 season, he finally broke out with 39 home runs. Look at the Bill James projection for Heyward this year, and you see a muted projection of 22 home runs and a .198 ISO (19 extra ISO points) that would look about right next to Bagwell’s sophomore debut in which he added 28 points of ISO and hit 18 home runs.
There is another player on the walk list that I want to bring up: Ike Davis walked 72 times in his debut, and no-one is talking about him as a comparable player to Heyward. And 72 is much closer to 75 than 75 is to 91. Davis also suffers from not having a minor league record that looks like Heyward’s – he only showed a .179 ISO in the minor leagues. Wait, is Bagwell a comp for Davis? I digress.
We do still have Heyward’s minor league dominance to take into consideration. Curt Blefary isn’t a name that will jog many memories, but he came up in 1965 (at 21) and walked 88 times against 73 strikeouts with 22 home runs (and had a .499 minor league slugging percentage), so in some ways he’s an interesting comp. But his .470 debut slugging percentage hid a .210 ISO, making his rookie season more powerful than Heyward’s, and he hit 31 home runs in Double-A before coming up. Of course, Blefary never slugged as high again in his career and was done at 28, and despite winning the Rookie of the Year award, he didn’t have the hype or the batting average of Heyward coming up, either (.270 minor league BA, .232 major league BA).
Alvin Davis, a first baseman that came up in 1984 in the Seattle organization, is somewhat similar. He burned through the minor leagues quickly (206 games in two years), had a decent slugging percentage (.497, .203 ISO), and walked 173 times against 95 strikeouts. In his rookie year, he walked 97 times to Heyward’s 91, but he hit 27 home runs and had a .210 ISO that year, too, so he showed more power in his debut. He was also 23 that year, three years older than Heyward. Albert Pujols, who walked 93 times and hit 37 home runs (with a .281 ISO), also is too overpowered to be a comp.
Sort the list for OBP, and it’s about the same, although Austin Kearns zooms to the top. That .370 BABIP in his rookie season had a lot to do with his OBP, but the 22-year-old Kearns had a nicer debut than people might remember and should be considered as a comp, if ultimately discarded for his lack of a strong minor league record. Sort the list for walk rate, and you’ll still get the same players near the top (Blefary, Hayward, Davis in order), but Barry Bonds and his 13.4% walk rate in his debut shows up. His .416 SLG in his debut seems to exclude him from the list, but he had a poor batting average that year and actually had a .193 ISO. He also stole 36 bases, though, and was seemingly a different player based on his speed and defense. If we use Bonds as a comp for Heyward’s power, though, we end up in a similar place as we did with using Bagwell as a comp – Bonds’ ISO hovered around .200 for a while, and he didn’t crack 30 home runs until 1990, when he was 26.
There just aren’t many comps for Heyward’s debut. He showed extremely good plate discipline and yet ‘only’ above-average power at a young age. He may age like Ken Griffey, Jr – another young rookie – but he also walked almost twice as often as Griffey in his rookie year. He may age like Bagwell, in which case we’ll see some great power years in his peak, but not right away. He may age like Bonds and show similar muted power until he bulks up in his mid-to-late 20s.
Or maybe he’ll simply age like Jason Heyward.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I don’t think nobody is a good comparison, because nobody is better than Jason Heyward.
I see what you did there.
As a Braves fan, there is nothing quite like watching the ball come off Heyward’s bat. I expect his power to increase significantly this year (granted that he stays healthy) as he adjusts to the pitching he faced last year and comes off several months of rest from his injured wrist. I expect 25-30 home runs. Go Bravos!
I agree from an eyes standpoint. Perhaps the health kept his power down, and he’s closer to Pujolsian than it seemed when looking at his final stats.
If I’m not mistaken, Heyward had a thumb injury (sliding into 3rd) that prevented him from putting up even better numbers.
He also missed some time (during spring and regular season) due to shin splints.
Wow. Blefary has a pretty interesting career. I can’t find the darn picture, but there’s a great “graph” of player value out there somewhere that shows 4 prototypical aging curves for fictitious players like “Eddie Early”, “Steady Sam”, “Larry Latebloomer” or whatever.
Blefary would be something like… “Frankie Fall-off-a-cliff”. That dude had a fantastic rookie year, and a pretty great 2nd year for a 23 year old, then…. wow. Just as he should’ve hit his prime he zeroes out across the board. That’s nuts. Drugs maybe. It was really a different game back then, off the field. No sponsors, endorsements or nine figure contracts. Hard to believe it could be anything else.
That’s a pretty awful career BABIP. I wonder what his hit profile and swing looked like.
Yeah, finding out about Blefary was the most interesting part of this. He definitely fell off a cliff. I suppose he must have been an extreme fly-ball hitter because he didn’t strike out much but had a poor BABIP. That might also disqualify him as a comp.
I thought exactly the same thing. He must’ve either been slow as molasses or an extreme FB hitter, because as you said his BABIP/K/AVG don’t really jive.
Here’s a clip from the article at http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=88&pid=1179 that explains (at least to some extent) Blefary’s sudden decline:
“Curtis Le Roy Blefary is best remembered for winning the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1965. He had three productive seasons for the Orioles before his intertwined personal demons, alcohol and anger, overcame his terrific natural ability. Blefary was a key contributor to the Orioles’ pennant in 1966. The left-handed hitter was an outfielder during his three solid seasons, and subsequently became a regular catcher and first baseman.”
Blefary must have had quite an arm too. His one season with a decent number of games at catcher, he threw out tons of potential basestealers. (Albeit only on the rare occasions he was able to actually catch the ball. Maybe some of those stolen base attempts were nearly WP’s and PB’s?)
Jason Heyward has the speed of a wide receiver, the size of a linebacker and the wit of a quarterback.
His power should develop quicker/better than Bags because, quite frankly, the kid is a monster. It was just a year ago that he was giving car insurance companies headaches with his towering shots into the parking lot at Disney Wide World of Sports complex.
He absolutely does not have the speed of a wide receiver.
but he can leap small buildings in a single bound.
He can’t necessarily accelerate like one because he’s a long strider, but his top end speed is insane. How many guys other than Heyward scored from 1B on a single last year?
Long striding would primarily benefit one running in a straight line.
Scoring from 1st to 3rd is not a straight line, but quite the opposite.
Running the bases would favor someone that can take sharp angles.
A long stroder might be the most ineffective type of runner to run the bases, given the tendency to take to wide of an arch when rounding each base.
Just like in the jay brice thread th eother day, there seems to b a few people adding fertilizer where it’s not needed.
Please excuse the number of typos. I should have at least read through that once before clicking submit.
Why would running the bases favor someone who runs sharp angles? You don’t run the bases at sharp angles. You round the corners. Taking longer strides doesn’t necessarily make you run a longer route around the bases. Heyward doesn’t need to slow down to hit the bases so he’s running at top speed from when he hits it on.
I’m not BSing or anything here. I don’t think Heyward’s speed adds all that much to his value or anything. I was just speaking to the fact that he has insane top speed for someone his size. I’ll ask again, how many other guys scored from 1B on a single this season?
Heyward is such a dangerous hitter, he gets intentionally walked in batting practice.
Too bad he has the swing of a line drive hitter.
Too bad your face has the swing of a line drive hitter…
As someone who was up next to Heyward multiple times this season, he most definitely does not have the size of a linebacker. He still has quite a bit of frame to fill out. Even D. Lee is more built.
Heyward has all sorts of promise, but let’s not get our of control here.
“He still has quite a bit of frame to fill out.”
Sounds like its time to take SOMEBODY to the old country buffet.
It’s not really bulking up that Jason Heyward needs. The ball flies off of his bat as hard as anyone’s. His swing just needs to generate a bit more loft, at times. He doesn’t want to uppercut at the ball, but it would definitely be a benefit if more of his balls carried over the fence. It’s hard to imagine him getting any stronger than he already is because he’s a ridiculous physical specimen for a 20 year old.
That’s the same issue Bags had when he came into the league. He says the work he did with Rudy Jaramillo in ’93-’94 is what led to his monster year in ’94 — something about changing up his stance and swing that got the ball to spin the right way. Maybe Heyward needs to work with Rudy a little.
Frank Thomas had BB%s of 18.3 and 19.7 his first two seasons starting at the age of 22.
that’s a good name. He didn’t make the PA threshold I set his first year, struck out more than Heyward, and showed more power, but it’s not a terrible name..
I got your comp: BILL BRASKY
http://www.psychonoble.com/subpages/quotes.html
The 1st time I saw jason Heyward, I thought “Cliff Floyd”.
I think Heyward is better than Floyd, certainly more skilled at least.
The next guy I would say is Ray Lankford. Both are athletic, but also have plate discipline and a good mixture of speed and power.
Floyd’s career was probably dimished by injuries, but Lankford had a pretty good career.
I know I’m supposed to think that JHey is a future HoF’er … but if he has a 40 WAR career like Lankford, I would consider that successful.
Perhaps from a scouting standpoint, but the numbers don’t bear it out. Floyd didn’t hit a double-digit walk rate until he was 24, Lankford until he was 25. Heyward’s ability to walk so often at 20 is pretty much unparalleled.
Not sure I see it Ray Lankford. I mean, as a rookie at an age where he really should be struggling, Heyward, posted a batting average that Lankford only surpassed four times, a BB% Lankford only reached twice, and his wOBA is already higher than Lankford’s was in his career.
I can’t predict catastrophic injuries, but surely Heyward is only going to get better, and if he does without washing out of the game before he hits 30, I think he’ll easily climb over 50 WAR. There’s probably at least 1 7+ WAR season in Heyward’s future, and several more where he can replicate the 5 WAR he accumulated as a rookie.
I think Heyward is more skilled than any of the 2 guys I mentioned.
Heyward at 20 is well ahead of where most everyone else is. There’s likey not a very good comp, but rather “some similar players”.
But from a body type, athleticism, skills, handedness, position, perspective … Floyd and Lankford were the two players I thought of. Lankford more similar than swing-happy Floyd.
One could easily way say “way to go CC11, you picked two black, left-handed, outfielders as comparisons … you’re brilliant”, and you could be right.
I do think Lankford is similar, just not at age 20 v. age 20. I also think we should exert caution in assuming the Heyward will continue to just get better and better. That certainly is possible, but it is not a guarantee nor should it be a drastic expectation.
Heyward was worth 5 WAR. Just how much do we expect him to improve? I Still remember when a young Eric Davis was going to be a 50-50 guy.
My thing with Heyward is that, for years, he has been working very hard at hitting … going to top notch coaches and hitting instructors, and working relentlessly on it. Combine that with a body big for his age, and I see the most improvement coming from his body “filling out” (sort of how Strawberry did). But I don;t think he’s going to make big advances in “improving his swing” or “working harder” or anything like that. Experience and physical improvements.
I think, like with Adrian Beltre, it is very tempting to set the bar for Heyward so high that he “never reaches it” and becomes just another guy who “under=performed” even though the culprit may have been our inaccurate expectations.
Davis didn’t start playing at a level similar to Heyward’s until he was 24, suffered from ridiculous injury problems, and still managed a 7+ WAR season and would have easily made 50 career WAR if he started performing at 20 and didn’t have the injury problems.
You forgot to mention that Bagwell started juicing. Maybe it should motivate Ike Davis.
Why bring Ike in to this…
My wife started juicing, too! I like the carrot, apple, mango, pineapple.
Jack Lalanne gives this a +1
@Bronnt, A person can improve their strength until they reach old age, well past retirement in baseball. Power=Work/Time, and a person doesn’t generally reach their peak power ability until 24-28 years old. Meaning, Heyward can continue to increase his speed on the base paths until at least his mid-twenties. A baseball swing is closely related to power, strength, and reaction time. Seeing that power and reaction time begin to peak around the same time (reaction time usually around early to mid-30’s), Heyward’s HR potential could continue to rise until he’s 27 or 28.
I don’t think there’s ever been a 20 year old with a rookie season better than JH. Really amazing. Projections are more difficult, though, for this reason: one of the advantages of steriod use was it allowed faster recovery from injury. As an aside this is why I always laugh when I read about how steriods “haven’t proven to help hitters hit more HRs” when they clearly do if for no other reason than they allow players to recover faster and get back on the field more than they would otherwise.
Sabermetrics came up in a time with rampant steriod use, and I think taints most saber’s viewpoints on how much injuries can play a part in a player’s development and eventual production. Although a healthy Heyward will almost certainly have a HOF career, favorable to almost anyone you care to name, you simply cannot overlook the extreme liklihood that he will get injured at some point, and such injuries will have a cumulative effect on him.
In a way, the Griffy comp is interesting, since he’s one of the only players of his era who is generally accepted to not have used steriods. And his 30s were injury riddled and not nearly as productive as everyone assumed they would be given the first half of his career.
We’ll see, of course.
Probably the best case career path for Heyward would be similar to Mel Ott
I know he had a high BABIP (.335) last season, but is there any reason to think Heyward’s not going to explode in the next few years? This kind of success at age 20 is unbelievable. I know it’s not totally without precedent, but it’s very rare.
Although a different position, Dwight Gooden clearaly had a better rookie season at the age of 19. Caveat emptor.
Reply fail
While I understand the enthusism about Heyward, is there any evidence to suggest that players who are good while young develop faster than players who are average while young?
I think the search for comps is sort of a way to talk about this. We’re looking for comparable players so we can see a similar development path. But Tango has discussed this a ton at the Book, too.
Doesn’t that 3 year age difference kill this comparison? When Bagwell was 20 he was a light hitting A-ball player, while Heyward at that age was a highly successful and patient major league hitter. To expect them to progress the same at different ages is incorrect, as we would typically expect more power to develop in age 21-24 seasons than in age 24-27 seasons.
The point of the article was mostly that you could argue against any comp out there. Bonds might be the closest, but he was a speedy centerfielder at that point. Thomas is okay, but he didn’t play as much at such a young age and struck out more and showed more power. Bagwell has plenty of problems as comp, as pointed out.
Barry batted .223 as a 22 year old in his first year…
Ah, but check out this comparison from my cousin, scaled to 623 PAs for both. Other than SBs, pretteh pretteh close.
Bonds: 623(pa) 118(h) 20(hr) 92(r) 61(rbi) 46(sb) 13.4(bb%) 24.7(k%).194(iso).416(slg) 4.3(war)
Hey: 623(pa) 144(h) 18(hr) 83(r) 72(rbi) 11(sb) 14.6(bb%) 24.6(k%).179(iso).456(slg) 5.0 (war)
2 years, 35 stolen bases and 25 hits… otherwise pretty close!
I think Adam dunn is a good comparison. Similar speed numbers, lh batters with high ISO and bb rate. Dunn has a little more power, and the higher k-rate. I realize we are not supposed to cross ethnic lines when comparing players though. I don’t understand why people can him fast though, other than him being black and it is assumed.
Dunn debuted with a .300+ ISO and a 30+% K rate – just a different hitter. I don’t even know what race Blefary is, didn’t put race in this comp search.
Jeff Bagwell: Black man.
I don’t think people assume he’s fast because he’s black……he’s no Ricky Henderson….but he’s absolutely no Adam Dunn. Seriously? Adam Dunn?
Have you ever compared the two running down balls in the outfield, not just SB stats?
Really?
Could be a job for Seth and Amy… really!?!!!
Unless you’re using “fast” in the colloquial sense to mean “steals lots of bases,” then no one is “assum[ing]” that Heyward is fast. If you watch him play, you’ll see: he just IS fast.
Looks pretty similar to Mays rookie year at 20 if you ask me
AVG: Heyward .277, Mays .274
HR: Heyward 18, Mays 20
RBI: Heyward 72, Mays 68
SB: Heyward 11, Mays 7
SLG: Heyward .456, Mays .472
BB/K: Heyward 91/128, Mays 57/60
He didn’t show up on the lists because he didn’t walk as much, and you can see that Heyward almost doubled Mays’ walk and strikeout totals, but this is a pretty good one. Mays walked 10% and struck out around 12% in his first year, which in a way is even better zone work than Heyward. Not sure how this will hold, given Mays’ speed and position, though.
Mickey Mantle seems like a decent comp, and certainly you can’t do much better as an upside – I always forget Mantle had as good a ten-year stretch as anyone, ever (basically, leading the league in OPS+8 times)
Now, Mickey’s second year… that one was very Heyward-esque! This said, Mickey benefitted by the prior year’s experience. Seems apparent to me that Heyward is pretty much in a class by himself, with all sorts of blue skies ahead. Everyone knows there are a million ways he could go wrong, but kid seems to do most everything right. Heck, he even was reasonably patient about coming back from a tricky injury situation.
Someone’s already said as much, but what is going to keep Heyward from prodigious HR totals is his swing, not his raw power. The ball already comes off his bat like no one else’s, I don’t see much room to improve that. He just has a ground ball stroke that won’t generate many fly balls.
As far as comps, my favorite one so far came from Bobby Cox: Al Kaline. I think it’s the best comp available.
That IS a good one. Kaline didn’t walk as much, and struck out less than 10% of the time for a long time, so it’s not perfect. But it’s possibly better than the rest here.
Heyward had more walks this year than Kaline did in any of his years, though. Heyward’s patience at his age is pretty unprecedented and it’s going to make it tough if not impossible to find any real decent comparison for him.
Right, I mean you’re never going to get a perfect comp of course. But in terms of finding a batting profile, he was pretty similar to Kaline. 82 walks at age 20 was top 10 in the AL for Kaline, so it’s a comparable start to a career (Heyward’s 91 placed 4th).
I’d say it’s the closest, yes. If he hadn’t played the year before (and only walked 20 times), it probably would have shown up in my search too. Well done!
Great last line!
Why are so many convinced that Heyward won’t deliver in the AVG department?
When he first arrived in the big leagues, he was striking out a lot and hitting a lot of flyballs. Then the thumb injury arrived and really forced him to change his approach.
He tried playing through the injury for over a month and was all but useless at the plate. He was then DL’d, and came back and put up a .302, .419, .457 line, all better than his first half numbers. But he was still bothered with his thumb until about a month and a half ago.
If you look at some of his PA’s in the 2nd-half, you can see that he’s gripping the bat differently and not using his thumb. After his DL stint, he started pulling the ball much more and hitting more grounders, as opposed to his performance in the first half where he was spraying the ball to all fields. I know many use injuries as an excuse for any given player, but his thumb injury really did change his approach at the plate and I honestly can’t believe how quickly he made the adjustments and managed to put up even better numbers than he did before the injury. Had that slide never occurred, I’d be confident in saying that he would’ve reached the 23-25 HR mark.
His ability to make quick adjustments is what impresses me the most about his game. The kid knows baseball backwards and forwards, and I understand he’s gonna need a bit more loft on his swing to be an elite power guy, but doesn’t that usually come with more experience? I’d rather him be focusing on just hitting the ball hard right now as opposed to focusing on power numbers. I loved what he said before ST about his approach at the plate…..”Wait, bait, bash.” It perfectly describes his approach.
I remember early on in the season Bobby saying that he’s being way too patient at the plate. Two days later he went on about a two-week streak of just absolutely hammering the baseball. He does have the tendancy to go after pitches low and away and pitchers will no doubt attempt to exploit that, but he seemed to improve in that department as the season progressed.
Injuries are definitely a possibility with his build playing in the outfield, but he adjusted to the thumb injury he was plagued with for over half the season, so I’m confident enough in him making the proper adjustments to stay productive.
Actually, I worry about the thumb injury. Who knows when a “little” thing like that will cause a great player to change his swing just enough to lose his effectiveness for a long time (see Utley, Chase). My point above stands, prior to steriods, many a promising career was deflated by injuries, even when those players continued to play and be effective ML-ers, they just weren’t what they could have been.
Yeah, but to put it in perspective…….it’s a pretty standard thumb injury. I don’t see it having any long-term effects on his performance. His approach didn’t change completely because of it, just some minor tweaks I noticed such as not driving the ball to the opposite field nearly as much and laying off a ton of pitches on the outer-half of the plate, as he said hitting the ball to the opposite field is painful when he’s not hitting it solidly, so he started to lay off more pitches he would usually drive the other way off the outside corner.
But you’re correct in that things like that do happen, but I think Utley and Heyward will get back to their normal approach this upcoming season.
What you’re descring is the idea of getting line drive hitters to hit the ball with backspin in order to get more loft and carry.
I’m far more familiar with pitching mechanics than hitting mechanics so I am not comletely certain how it is accomplished, nor how difficult it is. Bit I certainly hear coaches talk about it quite a bit.
Without looking at any statistical backing, I see more Larry Walker than Bagwell in JHey.
I was just about to post that I’ve always thought of Larry Walker when Heyward comes to mind. He struck out a lot more in his first few seasons, so the early career comp isn’t there, but he ended up lowering it considerably.
Interesting article
Damn, the NL East is going to have some young hitters in the next few years. Heyward, Stanton, Morrison. I know it’s premature at this point, but Harper will probably be up soon enough. Still blows my mind to think that the gdamn Braves got this guy partly because his HS coach couldn’t throw bp enough for scouts to see him
If Domonic Brown can even put himself close to the same level as Heyward/Stanton, I’ll be thrilled. Forget being as good because that just doesn’t seem plausible with how good these guys were at age 20-21
Well, Bill James’s often optimistic projections next year for Brown read like this:
.288 AVG
.346 OBP
.505 SLG
26 HR
84 RBI
28 SB
.217 ISO
.372 wOBA
So according to that, he’s going to have a better rookie campaign than both Heyward and Stanton, which I really don’t buy(at least with Heyward). Projecting any rookie to be that close to a 30/30 guy in his first full season is being pretty optimistic, although I do see Brown with a world of talent.
Yeah, but even if he hits that projection, Domonic will be 23 in his rookie year. By the time Heyward and Stanton finish their age 23 seasons, they’ll likely both have 100+ career HR in the bank.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m a Philly fan and I think Brown looks like a terrific player with a sweet stroke.
But Stanton and Heyward are already a step (or 3) ahead.
People gotta remember that Heyward was well on his way to 25+ homers until he injured his thumb.
The power is there. If healthy, I fully expect big power numbers from him this upcoming season.
I’d say the length of some of the homers he hit suggests that he has the power to hit them more frequently. Following the entire Braves season, his power numbers were destroyed once the thumb injury occured as he played through it.
You know who is a piece of shit?
Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts.
That guy is a scumbag.
How about Fred McGriff?
Not a scumbag.
I don’t think you can use his numbers to even compare him to anyone.
When he started the season out batting 6th, the only Corner outfielder better than him in RBI, OPS or Slugging was Andre Ethier who got off to an amazing start as well.
After his thumb injury that obviouslyl effected him to teh end of the year, as well as the move to the 2 hole, his slugging dropped significantly. Right now at 21, I have no doubt that this guy is a top 3 Corner outfielder in the game and unlike most corner outfielders that you could say that about, he can give + defense with an elite bat.
I think the best comparison to draw to is a quicker matured Ken Griffey Jr. or maybe even a Barry Bonds. He’s an elite type of talent and fully deserved to be Rookie of the Year over Buster Posey who hit incredibly well for one month and basically provided below average offense for the rest of the season.
I know I am a week or two late to this conversation, but since I read every comment, I feel like I have earned the right to add my half cent.
Heyward had a great season as a 20 year old rookie. But it is a huge injustice that baseball fans are not able to look back on his season and see what his numbers would have been (could have been) had it not been for that thumb injury.
He slid into third on May 14th and injured his thumb. These are the numbers he had up to that game (Apr 5-May 14):
.299/.425/.608 (31 games, 97at bats)
While playing hurt (May 15-Jun 26):
.222/.328/.361 (40 games, 158 at bats)
After his DL stint (Jul 15-Oct 3):
.302/.419/.457 (71 games, 265 at bats)
That puts his numbers surrounding the time he first injured his thumb, and his DL stay, as follows (102 games, 362 at bats):
.301/.422/.533
You can see that his power was down after coming off the DL. and there is nothing to say he could have kept up his power numbers he was putting up in his first 30 games, but you can reasonably assume that it would have fell somewhere in the middle had his wrist been 100% those last 71 games.
All of that to say that, while it’s currently difficult to compare the season that he did have to any other player, just imagine if he went feet first into third base on May 14th. With his plate discipline, combined with all of his talent, size, and age. The sky may not even be able to limit his abilities.
This next year will be very interesting to see what he does.
Out of curiosity, do you know what his walk rate was during that May 15-Jun 26 stretch? I wonder if hitting with a hurt thumb would make you a little more prone to looking for walks before you’d swing, thus perhaps giving him a slightly higher walk rate for the year than he would’ve had if he was totally healthy.