Projecting Yoan Moncada
After they shipped Todd Frazier to the Yankees in exchange for prospects earlier this week, the White Sox replaced him on their roster with Yoan Moncada. Moncada was hitting a healthy .282/.377/.447 at Triple-A, highlighted by his 12 homers and 17 steals. He hits for average, hits for power, steals bases, and even draws walks. Very few players can hit like Moncada does while also providing value in the field and on the bases. That’s why he was a fixture at the top of midseason prospect lists this summer. Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus both ranked him No. 1, while Keith Law put him at No. 13.
But for all his strengths, Moncada has some weaknesses that we shouldn’t overlook. Most notably, he strikes out a bunch. Moncada’s struck out in over 28% of his trips to the plate this year. Though it’s been somewhat hidden by his high batting averages, Moncada has had a lot of trouble making contact against minor-league pitchers. This suggests he’ll have even more trouble doing so in the big leagues, which is exactly what happened in Boston last September when he struck out 12 times in 20 plate appearances.
There’s also the matter of Moncada’s defense. He’s primarily played second base since emigrating from Cuba, and the prognosis for minor-league second basemen isn’t great. The fact that he’s already been deemed “not a shortstop” is a knock against him in KATOH’s eyes. Furthermore, his defensive metrics at second base aren’t great. He’s been right around average there by Clay Davenport’s fielding data this year and was several ticks worse than average last year. This suggests he may not be a defensive asset in the infield.
My KATOH system pegs Moncada for 8.6 WAR over his first six seasons by the stats-only method and 15.6 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his No. 1 prospect ranking from Baseball America. Those marks place him 20th and third, respectively, among prospects. Everybody loves Moncada, including KATOH, but KATOH loves him a little less than everyone else.
To put some faces to Moncada’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps. I calculated a Mahalanobis distance between Moncada’s Triple-A performance and every Triple-A season since 1991. Given the scarcity of elite second-base prospects — let alone ones who look like Moncada — I included prospects who played other more challenging defensive positions, including: second base, third base, shortstop, and center field.
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. 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 | KATOH+ Proj. WAR | Actual WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ian Stewart | 8.5 | 3.1 |
| 2 | Andrew McCutchen | 14.3 | 34.5 |
| 3 | Melvin Upton | 12.6 | 22.4 |
| 4 | D’Angelo Jimenez | 13.2 | 7.4 |
| 5 | Alex Gonzalez | 14.0 | 6.2 |
| 6 | Bobby Crosby | 11.5 | 8.1 |
| 7 | Andy Marte | 13.8 | 0.3 |
| 8 | Grady Sizemore | 8.3 | 29.4 |
| 9 | Jim Thome | 12.0 | 27.8 |
| 10 | Sean Burroughs | 15.0 | 5.4 |
As noted above, Moncada had a lot of trouble making contact against high-minors pitching, and it’s unreasonable to expect him to have any less trouble as a rookie in the big leagues. That doesn’t mean he can’t still be productive, of course, as his power, speed, and walks are bound to generate value. Some of the best players in baseball produce considerable value with strikeout rates well over 25%, including Cody Bellinger, Aaron Judge, and Miguel Sano. For what it’s worth, Steamer projects Moncada for .230/.310/.366 (80 wRC+) for the rest of the season with a 31% strikeout rate. That isn’t a terrible baseline expectation, but given his outstanding physical tools, don’t be surprised if Moncada blows past those numbers.
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 there any evidence that Moncada has done anything to adjust to make better contact? It’s possible to make a living with a K-rate above 30% but it usually requires a lot of homers…
I’ve been wondering recently between the correlation of SwStrk% and K% (now that we have minor league data to help a bit). Moncada doesn’t have a super high SwStrk% in the minors but it jumped up a good deal in his MLB debut short stint.
If he can get his SwStrk% to be near his MiLB levels, that’ll put him in the Addison Russell, Ian Desmond, Brad Miller range of ~24% K%.
That’s doable given his other skills.
And, if he could play a decent 2b and/or transition to CF like a Mookie Betts put him in what I think is his best compa range – Melvin Upton. Before the big contract remember Upton was a .250 hitter with speed, some power and good defense in CF. Of course, lots of players DO improve plate discipline and Moncada is still very young. Bryant went from 30 to 20 over two years, Souza this year has dropped 6%, so even if he opens up @ 30 in the K rate department it’s not all over.
I’m a little gun-shy to proclaim him a likely bust after I was wrong about Aaron Judge. But I’m pretty skeptical about him, because while some guys do improve their contact skills in MLB, most don’t do it enough to compensate for high early K rates. And when you have contact problems it’s really hard to be valuable big leaguer. We’ll see, but I’m not going to hold my breath because it’s going to be a while.
Ian Desmond has run a decent career with an upper range SwStrk%.
And while some may consider it a disappointment, Danny Espinosa has a career 28.7% K% but has still been worth 10.6 WAR.
Obviously it’s challenging to be good and strikeout that much, but he’s got other skillsets that will help offset it.
Might be more accurate to say Espinosa has a career WRC+ of 83, because WAR takes into account his defensive skills (which have nothing to do with his K%)
A 24% K rate would be probably make him a really valuable big leaguer. Everyone says he makes very hard contact, so between that and his speed I’d expect him to run high BABIPs.
I’m afraid I can’t really buy into the graph given that 13-16 WAR is given a probability of 0%, which is obviously ridiculous given that 16+ is given nearly 50%. The difference between 1-4 WAR (c. 3%) & 4-7 WAR (c. 27%) is also eyebrow-raising.
Is this just a consequence of a Monte Carlo process? Surely any plausible distribution ought to have a single peak (on an equivalent bucket size basis), no matter what shape the curve takes either side of that peak?
I can’t speak to the more detailed statistical side of this question, but generally, I can see how it’s reasonable that 13-16 is an incredibly unlikely outcome. If he busts, it’s partly because he doesn’t accumulate much value in the first place. If he produces even 2-3 WAR per season, he’s likely to play a lot of years, as he’ll be an average-ish player with top prospect pedigree, and that will keep him in the league for a decade-plus. Most routes to 13-16 WAR would seem to involve a freak, career-ending injury, or a few good seasons followed by an abysmal drop-off in skills that runs him out of the league.
TL;DR if he’s bad, he’ll accumulate little value over few years, if he’s decent-to-good, he’ll accumulate at least moderate value over many years.
This is a fair point, and I’ll admit that I grimace every time a graph comes out looking like this. Here’s why it happens…
The underpinnings of KATOH are a series of independently-calculated probabilities for WAR thresholds (MLB, 0.5 WAR, 1 WAR, 2 WAR, etc.). It then takes a weighted average of those probabilities to produce the point estimates that I cite in my articles. So the “13-16 WAR” is really the “16+ WAR probability” minus “13+ WAR probability”. In most cases, the probabilities go down in a consistent manner as the WAR totals increase –just as you’d think they would.
In Moncada’s case, though, the descent is unusual. He has a near-100% chance of doing everything through 4 WAR, then the probabilities descend as they typically do until around 16 WAR, where there’s a random spike before it starts going down again. Then he gets a 40% for 20+ because he’s such an elite prospect. But because of the spike at 16 WAR, “16+ WAR probability” > “13+ WAR probability,” which results in the empty spot for 13-16 WAR. The spike is small, but any spike results in weird graphs.
Why is there a spike at 16 WAR? Essentially, that’s because — for whatever reason — historical players similar to Moncada have ended up above 16 WAR disproportionately often, while players who were not like him ended up at 10-13 WAR disproportionately often. A big part is that sample of players who get to the 13+ WAR territory is tiny, but Moncada’s uniqueness also plays a role. He’s an extreme data point in terms of power, speed, K% and even BB%; and those characteristics are rarely combined the way they are for Moncada. Not many players hit a bunch of homers and triples AND have tons of strikeouts. Based on historical data, players who do any one of these things are more likely to cross the 16 WAR threshold than their peers, but very few players do all of them together.
It’s my opinion that these weird quirks don’t invalidate the system as a whole, since the WAR estimates are an average of a bunch of these independent probability calculations. And even though it is counter-intuitive, “Moncada has a 46% chance of getting to 13 WAR and a 52% chance of getting to 16 WAR” still generally tells us what we need to know — that Moncada has about a 50% chance of accumulating at least ~14 WAR. Even when they are occasionally volatile, the probabilities still do what they’re meant to do: Play a small part in telling us how good this player will likely be.
All that being said, I understand that the graphs sometimes don’t make any sense. “How could Moncada have a 0% chance of ending up with 13-16 WAR?” is a more-than-fair question. And everything I wrote here runs through my head every time a graph looks like Moncada’s. So I do want to smooth out the graphs somehow, and have been playing around with some things. But it’s a little tough, because I don’t just want to arbitrarily smooth for the sake of smoothing. I was planning to figure something out by early next week in anticipation for the deadline, but it seems the deadline has come early this year!
We could just get the straight probabilities and give us a curve instead of buckets. So just a line graph starting at 0 WAR and up to 20+ that would obviously be curving down
Many thanks for the comprehensive answer!
Thanks for giving me a reason to finally write it all down!
Moncada has to show me he isn’t the next Byron Buxton, and he doesn’t even bring a glove along. The fact that Moncada struck out 12 times in 20 appearances doesn’t even begin to tell the story. He could not make solid contact of any sort and his few hits were seeing eye dribblers. The scouts have been striking out more than Moncada lately and I am afraid we are looking at another Jurickson Profar.
“He’s primarily played second base since emigrating from Cuba, and the prognosis for minor-league second basemen isn’t great.”
Can somebody expand on this statement for me please? I thought second base was considered a premium defensive position.
2B is classically the middle infield (non-1B division) with the weakest arm and range. That’s why it seems like moving from 2B to CF is more common because you don’t need the arm strength there generally (more reserved for RF).
It’s still a +run position, but it’s a decent difference between SS/C and 2B/3B/CF which all get the same adjustment
But he has 70 grades on speed and throwing – not that speed definitely equals range. So he is being downgraded because his competition does not have some of the tools he does? I can sorta see that, but it still seems silly.
It’s probably a measurement artifact. Teams often leave their elite hitters at short for as long as possible, even if they’re lousy fielders.
It’s frustrating that this was downvoted because it is the correct answer.
Yes, but WHICH ALEX GONZALEZ IS IT!?!?!
Interesting names in the comps. Thome. Sizemore. And… Andy Marte?!
Moncada has a lot of work ahead of him.
Any Katoh comps list that includes Grady Sizemore should come with a trigger warning. Now I’ve just gone and looked at his profile page and made myself sad.
Knew someone would say this as soon as I saw the list. He’s one of those players that you try to over exaggerate how great he was because his production happened during a very impressionable time in your life(like high school)… and it turns out you’re almost underselling him.
Kind of like how some people swear Trent Dilfer was the truth and unstoppable in his days.
I can honestly say I have never heard anyone say that about Trent Dilfer, and I live in pretty prime ravens territory.
They are talking about the Bucs version!
What are everyone’s thoughts on Mahalanobis (admittedly ancient) as opposed to a brand new inscrutable acronym?
I don’t know if this is what you meant, but Mahalanobis is a guy’s name and not an acronym.
I think he means it would be fun to try to make a bacronym instead of a boring old person’s name. Mean Average High Analysis Leveraged Aggregate Normalized On Base Isolated Statistic
catchy!
Melvin Upton doesn’t seem like a bad comp. He was a bad infielder who flourished with a move to the OF, struck out a ton but got by on raw tools. Literally once his skills slipped the tiniest bit though, he was done
Worth nothing how aggressively he’s been pushed as well. Missed time for coming from Cuba and then less than half a season at each level, only 50 games at AA. That’s tough to compare to other prospects that might get a full year at AA and handled with baby gloves (are baby gloves a thing?)
Baby gloves are mandatory in any reputable, above-ground baby boxing league.
kid gloves are a thing, but the “kid” refers to what they’re made out of (goatskin). So baby gloves would be made out of…WHAT HAVE YOU DONE MLBJK8????
But they are gluten free, organic babies!
I’ll be the guy to say that I think Moncada is a superstar. I think he is head and shoulders above the rest of the prospects in baseball. Of course, anything can happen but I like what Moncada is. Being the best prospect in baseball is a bit like being the tallest kid in 6th grade – doesn’t matter a whole lot and certainly doesn’t mean anything for the future – but it just might.
The K-rate is concerning, but the BB-rate is very healthy which eases my concerns a lot. The K-rate has come down a bit which is a good sign as well. For me, I like the swing and approach enough that I am not worried about the Ks – I think it will get better. Comparing him to Buxton is just absurd (read it more than once before), who I have always said doesn’t belong in the lineup until he makes some huge changes. Even if Ks are a problem, this kid has real power which I think is getting downplayed. Its not 80 power but there is more there than a guy like Bellinger has, who is a good example of a guy with 60 power hitting a million home-runs potentially.
The other knock is the defense, which is way overblown. If he just worked at one position, then he would be perfectly fine and we wouldn’t talk about it… but he has worked at two positions which has created talk about his defense. From what I have heard and seen he is fine at both, which should actually be a strength. What if he just moved to CF or an outfield corner where he would potentially be elite? Most guys with his tools just run around the outfield and call it good. The fact that a guy with his tools is playing on the dirt is a testament to his ability. Imagine if he was playing first base with a bit of outfield and zero innings in CF. This is how we describe Cody Bellinger and his defense is an asset?
Typically, I am the guy questioning the elite prospects so I get where it comes from, but I like this guy a lot. He has a beautiful stroke from the left side. Watch his 2016 milb highlights on YouTube. I can’t help but see a little Ken Griffey Jr in that left-handed stroke. Anything can happen but prospects don’t come any better than this for me. He is a plus runner and a switch hitter which is just crazy. I can’t help but wonder if just hitting left-handed would be a good idea…
I chose Bellinger as a comp because it is absurd and to demonstrate that there is a huge disconnect between prospect status and real-performance – anything can happen more or less. I don’t know what start Yoan will get off to or how Cody will finish the season. Maybe I will look right and maybe I will be wrong, but that is my take on Moncada as a prospect.
Moncada’s K-rate was around 26% (still high) if you take out the month he played with a bruised thumb, where his k-rate soared to 34%.
Straight from Longenhagen: “The tools are deafening. Moncada is a plus-plus runner with plus-plus arm strength, plus raw power and an advanced idea of the strike zone.” I would feel a lot more comfortable buying Moncada if his bat wasn’t the third thing that Eric mentioned.
“… an advanced feel for the strike zone…” does not mean “this guy can hit”. I’ll probably be lukewarm on him unless he either a) cleans up the contact issues (not likely) or b) shows some legitimate power and/or FB-heavy approach (more likely).
Well, the first two are objective – maybe that’s why he led with them… in addition to them being plus-plus. Of all the potential concerns, I think this one is pretty small!
I’ve seen Moncada in person quite a bit over the last three years and made my concerns known at length regarding his contact, fielding, and effort. Basically, I agree with KATOH about him being more risky than most #1 prospects but I also understand why scouts ranked him #1 anyway because his ceiling is that high. Three things I’ll note that haven’t received much attention are that Charlotte heavily boosted his offensive numbers this season (2nd best park in the IL for hitters), that he’s struggled the last two seasons against left handed pitching, and that against RHPs he could be vulnerable to shifts due to how often he pulls ground balls against them.