Projecting Clint Frazier
After their roster was ravaged by injuries, the Yankees promoted a trio of promising hitting prospects last week in Tyler Wade, Miguel Andujar and Dustin Fowler. Fowler, the most promising of the three, was supposed play regularly in New York’s outfield. Unfortunately, his big-league career was derailed as soon as it started in horrific fashion.
To fill the Holliday/Fowler-sized hole in lineup, the Yankees dipped into their farm system once more this weekend. This time, it was top prospect Clint Frazier who was summoned from Triple-A. Frazier wasted no time making an impact, belting a homer and a double in his big-league debut. Power is a big part of Frazier’s game, and he’s hit for more of it than ever in 2017. In fact, his power output has been on the rise throughout his minor-league career.
He’s done this while simultaneously cutting his strikeout rate. Following his 2014 campaign at Low-A, erstwhile lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel asserted that “his 29.7% K rate needs to be closer to 20% to make this work at higher levels.” Frazier’s done just that, and it’s turned him into a consensus top-40 prospect.
In addition to hitting for contact and power, Frazier has also posted double-digit walk and stolen-base numbers. He’s also been perpetually young for his levels: he spent one year at each level after starting in Low-A at age 19. As a result, my KATOH system pegs him for 6.9 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 8.2 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 35th and 24th, respectively, among prospects.
To put some faces to Frazier’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Frazier’s Triple-A performance and every season since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.
Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.
| Rank | Name | Mah Dist | KATOH+ Proj. WAR | Actual WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jayson Werth | 1.6 | 5.4 | 12.0 |
| 2 | Alex Ochoa | 1.7 | 6.3 | 7.2 |
| 3 | Pat Lennon | 1.9 | 4.7 | 0.0 |
| 4 | Trot Nixon | 2.1 | 4.1 | 16.8 |
| 5 | Daryle Ward | 2.7 | 4.5 | 0.0 |
| 6 | Danny Clyburn | 2.7 | 4.4 | 0.0 |
| 7 | Wladimir Balentien | 2.8 | 5.0 | 1.0 |
| 8 | Shin-Soo Choo | 2.8 | 4.8 | 18.2 |
| 9 | Mike Humphreys | 3.0 | 5.3 | 0.0 |
| 10 | Tony Tarasco | 3.0 | 8.4 | 1.4 |
Frazier’s offensive profile is extremely exciting. Twenty-two-year-olds capable of clobbering Triple-A pitching the way Frazier did are few and far between. And in KATOH’s eyes, his hitting far outweighs the fact that he’s limited to an outfield corner, where the bar for hitting is extremely high.
Chris works in economic development by day, but spends most of his nights thinking about baseball. He writes for Pinstripe Pundits, FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. He's also on the twitter machine: @_chris_mitchell None of the views expressed in his articles reflect those of his daytime employer.
Is the bar for hitting at a corner outfield position extremely high? Doesn’t look like it in today’s game.
He improved a lot but i would not call hitting for a 820 ops in AAA “extremely well”. It is certainly good and he is still young but extremely well I would call for example what those cubs prospects did (bryant, schwarber and soler all had a 1000 ops in AAA).
I don’t want to be a downer and I think frazier will have a solid career but for a corner of it is not that outstanding.
The Cubs you mention all played in the PCL, which is a much better environment for hitters than the IL.
In 2016, Aaron Judge only put up a .854 OPS in AAA and Gary Sanchez only .807. So far, they’ve both hit far above their AAA numbers in the majors. So one never knows.
(and I say this as a Yankee hater)
First off, do yourself a favor and never cite to or consider OPS ever again in any context.
Second, particularly in MiLB, where run scoring environments vary widely from league to league, use adjusted stats wherever possible. This will help illustrate that Frazier’s .840 OPS in 2015 was almost exactly as impressive as Soler’s .996 in 2014.
Third, your proposed Cubs comps tell the whole story… the final analysis here is that there is a high chance that Clint Frazier ends up being somewhere between as good as Kris Bryant and Jorge Soler… welcome to prospecting.
I’d like to be optimistic based on his minor league stats, but the kid has one of the ugliest swings I’ve ever seen. It’s practically a carbon copy of Mike Olt’s.
Think of it this way; swings are mutable. Players tinker and rework them all the time. If he’s this good with a bad swing, imagine how good he’ll be when he makes adjustments.
not sure why its getting downvoted. Outside of Pence, I cannot think of a worse swing in the mlb
I don’t pretend to be a scout, but his swing seems much tighter than Olt’s; obviously his bat speed has been complimented, and there is a lot to like about his improvements re patience/eye at the plate. Rumor had it they were tinkering with his swing a bit, so it could continue to change – but would love to hear what kind of minor changes someone knowledgeable of these things would like to see in his swing.
His *swing* itself seems ok to me, as in his upper body. His feet on the other hand, hoo boy. I am truly astounded that he has made it all the way up to the show with his feet doing THAT. Moving his back foot when he swings seems like he is unnecessarily turning up the difficulty level to Legend (which is the most impossible difficulty level in MLB The Show for those wondering).
If you go frame-by-frame on his homer (25 secs in), he probably slides his right foot back a whole 2 feet while he swings, which just seems insane: http://mediadownloads.mlb.com/mlbam/mp4/2017/07/02/1562972683/1498991550061/asset_1800K.mp4
I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets worked out over the offseason since it’s way too big a change to make in-season. But if he’s done this well with what seems to be a major flaw in his mechanics, then as a Yanx fan I’d love to see what he could do once he’s ‘fixed’ the supposed glitch.
Don’t curse it this time, ok?
Do you make anything of the fact that there’s so much swing in those comps, more than seems typical for high level comps? Seems to be a lot of zeros and double digits, you either get a total stud or a total dud. Does that suggest more variance here?
I think this warning from the article applies here:
“Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.”
For sure, but the question is still interesting, as you’d have to think that certain batting profiles more volatile to project than others