Devon Travis Gets His Shot in Toronto

For the second year in a row, the Blue Jays headed into spring training with no clear second baseman. Last year, their second base competition featured Ryan Goins, Maicer Izturis, Munenori Kawasaki, Chris Getz and Steve Tolleson. Unsurprisingly, this quintet ranked last in our preseason, second base positional power rankings with a collective projection of 0.1 WAR. Nonetheless, the Jays rolled with this group all season, and things got ugly. Real ugly. Blue Jays second basemen combined for 0.3 WAR last year, and 0.7 of that WAR came from Brett Lawrie, who was supposed to be the team’s third baseman, but filled at second for 32 games.

A year later, not much has changed. Goins, Izturis, Kawasaki and Tolleson are all still on the team’s depth chart, and once again, the Blue Jays checked in at number 30 in our second base power rankings. For the second consecutive year, Toronto’s outlook at at the keystone looks pretty dismal. But unlike last year, there’s reason for hope for Blue Jays fans. While last year’s cast of characters is still around, the team’s opening day second baseman will be someone new: 24-year-old rookie Devon Travis, who secured the job by hitting .352/.397/.463 this spring.

The Jays acquired Travis from the Tigers back in November in exchange for outfielder Anthony Gose. That fact alone should tell you that Travis is far from a blue chip prospect. But if you need further validation, Kiley McDaniel placed him in the 45+ tier (143-200) of his top 200 list, meaning he has the upside of a second-division starter, or a 1.5-2 WAR player.

Travis may be fringy, but he’s done nothing but hit since the Tigers took him in the 13th round out of Florida State. In 276 minor league games, he’s hit a loud .318/.383/.479. Travis kept up the hot hitting in Double-A Erie last year, where he put together an impressive .298/.358/.460 season in the Eastern League. Travis has clearly come a long way since his days as a nondescript, undersized second baseman at FSU.  To get a sense of how this transformation happened, I recommend you check out Clint Longenecker’s in-depth look at Travis’s mechanical changes from last winter.

Still, despite his strong offensive numbers, KATOH is lukewarm on Travis’s future. It pegs him for 3.6 WAR through age-28, which put him 129th on KATOH’s top 200 list. KATOH only likes Travis slightly better than Kiley does. Here’s a look at KATOH’s full breakdown.

MLB	>4 WAR	>6 WAR	>8 WAR	>10 WAR	>12 WAR	>16 WAR	WAR thru 28
82%	21%	15%	12%	9%	6%	3%	3.6

There biggest reason for KATOH’s lack of enthusiasm relates to Travis’s age. By no means is it unusual to see a 23-year-old in Double-A, but a good number of today’s big leaguers were in Triple-A or the majors at that age. Travis’s age relative to his level is a strike against him, but isn’t exactly a glaring weakness. Plenty of prospects have gone on to have excellent careers with worse age-to-level profiles. However, Travis doesn’t really stand out from the crowd in the other aspects of his game.

Travis’s biggest asset is his above-average contact ability. He struck out in just 14% of his plate appearances last year, which put him 9th among qualified players in the Eastern League. Travis’s bat-to-ball skills are undoubtedly encouraging, but statistically, the rest of Travis’s game is pretty meh.

His walk rate and BABIP were merely average, and with 16 steals in 21 attempts, he didn’t exactly show blazing speed. Additionally, Travis didn’t hit for a substantial amount of power. His .162 ISO was decent, but unspectacular, especially considering he played in the Eastern league, where power numbers are slightly inflated. The Eastern League ISO of .131 was the fifth highest among the 16 affiliated minor leagues.

It’s also worth noting that — at 5-9 — Travis is shorter than most major leaguers, which makes him unlikely to offer very much in terms of power upside. KATOH doesn’t take into account player’s heights (coming soon!), but I imagine Travis’s height would be another knock against him. A taller player with a similar stat line would likely have a better power tool than the 40 that Kiley gave to Travis.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Travis’s height and position probably reminded you of another 5-9 second base prospect who’s gotten a lot of attention in the last year or so. But Devon Travis is not Mookie Betts. Not by a long shot. Kiley McDaniel addressed this very question in one of his chats this past winter.

Aside from having superior tools, Betts was also a much better prospect statistically. He hit for much more power than Travis did in the minors, and did so at a younger age. Last year, Betts reached the big leagues as an 21-year-old. Travis split his age-21 season between college and Short-Season A-Ball. Simply put, Travis to Betts is a lazy comparison, and isn’t really fair to Travis.

Travis may not have the upside of Betts, but that’s not to say he can’t be a useful player. To better personify the possible outcomes for Travis, let’s take look at some hitters who had seasons similar to Travis’s 2014 campaign. Below, you’ll find a list of all hitters 23-year-olds since 1990 whose league-adjusted walk rate, strikeout rate, BABIP, ISO and stolen base frequency fell within .75 standard deviations of Travis’s marks from Double-A.

Year	Name	BB%	K%	ISO	BABIP	SB%	Plate Apearances thru 28	WAR thru 28
1999	Julio Lugo	9%	11%	.144	.342	17%	5,338	13.9
2008	Daniel Murphy	10%	11%	.188	.318	13%	3,081	11.2
2008	Jon Jay	9%	11%	.151	.324	8%	2,424	11.1
1996	Aaron Boone	6%	13%	.199	.308	16%	4,333	10.0
1999	Kevin Nicholson	8%	17%	.170	.328	12%	105	0.2
1999	Hiram Bocachica	11%	13%	.157	.320	18%	584	-1.4
2006	Danny Richar	9%	14%	.123	.328	10%	252	-0.7
1996	Jed Hansen	7%	16%	.175	.322	13%	208	-0.5
1996	Adam Riggs	7%	15%	.168	.311	12%	171	-0.2
1999	Alex Prieto	8%	11%	.136	.323	11%	47	0.0
2002	Papo Bolivar	8%	16%	.143	.312	12%	0	0.0
2002	Shawn Garrett	6%	17%	.149	.333	14%	0	0.0
1995	Charles Poe	10%	16%	.166	.318	14%	0	0.0
2004	Val Majewski	7%	14%	.182	.332	11%	0	0.0
2014	Devon Travis	8%	14%	.162	.329	13%	?	?

Certainly some encouraging names there. Lugo, Murphy, Jay and Boone all blossomed into solid, everyday players. Clearly, the high-contact, mediocre everything else skill set can yield productive big leaguers, which bodes well for Travis’s future prospects. However, it’s worth noting that each of those players has at least two inches on Travis, so perhaps they’re not perfect comps. But Daniel Murphy with slightly less power wouldn’t be a terrible player by any means.

This article has looked exclusively at Travis’s long-term upside. This is obviously important, but Travis will be Toronto’s second baseman next week. And with nary a plate appearance above Double-A, it’s not clear that he’s quite ready to face big league pitching. Still, despite his lack of experience, the projections don’t think Travis will embarrass himself. Steamer and ZiPS spit out wRC+s of 94 and 85 respectively for 2015.