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.
I’m really interested in Bell. I’m also interested now in going back over previous call up charts, because I don’t remember seeing one where so many of the Melahanobis comps outperformed their WAR projection.
Yeah I noticed that too. That *might* suggest some sort of blindspot with KATOH for players like this, but is likely mostly just a coincidence.
I think it’s maybe a first baseman thing, maybe something within KATOH, maybe there’s also difficulty valuing ‘type’ like you said. maybe I’m seeing what I want to see, because I think the Pirates didn’t handle Bell/1stbase correctly at all. Bells perceived lack of (or later blooming) power seems like it’d lead to an undervalue, which your chart does show. Also, Bells type doesn’t jive with what I think of as AJ Reeds type, but 5 of Bells Mah comps match those of Reed from last week, in different orders. strange. In Reeds case it’s 50/50 in terms of the comps vs their projected first years.
Curious – what do you mean by the Pirates not handling Bell/1st Base correctly?
Perhaps the Pirates should have managed Bell’s development in such a way that Bell would have more accurately reflected the idea of a ML first baseman.
They instead seek to develop good hitters who hit homeruns instead of homerun hitters. This strategy can mask a player’s raw power.
I will take the over on the 3.6 WAR over his first 6 big league years.
Indeed. I would take “over” on 3.6 WAR in his first 3 yesrs.
I found your paragraph on assessing player futures to be interesting.
I actually take the polar opposite approach when trying to take a serious stab at what a player might turn into one day. To be sure, what KATOH has to say about what you can/should expect from a player based on broader trends is useful, and there is a time and place for that (such as in considering the fair trade value of a prospect). When you’re simply playing the odds or are trying to establish how the masses should view a player, yes, go for it that way.
But I think that approach is inherently limited, because it assumes every player is true to his statistical profile, and is only interested in the “what”, not the “why”. I think KATOH should be factored in as a starting place, as it goes under the hood much better than most methods of projection probably do, but if you want to get serious you need to delve much deeper than that, including into the qualitative.
I won’t get into the specifics of the kinds of things that can/should be factored in, as that discussion can go on all day AND varies depending on the individual too, but I believe it is necessary if one’s goal is to find a true outlook for a player.
How is his defense? I’m asking because if youre going to be a non-power 1B, it would help to have defense like Grace, Hernandez, Snow, etc. Not that you need to be annual gold glove caliber … but you need to supply value elsewhere.
Bell is a bad defender.
Analysis on how Todd Helton blew his projections to crap would be interesting. They were only off by 30 WAR or so.
Basically these 6 year WAR predictions are “BUST” predictions.