Beware the Jays’ Sluggers
Today, Alex Gonzalez and prospects were traded for Yunel Escobar. Maybe that doesn’t seem too insane today, but if this news had broke last offseason, nobody would believe that Alex Gonzalez could bring in a player worth 10.1 WAR from 2007-2009 and yet to reach arbitration. Obviously, a large part of this deal is Yunel Escobar’s offensive struggles in 2010, but perhaps an even larger part is Alex Gonzalez’s power surge.
Alex Gonzalez has hit 17 home runs in 348 PAs this season, only six fewer than his career high from 2004 (a 599 PA season). He’s on pace to hit 29 this season if he reaches 600 plate appearances. Thanks to that, Gonzalez’s ISO is a career high .238, allowing him to wOBA .341 despite only reaching base at a .296 clip.
Jose Bautista is having a similar season. After posting ISOs between .160 and .185 for the last four seasons, his ISO is now up to .306, earning him a position on the AL All-Star team. Bautista’s 24 home runs in only 366 PA is already a career high, as his previous high was 16 (in 469 PA) in 2006. With the Blue Jays swiftly falling out of the race, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Bautista included in a trade down the road.
Since so much of their value is tied up in their ability to hit home runs, let’s take a look at how far they’ve hit their home runs this year, courtesy of the ever excellent HitTracker Online
Both Bautista (red) and Gonzalez (blue) are right-handed and extremely pull-happy home run hitters. Bautista’s home runs, overall, tend to go farther, but there is one cluster in particular that both share in common. Gonzalez and Bautista have eight combined home runs in the area between 130 degrees and 125 degrees and less than 375 feet, and Gonzalez has an additional five in the area between 135 and 130 degrees and less than 355 feet.
The rather unimpressive spread of home runs is confirmed when we look at the classifications that HitTracker uses for home runs. This is the HitTracker definition of a “Just Enough” home run:
“Just Enough” home run – Means the ball cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, OR that it landed less than one fence height past the fence. These are the ones that barely made it over the fence.
Alex Gonzalez is currently the NL Leader in Just Enoughs with ten. Jose Bautista is second with eight. Both have HR/FB rates that eclipse their career averages. Even though the park factor for overall runs in Toronto favors the pitcher, the factor for home runs largely favors hitters. According to StatCorner, the RHB HR park factor in Toronto is 110, heavily favoring the hitters. This is balanced out by a 92 park factor for singles for both hands, which is why we see pitchers seemingly favored at the Rogers Centre.
All of the factors for a heavy decline in the second half are there, particularly for Alex Gonzalez, who moves to Turner Field and its 90 park factor for RHB HRs. These players are getting lucky in almost every possible sense with home runs. The Braves are likely to fall victim to a drop in power from Alex Gonzalez, and any team, particularly without a RH-friendly ball park, would likely see the same out of Jose Bautista.
Jack Moore's work can be seen at VICE Sports and anywhere else you're willing to pay him to write. Buy his e-book.
Does this mean that Escobar will start knocking them out with regularity too?
Thanks, Frank Wren! It would be so nice if your highly-paid front office analysts could work through a little problem like this half as competently as a blogger who’s not getting paid for this.
What a terrible trade.
As a Mariners fan, I like to call the zone from 125 to 135 degrees and less than 375 feet the “Jose Lopez power zone”. Look how sustainable it was for him.
oh yeah
Great article, Jack, and I love the home run graph (even if you can’t take credit for it). Agreed with Anon21 that it’s somewhat astounding no one in the Braves’ front office, who combined make several million dollars to know baseball, couldn’t analyze this trade as well as you did.
My initial thought was that it was a terrible move for the Braves, the kind of impulsive trade you’d make in fantasy when you’re trying to make a push in home runs. In that case, it might not be a bad move. This isn’t fantasy baseball. This is a terrible trade, and your article confirms that. Thanks again for all of your great work.
Actually the article fails in its first paragraph, last sentence…
“Obviously, a large part of this deal is Yunel Escobar’s offensive struggles in 2010, but perhaps an even larger part is Alex Gonzalez’s power surge.”
Obviously, a large part of this deal is [THE BRAVES HAD ENOUGH OF YUNEL AND WERE SHEDDINNG HIM FOR WHATEVER THEY COULD GET}. That’s gotta be pretty obvious to everyone. The guy has been one of the best SSs in all of baseball since coming into the league, his talent is undeniable. So unless you can’t deal with him anymore, the deal makes absolutely no sense. Trading a player, at his age, with his skills, with 3 cost controlled years left, for a much worse and older SS and two decent but nothing special prospects doesn’t add up any other way than by including the Braves apparent dislike for Yunel Escobar in the locker room and on the field. Not saying they are right or that he’s some Milton Bradley or other intolerable type player, but without factoring that level of dislike for Yunel the person into the deal, it makes no other sense. So the analysis fails right then and there when it doesn’t acknowledge an obvious, primary, overwhelming reason behind making the move.
Well put, Mr. Sanchez. Even though the other stuff is still interesting.
The analysis on Gonzalez makes sense but calling Bautista lucky is ridiculous. Even if you take out ALL 8 of his “just enoughs”, he’d still have 16 HRs.
“Jose Bautista is second with eight [Just Enough’s].”
He also has one home run of the inside-the-park variety.
take out the poor excuse for a home run home runs and the itp’er and he’s on pace for 25 home runs which when combined with his horrifying batting avg makes him a pretty sub-par player imo.
Well, if you just look at this season, his average may be low, but he is tied for the AL lead in walks, so his OBP is fine (.361 as we speak). Obviously, he hasn’t been this good historically, but he’s having a very good season.
I’d bet good money that Bautista also has the league lead in “no doubters, out by a mile” homers this year as well.
His “just enough’s” are mostly all rocket line drives that might not be 10 feet over the fence, but would clear the fence even if it was 20 feet further back.
The only park that would hurt him there would be Fenway.
Alex Gonzalez has pretty much the same HR rate on the road as he does in Toronto. With that in mind, I don’t understand the focus on his home park.
In addition to the 8 HR’s he hit in Toronto, he hit 3 @ BAL, 1 @ TEX, 2 @ CHW, 1 @ NYY, 1 @ PHI and 1 @ TB, so most if not all of his road HR’s also came in hitter friendly parks. In addition, this is not solely about the parks where he’s hit them this year. You also have to factor in that he’s going to play 41 of his final 74 games in a park with a 90 HR factor for RHB’s.
jose bautista is also 3rd in the majors in no doubt home runs…. nice of you to just leave that out of the article…
If you’re the Braves sitting in first place and distancing yourselves from the Mets and Phillies, don’t you want to do something about that black hole at SS? They lost a young upstart player who has been all you could hope for until this season, but in return they get a hot bat for the playoff push who they have under control for under $3 mil next year if they choose. I don’t care if Gonzalez can’t match his 17 HR in the first half. It’ll be better than what Escobar was doing in 2010 for sure.
But will it be better than what Escobar does over the second half? It doesn’t seem likely if Alex Gonzalez can’t maintain his power because he can’t even get on base 30% of the time.
Ok, so Gonzalez had a hot 1st half. Do you think he suddenly figured something new out at age 33? I sure don’t, and neither does this article.
I expect to see each player put up numbers pretty similar to career averages in the 2nd half. If that ends up being the case, I would much prefer Yunel in the 2nd half to a guy that can’t even get on base at a 30% clip when he is having the hottest 1st half of his career!
I don’t even think their power numbers will be that much different in the 2nd half.
I agree he won’t hit 17 HR again, but what if he hits 7-10 HR? Has Escobar shown he was capable of hitting that many? Or even getting on base this season? It’s purely a move for 2010 because Atlanta can win right now.
Um…
Escobar 2010 OBP: .334
Gonzalez 2010 OBP: .296
That’s really interesting, I was wondering myself why it was the Blue Jays have suddenly emerged as the biggest power threat in baseball. Even though Gonzalez won’t hit nearly as many bombs in Atlanta, overall he seems to be making better contact this year, so I think he will still be a pretty good offensive pick up for the Braves. Plus, he’s not bad on defense.
Bautista has 8 no-doubters (2nd only to Vernon Wells in the majors), 8 just enoughs, and no lucky home runs according to HitTracker.
He’s hitting for major power and has been since September of last season. That’s not a matter of luck.
The thing I dislike the most about this deal is that the M’s weren’t able to buy Yunel for pennies on the dollar. I can’t complain considering how the whole Lee deal worked out, but still, what a steal for TOR.
The M’s had nothing to offer Atlanta in return. At least, nothing they’d want.
Oh, I know. Jack Wilson isn’t exactly a hot commodity. Still, after seeing JJ Hardy and now Escobar go on the cheap, would have been nice to get in on those.
This is some horrendous analysis, not single mention of the leaders in “no doubter” homeruns at all? #1 Vernon Wells and #2 Jose Bautista who you ripped on so much?
Bautista’s kind of a secondary character in this article, though. The focus is definitely on Gonzalez vs. Betemit, and I think the analysis there is right on. Maybe Bautista shouldn’t have been mentioned, but his inclusion does not make this “horrendous analysis” by any means.
Gonzalez’s average standard distance on his home runs is 378.6 feet, Bautista’s is 401.2. That’s quite the difference. Lumping them together makes no sense.
Okay so there’s already been a lot of neck-wringing in these comments, but allow me to continue.
Bautista does not hit “just enough” home runs. He hits rocket shots and moon shots..the rocket shots have a low trajectory but I bet if you look at the speed off the bat of them they will still come out as very impressive. Maybe just as impressive as the moon shots.
As for this: “take out the poor excuse for a home run home runs and the itp’er and he’s on pace for 25 home runs which when combined with his horrifying batting avg makes him a pretty sub-par player imo.”
That comment makes me somewhat physically angry…first of all, Bautista became a regular everyday player and changed his approach late last season and THAT is when his surge started..and continued through winter ball..and into spring training…and through to the all star break. His batting average is not a good way to judge him, especially because he has always had a pretty good walk rate, which has not changed this year.
Not to mention the fact that he is a versatile defender with a RF cannon (some say the strongest RF arm in the league, Jose Molina compared him to early-Angels Vlad) and you have a player who is not “sub-par” even when his HR/FB does regress. On top of leading the league in HR, he leads in OF assists (not a great counting stat to use, I know, due to him being run on more often because he lacks reputation) DESPITE playing 1/3 of his games at 3B this year.
I don’t think the Jays would benefit from trading Bautista if they’re not getting a lot back.
i think the comment that made you angry was about gonzalez, not bautista.
not true, unless Agon hit an inside the park HR I was not aware of..
No, that comment was about Bautista.
The Braves should have gotten Bautista in the deal too. They got NOTHING of value for one of the best shortstops in the majors….not that Bautista has much value or anything. What a stupid, stupid trade for the Braves.
The Jays were NOT going to unload Bautista and Gonzalez for only Escobar. I mean, sure it would’ve been good for Atlanta, but…c’mon now.
It’s funny that if you had made this article just about Alex Gonzalez, you probably would have gotten no complaints. And it is mainly about him, but because you (somewhat incorrectly) chose to compare him to ex-teammate Bautista, you got ripped. Ah well.
Right on. I don’t agree with the bit on Bautista–a surge that goes from August to July is a bit too long for me to ignore–but there’s nothing at all offensive about Jack’s take on Alex Gonzalez. He is definitely overachieving and is definitely going to suffer when the regression monster inevitably rears its ugly head.
As great a resource as hittrackeronline.com is, it’s unfortunately not very well designed. If you do a bit of digging, you’ll find that the average distribution of home runs is 27% JE, 55% PL, and 17% ND. Of course, those were just the averages in 2006, since that page hasn’t been updated since then:
http://www.hittrackeronline.com/threetypesofhrs.php
Bautista’s got 8 JEs, 7 PL, and 8 ND, for a 35%/30%/35% split. So his non-JE HRs are 65% of his total, instead of 72% like they “should” be. If you reduce the # of his PL HRs so that they’re only 27% of his total, then he’s left with 20.8 HRs instead of 23. Not a huge difference.
As absolutely essential as the site is and as indebted as I am to Greg Rybarczyk for maintaining it, I don’t know if those classifications are the best gauge, either, as they’re very park-dependent. The good Upton brother’s mammoth 453 foot blast to dead center at Minute Maid Park, for example, was labeled Just Enough while numerous 340 foot pokes down its cozy left field line that would leave very few if any other stadiums get filed under Plenty. Fence heights matter too as line drives that don’t clear the wall by more than ten vertical feet but still sail well past it are by definition Just Enough.
I thought it might be interesting to recategorize each home run based on the number of parks it would have left so I tallied said figure for each of last year’s 5042 home runs to see how they break down — a dangerous combination of a passion for numbers and having nothing better to do with my time. For those interested:
# Parks — HR
30 — 2063
29 — 438
28 — 243
27 — 266
26 — 204
25 — 139
24 — 134
23 — 127
22 — 94
21 — 97
20 — 87
19 — 85
18 — 88
17 — 67
16 — 96
15 — 65
14 — 59
13 — 70
12 — 75
11 — 66
10 — 51
9 — 46
8 — 44
7 — 37
6 — 40
5 — 47
4 — 61
3 — 31
2 — 35
1 — 32
0 — 46
Not measured — 6
Inside the park — 3
I’ll call the 0-park shots and inside the parkers (1% percent of last year’s home runs) Completely Lucky and lump the 29-parkers in with the 30-parkers (50% of home runs) and call them No Doubt so I can split the rest into neat quartiles: 22-28 parks (24% of HRs) are Plenty, 15-21 parks (12%) are Enough, 8-14 parks (8%) are Just Enough and 1-7 parks (6%) are Bare Minimum.
Bautista’s percentage breakdown of No Doubt/Plenty/Enough/Just Enough/Bare Minimum/Completely Lucky is 71/8/13/4/0/4 against last year’s league average of 50/24/12/8/6/1. He comes out looking better than the numbers you cited now that three of his eight Just Enoughs have been reclassified as No Doubt and another as Plenty.
Gonzalez’s percentage breakdown using Hit Tracker’s classifications is 6% No Doubt/35% Plenty/59% Just Enough versus that 17%/55%/27% league average. Using the makeshift classifications, his new breakdown is 24/24/24/29/0/0 versus the league’s 50/24/12/8/6/1. He comes out looking about the same as before — low on the high-end shots, heavy on the mid-range shots — as most of what was initially deemed Just Enough remains in the Enough/Just Enough range.
Jose Lopez who was mentioned above broke the system last year with a 80/20/0/0/0/0. They may not have traveled far and I don’t know how repeatable the performance is but sixty percent of them would have left any stadium in the bigs so he earned them at least in that regard.
Thanks for doing all that work!
Cool stuff! I also was bothered by the disconnect between the ND/PL/JE classification and the number of parks that a HR would clear, but I never bothered to do the number-crunching that you did. I think the Jose Lopez thing is probably due mostly to Safeco being death to pull-heavy righties. If you can hit HRs to LF there, then you can — as they say — make it anywhere.
having watched plenty of Jays games this year, i can tell you that all of Gonzo’s homers have been line drives that just clear the fence or very high shots that also just clear the fence. I think he has hit one or 2 that have actually made it into the bleachers in LF.
He is not a power hitter.
Well hey, at least he’s a big on-base guy!
Fire Frank Wren.
only 1 person exxrocks mentioned Bautista’s insane walk totals this year as well.
the other issues have already been dealt with, but that was barely touched. thanks for the comment on the HR distance
It’s not only this year…Bautista’s career walk rate is 11.44%, and the last 2 years (since joining the Jays) it has been 13.9 and 14.8 respectively. In fact it has been on a steady rise through his entire career.
To back up my previous assertion that his “just enough” HRs are actually just line drive rocket shots, I had to look no further than hittracker once again: http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2010_185&type=hitter
Just compare the speed off the bat for some of his JE home runs..his 2nd fastest HR, along with a bunch of others, fall into that category.
Oh and if you’re still in doubt, that website provides video of the hits.
Where can you find the no doubt and just enough HR data at Statcorner?
Are the park factors not influenced by the home 9?
The chart shows that at least 13 of Bautista’s homers have traveled more than 400 feet. Very shoddy and misleading analysis.
Has anyone mentioned this yet? I think Hit Tracker is a great site and service for the game. But I do find that some ball parks systematically produce way, way more Just Enoughs than others. Miller Park being one……
I think this might be due to how high fences are……Something to look into.