Chris Johnson and Great Players
Sometimes, to get a batting champion, you have to pay a steep price. Right now, Miguel Cabrera is blowing away the competition in the American League, to such an extent that it’s hardly a competition at all. The Tigers, of course, couldn’t be more thrilled that he’s on their side, but when they got him, they had to have some doubts. And sometimes, to get a batting champion, you can make a move that people hardly notice. The leader in the National League right now is Chris Johnson, batting .342. Johnson didn’t even begin the year as an everyday player.
Johnson went from the Diamondbacks to the Braves as part of a much larger deal. The key, everybody understood, was Atlanta’s acquisition of potential superstar Justin Upton. This was the conclusion of the Justin Upton sweepstakes. To this point, Upton has been worth 1.6 WAR. A big part of Arizona’s return was the solid and underrated Martin Prado. To this point, Prado has been worth 0.4 WAR. Johnson went to Atlanta and people didn’t notice. To this point, he has been worth 1.9 WAR. He was worth more than a third of that in July.
In chats all year long, I’ve been fielding questions about what the Braves might do at third base. Johnson, obviously, wasn’t any kind of real solution, so, what was out there and available? How was this playoff team going to upgrade? I’ve presented a few ideas, but the only problem has been that Johnson hasn’t slowed down at all. To whatever extent people don’t believe in him, he’s earning more believers by the day. What’s the Braves’ solution at third base? Chris Johnson might be the solution at third base. Except-
Except it’s easy to be skeptical, and here’s why:
- Chris Johnson, .426
- Joe Mauer, .398
- Jhonny Peralta, .384
- Jarrod Saltalamacchia, .381
- Mike Napoli, .376
There are your current league leaders in BABIP. Only Johnson and Yasiel Puig find themselves north of .400, and Puig’s a freak who didn’t come up until later. When people see a high BABIP, they instinctively think “luck,” and it’s not like Johnson makes major contributions in the field or on the bases or with his raw strength. “Regress that number,” your brain says. “Regress that number, and Johnson’s damned ordinary.”
Of course, Johnson won’t remain at .426. That’s not worth the sentence it takes to write it. But this can get as interesting as you want it to be, and look what happens when you examine Johnson’s track record. Last year, his BABIP was .354. Before that, .317, but before that, .387. Johnson debuted in 2009. Why don’t we take a look at the all-time BABIP leaders, setting a minimum of 1,500 plate appearances? Yeah, this mixes active careers with inactive careers, but this is for reference, not science:
- Ty Cobb, .383 BABIP
- Shoeless Joe Jackson, .366
- Rogers Hornsby, .365
- Chris Johnson, .364
- Austin Jackson, .364
Right now, with this minimum, Chris Johnson owns the fourth-highest BABIP all-time. Just behind this top five: Joey Votto, Rod Carew, and Derek Jeter. Johnson finds himself in the company of great players, and for this reason, it wouldn’t be right to dismiss all the hits off-hand. We have to at least consider the possibility that there’s just something about Chris Johnson, even though it doesn’t seem like there ought to be. He’s not exactly a burner. He doesn’t demonstrate tremendous discipline when he’s batting, and he strikes out pretty often. In so many ways but this one, Johnson’s a bench player or a waiver claim. In this way, he’s been a Hall-of-Famer.
If it’s visuals you want, Johnson has made two outs this year when hitting the ball to left field. Four months, two outs, to the pull side of the outfield. Here are those outs:
Well-struck outs. League-wide, righties have batted .617 pulling the ball to left field. We’re looking at line drives with maximum bat speed. Johnson’s batted almost 1.000, and from looking at his swing and from looking at his spray charts, he seems like a low-line-drive sort. He doesn’t hit very many infield flies. He’s what you imagine when you think of a guy who sprays liners, and the numbers so far back that up.
But now what? Johnson owns a .364 BABIP and he’s in his fifth season in the majors. Johnson can’t tell us what’s going to happen in his career, so what might history have to say? Using the Baseball-Reference Play Index, I isolated all the guys who posted BABIPs of at least .340 over their first five big-league seasons and 1,500 plate appearances. This yielded a pool of 66 players, from Lou Gehrig to Quinton McCracken. I then looked to see how these players did in their sixth seasons. Immediately, three players are eliminated from the sample, because they’re still in their fifth seasons right now. Dale Alexander didn’t have a sixth season on account of gangrene. Alex Sanchez didn’t have a sixth season on account of steroids and injury and personality. I also left out Ray Grimes and McCracken, because in their sixth seasons they barely played. I’m aware that there are sampling biases here, trust me, but let’s just look at the remaining sample of 59 guys.
Overall, they averaged a .350 BABIP over the first five years. In the sixth year, they averaged a .333 BABIP. They averaged a 5% BABIP loss, but five players showed no change and 16 players showed improvements. George Sisler’s BABIP shot up to .401. Joey Votto’s BABIP shot up to .404. At the other end, we find guys from Fred Lewis to Alex Rodriguez to Stan Musial. Nobody’s BABIP in the sixth year was bad, and the evidence suggests that if you demonstrate something of a BABIP skill, at least some of it is probably real. Anybody at an extreme needs to count on some regression, but it’s a matter of figuring out how much regression to count on. Chris Johnson might very well not regress all the way. The rest of the year, ZiPS projects him for a .354 BABIP. Steamer, .342. Under both projection systems, he’s a safely above-average hitter.
There’s just one other data point we haven’t discussed. Johnson’s a major leaguer with a high BABIP, but he’s also been a minor leaguer. For parts of six years, actually, with nearly 500 games and nearly 2,000 plate appearances. He put nearly 1,400 balls in play. Over those balls in play, his BABIP was .312. That’s pretty standard minor-league territory. Even in Triple-A, it was .328. Among contemporary players, we find Dan Johnson near the bottom of the big-league BABIP list, at .244. His minor-league BABIP is .302. Johnson wasn’t the same player in the minors as he’s been in the majors — that’s the reason the minors exist — so it’s not fair to make a direct comparison, but at the same time we can’t pretend like one player doesn’t have anything to do with the other. In lower levels, Johnson didn’t demonstrate an extreme BABIP skill, so either he’s learned that more recently, or this is a skill he doesn’t actually possess.
As with all things, the Chris Johnson truth lies in the in-between. He is neither as good as his BABIP, nor is he probably as average as an average BABIP. It’s a matter of degree of regression, and that’s not something we can easily predict. For Johnson, with his .364 career BABIP, he’s been worth 1.0 WAR per 600 plate appearances. The one time his BABIP was normal, he came in below replacement-level. How much he sinks is a matter of some interest to us. It’s also a matter of extreme interest to Johnson, since his BABIP looks like it’ll determine the course of his career. So far, at least, so good. So astonishingly good.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Really outstanding work, Jeff. Fantastic read.
Johnson has been quite a revelation for the Braves this year, and it is astonishing to me that he’s only made 2 pull outs to the outfield this season. He has a nice swing that’s conducive to line drives, albeit without much power. He’s getting a bit lucky now, but it would be so unfair to solely blame his 2013 success on luck alone. Thanks for the throw-in, Kevin Towers!
I’m actually surprised he hasn’t homered more. The thing that impressed me last year in Arizona with Johnson was that his homers weren’t cheapies. He really crushed some balls. A couple of dead center shots onto the walkway in Chase. A couple of pull shots that got out real quick but had trajectory too.
He has power, plenty of it, but as a poster below said, he is taking whats being given to him.
I thought he would be good this year. I was bummed we missed out on the chance of a Johnson/Chavez platoon. Would have been alot of offense.
It doesn’t surprise me he isn’t homering more, look at his batted ball profile. His LD% is the highest of his career and his FB% is one the lowest of his career. It’s hard to hit homers if you aren’t hitting fly balls.
I can’t really comment on Johnson before this year, I had only seen a few at-bats by him before 2013. I’ve watched most of his at-bats with the Braves this year and he’s one of the few players remaining in MLB that is a pure Charley Lau disciple. You really don’t see that anymore, because it sacrifices more power than players feel comfortable with these days.
Johnson is the master of the soft line drive into the outfield. He doesn’t really smoke the ball unless he has to start his swing a bit early to catch up with high-velocity fastballs. But he is perfectly content to hit the ball where it is pitched and willing to go the other way. He’s definitely not legging out any cheap hits, Johnson is slightly faster than an average catcher.
I do see some areas where I would attack him as a pitcher, though Johnson has made better pitch to pitch adjustments since becoming the everyday 3B.
He is two months away from winning a batting title.
Where’s my article?
see: speed.
I should add that I really think that Atlanta would be wise to trade him after this season. Capitalize on that perceived value.
1. who would play third
2. do you really think other teams dont recognize the same things we recognize?
1. Another trade or signing *cough Headly*
2. Yes. You’re giving teams too much credit for reading into peripheral stats. Angels, Phillies, Indians etc.
Headley? You wanna talk about a 3B who should’ve been traded to capitalize on their perceived value
A.) There are plenty of teams who are too traditional to see/believe in such things, and would absolutely pay for this lucky streak. Hello, Dayton Moore.
2.) Unfortunately the Braves are one of those teams, and thus will not trade him because they think it is real.
Just a quick glance at his career BABIPs v. his xBABIPs in those same years (using Zimmerman’s spreadsheet that itself uses slash12’s formula, and ignoring the 20-some-odd PAs in 2009):
Year: BABIP – xBABIP
2010: .387 – .352
2011: .317 – .347
2012: .354 – .349
2013: .426 – .364
It seems like a ssomewhat comfortable assumption to me that he’s a .350ish BABIP guy, really. He did that last year in terms of actual BABIP, and had a .334 wOBA. Someone smarter than I can chime in with something more accurate, but I’ll guess that the move from Houston and Arizona to Turner Field would drop that to .315 or so due to lost homers. Useful, but hardly irreplaceable. So I’m still in that ‘not buying it’ category.
Atlanta might not be a saber team, but I think they know more than you’re giving them credit. I mean, Freddi doesn’t, but the office seems to have a good grasp, they start three 23 year olds and win with a below average payroll.
And B. J. Upton
If you think the Braves don’t follow sabrmetrics you’d be wrong. Several of the higher ups in their organization have talked about their use of sabr stats. They do disregard UZR and many of the defense stats because they feel they are flawed, but for pitching and offense they definitely consider sabrmetrics.
Why else would they be so comfortable with all those strike outs if they didn’t have an advanced thinking? The old school thinking is offensive strike outs=bad.
I’m not buying….People can not buy Chris all the way to a batting title…. but it will be a fluke and he will have gotten lucky…. but then I might call you a lunatic
I’m curious where you’ve seen members of the Braves FO discuss using sabermetrics. Schuerholz, former GM and now the GM’s boss, openly makes mother’s basement jokes (yes, using that phrase) about anything past BA, RsBI, and W-L record, and says that OBP only matters in leadoff hitters, and even then not as much as steals. He also actively participated in Shanks’ abortion of a book that billed itself as the anti-Moneyball and spent a couple of hundred pages painting Schuerholz as the anti-Beane. It’s kind of hard to think of any front office of which he is President as being anything other than Luddites.
Strike while the iron is hot! Johnson will be coming off his best season of his career, and he may have another one like it. The Braves have learned their lesson about hanging on to guys too long (Jurrjens, Hanson, etc)
*may not
I was just watching the Braves vs. Rockies broadcast and they were mentioning this article in the middle of a Chris Johnson AB. I was excited to see Sullivan’s name on the TV and then wouldn’t you know it, Chris Johnson hits a line drive out to left field.
Ooh, I’m gonna want to watch that bit later. Was that the bottom of the first?
Bottom of the fifth. When I was looking through this article and saw the list of guys with 1500 PAs, I thought, “Hey, that’s exactly the cutoff the Braves broadcast used!” and then I remembered that they got the information from Jeff. Then Tom Hart mentioned that he had only hit two outs to left field and immediately after he gets the third.
He is now up to .346 on the year, after going 3 for 5 tonight. It has been a pleasure to watch his at-bats this year on a Braves team that rarely makes contact, other than Freddie Freeman.
It’s really a shame that the Braves have such a terrible offense!
nah, not terrible, just erratic.
Terrible as in scored the second most runs of any team in the National League? Terrible as in leading the league in homers (by a lot)? Terrible as in second in RBI and walks, tied for 5th in batting average?
You are either being sarcastic or don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
It was pretty obvious sarcasm, dude. Sorry you missed it!
You realize Freeman’s got one of the higher K rates on the team, right?
McCann and Simmons are two of the best contact hitters in MLB. Why not mention them instead of Freeman, who strikes out a great deal?
He seems like a fundamentally sound guy because of his complexion.
Simmons is the human pop-up machine. He makes contact all right, easily caught pop ups. McCann has increasingly swung for the fences as he has gotten older and has become much more of a dead-pull hitter these days.
Well it seems to be working pretty well for McCann
I would prefer to see an age-based comparison. He may have a much higher BABIP his first few years than guys who broke into the league at 22, but that’s because 22-year-olds don’t hit as hard. He’s all peak.
But cool article! That all-time BABIP list is an eye-opener.
Sounds convincing. Thanks for the evidence.
I like the Fangraphs has been around long enough and established enough that they can write articles like this. What I mean is that the driving force behind Fangraphs for a long time was demystifying streaks like this, pointing out outliers and unsustainable luck. It’s cool that the audience is so well versed in this that we can look at a potential outlier and ask what of it is real, what is sustainable. That true talent can mean lots of different things and that we’re going to look at it from every possible angle.
Johnson was rather maligned during his Houston tenure for a variety of reasons, but if there was one thing that he always seemed do much better than the average major leaguer it was hit the fastball and its variants squarely.
Johnson is a fundamental see ball/hit ball hitter. He’ll take a soft line drive single over a home run anyday, evidenced by his high BABIP/low power figures. Rare to see a guy in today’s game who takes what he can get and doesn’t try to do too much at the plate, like Joey Votto for instance.
Nobody would take a soft single over a home run anyday. He may prefer a 35% chance at a single over an 8% chance at a home run, or something.
Sarcasm? Hmm.
The Braves have traded away two players that had higher than average BABIP in Atlanta in recent years
1) Omar Infante as part of the Dan Uggla trade
2) Martin Prado as part of the Justin Upton trade
In both cases, the teams that traded for the Braves players didn’t seem to “overvalue” the player due to high BABIP… It’s just that those teams had no intention of keeping the players and viewed those high BABIP players as a decent return. And interestingly, in both cases the Braves essentially traded position for position. I wonder if there are teams in similar situations out there that would trade a stud 3B for a Chris Johnson.
Well, I think it depends how you define “stud”. Are we talking David Wright and Miguel Cabrera or are we talking Chase Headley and Pedro Alvarez? I personally wouldn’t mind seeing a swap for Josh Donaldson, but I doubt OAK would do it.
you are correct in that the a’s wouldn’t deal donaldson for CJ.
Mr. Beane, if you are gonna post on Fangraphs, no need to choose a fake name. Just post as yourself.
Having CJ on the Braves is a wonderful counterpoint to all of the high K/HR guys. I know CJ strikes out some too, and doesn’t walk a ton, but he fits in perfectly as a guy who not only gets on base, but gets on base with hits, and thus provides a lot of value either scoring guys or moving them first to third and setting up the power guys. You know he’s got a great shot of hitting the ball low and hard somewhere, and he just missed a HR last night as well. I’ve enjoyed watching him hit all year, and though I wish his defense was better (which would make him amazing valuable), it’s been entirely worth it for his bat and the added excitement of having someone in the batting title race.
?????
ChJot Zzangzzang-man
Both steamer and zips have him as a ~2 WAR player with a ~.350 BABIP. Could have saved a lot of time by just linking to his player page instead of using a bunch of words to say nothing remotely interesting or groundbreaking.
Fuck off.
Could have said nothing, leaving us thinking you’re a moron, rather than opening your flaps and confirming it.
-C
Jeff does a great job of laying out the facts and then basically throwing up his hands and saying “I don’t know what the hell to make of this.” That’s not a criticism, as I love that baseball still has mystery to it even with all the analytics, plus I appreciate a writer who doesn’t feel compelled to force a conclusion. I don’t know what the hell to make of Chris Johnson either, especially considering that he didn’t display this same level of skill in the minor leagues. I imagine that most everyone would expect 2014 to look like 2012 instead of 2013, but that’s still a pretty solid player. Good work, Jeff.
A Theory:
a) He was unlucky in the minors or b) he’s lucky now, suggesting one of the two represents his “true talent” but we don’t know which one. This theory would say that he’s unchanged as a player, but we don’t know which one is the real Chris Johnson.
Maybe, but the sample sizes would argue against it. It’s possible that he really developed something as a major leaguer, which can happen.
Why have they consistently hit him 7th this year? He had consistently hit below the Upton Brothers and Uggla all year. Given all the Ks in the lineup wouldn’t it make sense to hot him 2nd right in front of Freeman then put Upton and Uggla after them?
He doesn’t walk.
He was originally a platoon partner this year against lefties. His true talent level against RHPs is probably sixth or seventh in the batting order, due to his lack of speed.
Fredi seems overly concerned with speed at the top of the line-up, even though the Braves’ reliance on homers would seem to obviate that strategy.
I had Chris Johnson in fantasy in 2011 when he hit .251 with 7 homers and vowed “never again.” Oops.
I think it mostly has to do with oppo power, as Votto suggested and you talk about in the beginning. Johnson ranks highly in oppo percentage, and that means you’re using more of the field and are harder to defend. It probably also suggests that you’re using a level swing plane and covering more of the plate.
I used to hate on Johnson pretty hard core, but with a .350 true talent BABIP — which is possible — he’s not so terrible.
Eno!!! Miller light?
Signed;
The Bigman
AKA Chicago Mark
The thing is he had high BABIPs before this season but not much to show for it. If a .430 BABIP is what it takes for him to hit .340 then, well, good luck to him, but it will be hard to keep doing that.
I did a quick search on b-ref for players to start their career (better comparison). Here are the top 5 with at least 1500 PAs in their first 5 years along with their career BABIP:
Bobby Abreu (First 5 years .372, Career .340)
Wade Boggs (.369, .344)
Derek Jeter (.368, .354)
Chris Johnson (.365, .365)
Dick Allen (.365, .334)
Most guys stayed a bit higher than their career rate until the end when they got slow and old. The only caveats are that Johnson was older in these years than all but Boggs and had fewer PAs than all of them, though he still has the rest of this year to finish up.
Late to the show as always. I just looked up the top line drive hitters for 2013 (qualified). Some very interesting names there. One that especially caught my eye was Mike Napoli. I didn’t look his stats up (really wanted to write this) but he’s striking out like 33% of the time. I don’t get how a player can make such good contact 25%+ of the time and K that much too. On the Johnson front, do we expect a regression in both his babip and his line drive rate? They both look very high for him.
Give Johnson a 352 BABIP for the year to date, and his average drops from 344 down to 287. Make it 372, higher than his career number, and his average would be 302. Which makes him seem much less like the answer, and much more like a 1 WAR player having a flukey year.
Incidentally, if Puig sported a merely greatest career BABIP in history of 383, his average would be down to 317. But he’d still be the answer, the future HOFer, the bat-flipping champion of the world.
As far as low MiLB BAPIP he may have changed his approach due to his role and desire. In minors he may have been one of the power hitters on his team and batted in the middle of the order. Once in the majors as a role player he may have decided that he is better suited to get on base or turn the batting order over etc…
Also in the minors he could have thought the best way to get a call up is to hit HRs but once up decided that hitting for average as as a part timer or even pinch hitter would keep him around.
I have to admit I did not look up his minor numbers because I am too lazy…