Cust Cussing
Last season, Jack Cust was one of the out-of-nowhere stories of the year. He’d received all of four plate appearances in the majors from 2004 to 2006, and had essentially been relegated to Triple-A slugger while bouncing from organization to organization. The Padres sold him to the A’s for cash after Oakland experienced enough injury problems that they felt they needed a warm body, and Cust responded to the opportunity by hitting .256/.408/.504 and becoming a key part of their line-up.
2008 hasn’t gone as well. He’s currently sitting at .161/.373/.242 through 83 plate appearances, one of the stranger batting lines you’ll ever see. He has just seven hits on the season, but he’s drawn 20 walks in 22 games, so he’s posting a respectable on base percentage despite the fact that he’s just not hitting. Generally, you’d look at a .161 batting average and conclude that the guy is just in a slump, and that regression to the mean will make that bounce back in the not too distant future. Jack Cust isn’t your normal hitter, though. He strikes out at unbelievable 41.4% clip, making contact less often than just about any other position player in recent history. Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn combine to cover the top three spots in single season strikeout totals in major league history, and even they didn’t get particularly close to striking out in 41% of their at-bats with career rates of 35% and 32% respectively.
I was going to show you a chart of the K% for those three plotted next to each other, but realized it wouldn’t be very helpful, because Jack Cust’s markings aren’t on it. See, the Fangraphs K% chart tops out at 40%, and Cust is consistently above that mark. He’s literally off the charts.
When you strike out as much as Cust does, you have to be amazing when you make contact. Last year, Cust was, posting a .366 batting average on balls in play and whacking 26 home runs in 124 games. So far, in April, Cust’s batting average on balls in play is down to .242, and only one of his seven hits are home runs. Even when he hits the ball, it’s not going anywhere, and that’s made him a significant liability at the plate during the first month of the season. With the signing of Frank Thomas to be the regular DH, Cust is going to have to play left field to keep his spot in the line-up. Unfortunately for him and the A’s, he’s about as good at that as he is at making contact. He might be the worst defensive player in baseball – if he’s not, he’s close.
Add it all up, and the A’s have a guy who has to torch the ball when he hits it in order to be a valuable player, and when he’s not driving the ball, he’s the least productive regular in the major leagues. Due to his defensive problems, it’s going to be harder and harder for the A’s to justify penciling him into the line-up if he doesn’t start producing better results when he makes contact. The A’s are surprising a lot of people by standing at 16-10 through 26 games, but they’re not going to be able to stick with Cust killing them in the field and at the plate forever.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Jack Cust does have a highly unusual set of statistics, which makes him hard to evaluate. But led by Billy Beane, the Oakland As have evaluated him and (probably) like what they see.
The most important thing about Cust is that he has a high On Base Percentage (OBP), typically in the high 300s, and that doesn’t seem to be in any danger. (Following the precepts of Billy James, the As are “bigger” on OBP than say, batting average or power.) It’s true, howeve, that the quality of Cust’s OBP has declined, with more walks than hits this year. Last year, Cust’s batting average was almost .100 points higher, and his slugging percentage was more than .250 points higher than they are so far in 2008, while the 2007 OBP was only .035 points higher. Cust does strike out a lot, but he also has an unusually high BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) of over .400 over his career.
Maybe Cust is in a slump. Or maybe opposing pitchers have gotten wise to his potential threat and elect to walk him even though it costs at least four pitches to do so. (Oakland is also big on “intangibles” of this sort; hence they initially placed a higher value on the Giambi brothers than any other team in the league.) In any event, the As will find a way to use him “strategically,” by cutting down his strikeout rate, or by putting him in the line-up at times inconvenient for opposing pitchers (and DH-ing him would eliminate defensive issues). His high OBP is a “down payment” for more production of one sort or another. As long as he maintains that, he is in no danger.