The Mariners Already Have Charlie Blackmon
This morning, Jon Morosi wrote that the Mariners and Rockies are “a trade match waiting to happen”, noting that the Mariners are still looking for another outfielder, while the Rockies are looking for pitching. The piece notes that the Mariners had previously expressed interest in Carlos Gonzalez, Charlie Blackmon, and Drew Stubbs, though Blackmon is mentioned most prominently in the piece.
Blackmon is appealing to the Mariners because of his ability to play center field, in addition to the corner spots. Blackmon could be Seattle’s primary left fielder but start in center if manager Lloyd McClendon wants to give Austin Jackson the day off against a tough right-handed starter. Blackmon also had 28 stolen bases this year in 38 tries.
Except, well, the Mariners already have Charlie Blackmon in left field. A quick comparison of 2014 performances:
| Name | PA | BB% | K% | ISO | BABIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dustin Ackley | 542 | 6% | 17% | 0.153 | 0.273 |
| Charlie Blackmon | 648 | 5% | 15% | 0.152 | 0.315 |
And what that translated into.
| Name | wRC+ | BsR | Off | Def | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dustin Ackley | 97 | 1.9 | 0.2 | 1.0 | 2.1 |
| Charlie Blackmon | 100 | 3.3 | 3.1 | -4.4 | 2.0 |
Both hitters make contact on about 85% of their swings and produce roughly average power when they make contact, though Ackley’s ISO is actually more impressive than Blackmon’s when you adjust for their home ballparks. Both strikeout a little less than average, and neither draws a ton of walks, though Ackley’s swing profile and previous history suggests that he’s got room to grow there. In 2014, they were almost identical hitters. Their career numbers are similar as well.
Ackley’s 27. Blackmon’s 28. Steamer prefers Ackley by a decent-sized margin — +1.8 WAR to +0.8 WAR — seeing a bit more upside in his skill-set while expecting some regression from Blackmon. Both hit left-handed. Both look like above average defenders in left and probably are not quite good enough for center, though both have some time in center. Blackmon does have one fewer year of service, so he’s not yet arbitration eligible, but even Matt Swartz’s arbitration estimate only places Ackley’s 2015 salary at $2.8 million, a fairly trivial difference.
Perhaps the Mariners and Rockies will make a trade next week, or at some point this offseason. It’d be a little odd if they traded for Charlie Blackmon to replace Dustin Ackley, however, considering that Ackley is a better version of the same kind of player.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
it’s definitely an interesting comparison, but you indirectly bring up a very interesting point- it’d be great to have something like ISO+ that is 100-scaled and takes park factors into consideration so we could directly compare park-neutral power of different hitters.
wRC+ is scaled to park factors as well so a diff of 97 vs 100 is fairly trivial
I understand that perfectly, however, it doesn’t isolate the power factor which is the point I’m interested in.
Well, you have WOBA too. ISO+ wouldn’t tell you much because the park factors are all different for 1B/2B/3B/HR. Individual players don’t hit enough triples in a given year that you can’t just point to any fluctuation as noise, and more importantly, they tell you more about speed and baserunning. Then we’ve got doubles, which are only going to change noticeably at Fenway (and I guess Toronto to a lesser extent). So… you’re really better off just scaling homeruns by handedness, which is way simpler to begin with.