Dickerson’s Debut

When the Reds traded away both Adam Dunn and Ken Griffey Junior, they needed an outfielder to finish out the season. With studly young prospect Jay Bruce already in the majors, there weren’t any more future stars to take a look at, so they turned to organizational solider Chris Dickerson. The 26-year-old was having a relatively successful season down in Louisville, maintaining his average-across-the-board skillset.

He walked some, but struck out a decent amount too. He had gap power, but not long ball power. He stole some bases, but wasn’t a speed burner. He had the glove of a corner OF, but not the bat of one. And, 2008 was really the first year he’d ever hit well for a sustained period of time. In ’06, he hit .242/.349/.424 as a 24-year-old in Double-A – not exactly showing the makings of a real major league hitter. He improved in Triple-A each of the last two yeras, but still looked more like a career minor leaguer than anything else.

However, when he got to Cincinnati, he decided to mash. After going 3-5 with a double and a home run last night, he’s now hitting .328/.406/.672 in his first 69 major league plate appearances. His walk and strikeout rates are about what we’d have expected, but the power is completely unexpected. 12 of his first 20 hits have gone for extra bases, including four home runs. His ISO of .344 is almost double the .193 mark he was putting up in Louisville.

Now, clearly, Dickerson isn’t this good. That’s not very insightful, however, as simply saying a guy making his ML debut at 26 isn’t the best player in baseball isn’t news to anyone. How good is he?

A quick MLE adjusting his ’08 performance in Louisville to the majors would come out to about .250/.340/.430. Of course, 2008 was his best minor league performance, and so would adjust that down a bit to account for his mediocre previous years. However, his major league at-bats count as well, and obviously serve to make the projection a bit more optimistic.

Overall, I’d say that the above line is about right. He strikes out too much to hit for any kind of average, but he’ll offset it with a solid walk rate and some power. Realistically, a .780 OPS from a guy with a decent glove in the outfield is a pretty nifty role player for a contender and a guy who could start for a lot of bad teams.

Dickerson’s one of the hundreds of guys in the minor leagues who are living, breathing indications of freely available talent – a 16th round pick with a nondescript minor league career who makes some improvements and finds himself as a useful major league player at the age of 26. He didn’t cost anything for the Reds to acquire or develop, and now they’ve got a guy who can fill a hole adequately for several years.

Welcome to the bigs, Chris Dickerson. Looks like we’ll be getting to see you stick around for a while.