Looking For the Real Chase Headley

Last July, the New York Yankees still fancied themselves a 2014 playoff contender, and struck 10 days before the trading deadline to upgrade their short-term third base situation. Yangervis Solarte, a six-year minor league free agent signing made good, plus minor league pitcher Rafael De Paula were sent to San Diego in exchange for Chase Headley, set to become a free agent at the end of the season. A few months later, with Pablo Sandoval setting a very high salary bar in a thin hot corner market, Headley has gone from being an affordable mid-level hole-filler to a potentially very rich man. While Headley did play better down the stretch for his new club, is he worth the years and dollars he is rumored to be about to receive from clubs like the Yankees or Giants?

Headley was the Padres’ 2nd round draft pick out of the University of Tennessee in 2005. That was my first year in the draft room with the Brewers, and one of my many roles was to provide analytical support to our overall draft effort. Headley was a particular favorite of mine that year; he hit .387-.534-.689 against very strong competition, and even more strikingly, had a sterling 63 walks as compared to only 23 strikeouts. Our scouts did not necessarily share my lofty opinion of him, and we never seriously considered drafting him that high.

Headley torched his way through the Padres’ minor league system, batting .301.-398-.498 overall and first forcing his way to the big club barely two years after being drafted. In 2008, he became a Padre regular, splitting time between left field and third base. Each season, I create an ordered list of minor league position players and starting pitchers who meet a sliding scale of relative production and age criteria. Headley qualified for this list in each of his minor league seasons, with a lofty peak rank of #15 following his 2007 Double-A campaign. This marked him as an extremely likely major league starter, possessing star upside.

For his first three and a half major league seasons, Headley might not have been a star, but he was a solidly above average player, combining above average defense with an average to slightly above average bat. The power was slow to develop, but the strikeouts that come when a player is attempting to tap into his power started to pile up.

His always solid walk rate made him a solid on-base threat throughout this period, and Headley supplemented his value by stealing 44 bags on only 54 attempts. He was basically a 3.0 WAR guy heading into his arbitration years, and both club and player were content to see where his continued development would lead before entering into any type of long-term commitment. He then had his career year in 2012, drilling 31 homers, as he finally did tap into that power. The strikeouts and walk totals remained high, but Headley finally tapped into his power. He had hit 36 homers in the three and a half seasons before his 31-homer breakthrough, …..and has hit only 26 in the two full years since.

After his trade to the Yankees in July, I wrote an article on these pages examining his 2013 decline. Headley had lost his ability to drive the ball with significant authority in the air almost as suddenly as he had found it. Now that the full 2014 campaign is in the books, let’s update our analysis to get as much of a feel as possible for the true essence of Headley’s offensive game moving forward. To do so, let’s look at his 2014 plate appearance outcome frequency and production by BIP type data, both in the aggregate, and separately for his time spent in San Diego and New York respectively. First, the frequency data:

Headley’s high K and BB rates are nothing new; his 78 and 72 K and BB rate percentile ranks fit in snugly among his career norms. His walk rate had been markedly lower prior to last year’s midseason trade; his BB rate percentile rank jumped from 50 as a Padre to 95 as a Yankee. His K rate percentile rank has bounced in a very narrow band between 77 and 83 for the last four seasons, while his 2014 BB rate percentile rank actually is his lowest since 2010. His popup rate has always been low, and his 2014 popup percentile rank of 21 actually his highest since 2010. After the trade to the Yankees, his popup rate was practically nonexistent, as his percentile rank dropped to a paltry 4.

Headley’s overall 2014 performance, while unspectacular on the whole, was driven by his very high line drive rate. His 2014 liner percentile rank of 95 matches his career best, set in 2011, though he has been above MLB average in this category for four of the last five seasons. He has always had a fly ball tendency as well, as his 2014 fly ball percentile rank of 69 slots in nicely among his career marks, and is above MLB average for the fifth time in six seasons.

On balance, there is a solid foundation here. Consistently high BB and liner rates, consistently low popup rates. Provided there is a representative level of general batted-ball authority to go along with it, this sets the table for above MLB average offensive performance. Now let’s assess the level of that authority by taking a look at his production by BIP type for 2014, both before and after adjustment for context:

Headley’s actual production on each BIP type — both pre and post-trade — is indicated in the AVG and SLG columns, and it’s converted to run values and compared to MLB average in the REL PRD column. That figure then is adjusted for context, such as home park, luck, etc., in the ADJ PRD column. For the purposes of this exercise, SH and SF are included as outs and HBP are excluded from the OBP calculation. Also for the purposes of this exercise, a couple of extra columns have been added to his full-season data, translating it as if half of his games were played in Yankee Stadium or AT&T Park, his two most likely 2015 destinations.

Headley’s performance on fly balls ticked up fairly nicely after the July trade; his actual REL PRD jumped from 116 as a Padre to 163 as a Yankee, though both of those figures are adjusted downward for context to 84 and 145, respectively. For the entire season, Headley’s fly ball ADJ PRD is 104, almost exactly matching his 2013 105 mark, way down from his 2012 peak of 189.

He was fairly unlucky on line drives in both of his 2014 homes, posting a combined REL PRD figure of 72, though that is adjusted significantly upward to about MLB average (102) for context. On the surface, it also appears that Headley was quite unlucky on ground balls, posting an overall .176 AVG-.184 SLG line, for a very low REL PRD of 50. His hard/soft grounder rates warrant an upward contextual revision to 101. As we shall see in a bit, however, there is another factor at work here which undermines this adjustment.

All in all, the net upward contextual adjustment boost Headley’s REL PRD on all BIP from 102 to 123. Adding back the K and BB, his high K rate drives his REL PRD and ADJ PRD down to 97 and 113, respectively. His overall context-adjusted ADJ PRD of 97 as a Padre jumped by a significant margin to 135 as a Yankee, thanks to an increased BB rate, a surge in his already high liner rate, and enhanced fly ball authority.

Back to his grounder production for a second, however. It is no accident that Headley had such limited production on the ground, as he is an extreme pull hitter from both sides of the plate, and is a fairly easy overshift decision, particularly from the left side. It doesn’t matter how hard you’re hitting the ball if there are multiple fielders standing in the way. On authority alone, one might expect Headley to essentially match the MLB average grounder production of .245 AVG-.267 SLG, but in reality, his actual 2014 performance is a more reasonable expectation going forward.

This lops about 10 ground ball singles off of his true talent projection. In other words, this .260-.333-.411 true-talent hitter becomes a .241-.321-.391 true-talent hitter after such a grounder adjustment. Even with all of those liners, and with so few outs given away on popups. This underscores the damage that can be done to an offensive profile by excessive ground ball pulling. Believe it or not, this, along with his lower walk rate, is the main driver behind Albert Pujols‘ decline as an Angel. Going from a potential .300 hitter on the ground to a guy lucky to hit .200 can really hurt a guy.

So what do we have going forward? Headley’s defensive numbers in 2014 were stellar, and while regression should certainly be expected, his ability to handle that position over his next contract isn’t likely in question. His fly ball tendency will play extremely differently in Yankee Stadium than it will in AT&T Park, as suggested by his 118 NYY PRD and 89 SF PRD figures on fly balls listed above. AT&T is more liner and grounder-friendly, though as discussed above, the impact on grounders will be muted by his pull tendency. What we have is a league average hitter, assuming a very high liner rate. In all likelihood, he is starting from a slightly below league average hitter baseline at age 31, with normal aging to be expected moving forward.

Looking for a reason to expect better than that? Then you must believe that his improved fly ball authority — that 145 post-trade fly ball ADJ PRD — in his two months as a Yankee is real, a product of some sort of swing adjustment, and not small sample noise. To me, the four-year, $65M rumors being tossed around with regard to Headley are beyond the pale, as he isn’t that guy. If that late-season fly ball surge holds moving forward, Yankee Stadium, with it’s 129.3 overall fly ball park factor (177.4 to RCF, 165.4 to RF) is one place where it would more than fully translate into production, much more than it would by the Bay, with it’s overall mark of 67.3 (63.8 to RCF, 92.5 to RF). All things considered, if I were representing Chase Headley, I’d take a slight discount to stay in New York, as it makes one more somewhat lucrative future contract more likely.