Projecting Pirates Call-Up Josh Bell
Almost right after after treating us to Tyler Glasnow day, the Pirates are giving us another promising debutante to fuss over. First base prospect Josh Bell will debut for Pittsburgh in tonight’s game against the Cubs. Bell crushed Triple-A pitching this year to the tune of .324/.407/.535.
Bell posted a healthy .212 ISO in Triple-A this year, but in years past, he’s hit for an underwhelming amount of power — especially for a 6-foot-4 first baseman. Between 2014 and 2015 combined, he managed just 16 homers, and didn’t exactly compensate with loads of doubles and triples. Instead, he made lots of contact, which resulted in loads of singles.
Bell has seemingly shifted closer to the prototypical first base paradigm this season. His power numbers have spiked, while his strikeout rate has crept over 15%, up from 11% last year. He’s traded contact for power, while his .361 BABIP has allowed him to maintain his sexy batting average.
KATOH projects him for 3.6 WAR over his first six years in the bigs, which puts him in back-end top-100 territory. This is down from his 4.4 WAR projection in the preseason. The drop is due to his increased strikeout rate, along with the fact that he stopped stealing bases this year.
To put some faces to Bell’s statistical profile, let’s go ahead and generate some statistical comps for the high-average first baseman. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis Distance between Bell’s Triple-A numbers between this year and last, and every season at those levels since 1990 in which a first baseman recorded at least 400 plate appearances. 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 | Mah Dist | Name | Proj. WAR | Actual WAR |
| 1 | 3.8 | J.T. Snow | 2.6 | 5.0 |
| 2 | 6.2 | Todd Helton | 2.6 | 33.4 |
| 3 | 7.4 | Eric Karros | 2.1 | 10.2 |
| 4 | 11.6 | Joey Votto | 3.6 | 33.3 |
| 5 | 11.7 | Steve Cox | 1.9 | 1.4 |
| 6 | 12.0 | Hee-Seop Choi | 5.2 | 3.3 |
| 7 | 14.1 | Nate Rolison | 2.7 | 0.0 |
| 8 | 17.6 | Travis Hafner | 2.7 | 18.4 |
| 9 | 18.6 | Dmitri Young | 3.0 | 8.0 |
| 10 | 23.2 | Carlos Pena | 4.6 | 9.2 |
Bell isn’t a slam dunk prospect. It’s hard to be one of those when you’re a first baseman, and it’s especially hard when you’re a first baseman with limited power. But Bell has a lot going for him. While his power is underwhelming for a first baseman, it’s quite good for a player who walks and makes contact as often as he does. And certainly it’s never a bad thing when guys like Todd Helton and Joey Votto pop up on your comps list.
Bell looks to have a bright future ahead of him, and should start producing for Pittsburgh right away.
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.
Sweet! The addition of the Mah Dist column makes this a lot clearer. Thanks for adding that 🙂
For context – in your experience what would be a ‘really close’ Mah Dist number? Do you ever see them under 1? 2?
Glad you find it useful! Generally, anything in the single digits is a pretty close comp. Distances under 1 and 2 are pretty rare. Wish I had a more scientific answer than that, but I’ve admittedly focused more on refining/analyzing the KATOH model than thinking about the comps.