Archive for Adrian Beltre

Like any baseball stat, Wins Above Replacement provides the answer to a question. The question, in this case? Something like this: accounting for all the main ways (hitting, running, defense, etc.) in which a player can produce value for his team, how many wins has this particular player been worth?

There are, of course, criticisms of WAR. Some valid, others less so. One prominent criticism is how defensive value is handled in WAR. Some don’t understand how it’s calculated. Others understand but also question how well it represents a player’s defensive contributions. These criticisms shouldn’t be dismissed. As with all baseball statistics, though, it’s necessary to consider WAR in the context in which it’s presented — that is, to remember the question a metric is intended to answer and the method by which it attempts to answer that question.

On Monday, I completed one such reminder in a discussion of players whose WAR totals this year are probably low based on what we know about their defense. Today, I’ll make another attempt — this time, by examining players whose WAR totals are probably inflated by defensive numbers unlikely to be sustained over the course of a season.

In the comments of Monday’s post, one reader, Ernie Camacho, noted:

[T]here is a weird tension in this article between quantifying and estimating what has already happened, on the one hand, and evaluating player talent, on the other. I’m not sure we should be blending the two.

This is a good point. That tension most definitely exists, and it’s possible that some of that tension is what causes people to discount defensive metrics — and WAR as a whole. I agree that, in terms of calculating WAR, we should not be blending what has already happened with what we think will probably happen. Over time, in an ideal world, WAR captures both. In smaller samples, however, this is more difficult to do. In fact, there’s actually something that does capture the blending when we have smaller samples: projections. If we want to capture a player’s talent level at any given moment, projections do that very well.

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Time catches up to us all, but Adrian Beltre seems to have secured a fairly sizable lead, leaving time a little further behind than for most 37-year-olds. Beltre debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the shadow of the Mark McGwire–Sammy Sosa home-run race during the 1998 season. Eighteen seasons later, the only players active during that season who’ve also recorded an appearance in this one are Carlos Beltran, Bartolo Colon, David Ortiz, A.J. Pierzynski, and Alex Rodriguez. Beltre was just 19 years old at that time and, after signing a two-year contract extension with the Texas Rangers worth $36 million, he’s in position to outlast all of them.

No discussion of what Beltre will do is complete without discussing what he has done. Beltre signed with the Dodgers at 15 years old for just $23,000 (improperly, as it turns out) and debuted in majors at age 19. At the time, Beltre was one of just four players (Ken Griffey, Edgar Renteria, and Ivan Rodriguez were the others) in the previous decade to record at least 200 plate appearances at age 19 or under. It would be more than a decade before any player would do it again, as Bryce Harper and Manny Machado both reached that mark in the 2012 season.

Since making his debut, Beltre has always been a good player. His 41.3 WAR figure through his age-30 season is identical to the mark produced by Derek Jeter through the same age. What has differentiated Beltre’s play over the last half-decade is his refusal to slow down and it has made him a surefire Hall of Famer. After Beltre’s contract with the Seattle Mariners ended, he was forced to re-establish his value with a one-year deal with the Red Sox. That one-year deal turned into a five-year deal with the Texas Rangers, including an option for this season that the Rangers happily exercised.

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Carlos Beltran’s season ended last night in the same way it’s ended in each of the last 18 seasons he’s spent time playing Major League Baseball: without a championship. Beltran, one of the greatest postseason hitters of all time, with 16 home runs and a 192 wRC+ in 223 plate appearances, did what little he could against Dallas Keuchel, producing one of the three New York Yankees hits. Beltran, along with Adrian Beltre, are reminders that no matter how great a player is on the field, even in an age of great parity and multiple playoff berths, a World Series championship is far from certainty.

Beltran has had a Hall of Fame-caliber career on and off the field. With just eight more home runs, he will become the fifth player in MLB history to record at least 400 home runs and 300 steals (Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Alex Rodriguez, Andre Dawson). His 66 wins above replacement sit comfortably among the top 100 position players of all time. He has used his wealth and fame to start a baseball academy in his native Puerto Rico that has already produced more than 10 MLB draft picks even as Beltran himself continues to produce on the field. After a disappointing 2014 season and disappointing start to 2015 that had this author worried he was finished, Beltran hit .295/.357/.505 with a wRC+ of 134 following the month of April and added a few more WAR to his career ledger.

While Beltran’s exit is disappointing for those hoping he wins a ring before he retires, he’s not even the most accomplished player in this postseason without a title. Beltre debuted in 1998 just like Carlos Beltran and, over the last 18 seasons, has accumulated more than 10,000 plate appearances, coming close in 2011 to a World Series title but never getting over the hump. Among active players, only Alex Rodriguez has stepped to the plate more times than Beltre. As for performance, no active player has been more accomplished than Beltre without winning a title.

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Joc Pederson and Kris Bryant are ahead of the pack when it comes to the National League Rookie of the year race, but perhaps lost among many other intriguing promotions, Maikel Franco is having himself a solid rookie season in Philadelphia. Franco has been up just over a month and received 150 plate appearances, but he has already hit nine home runs after two more cleared the fences against the Yankees last night. The 22-year-old does come with some questions, particularly with regard to his plate discipline, but his power is clearly major league-ready. His line on the season is an impressive .312/.353/.574 with a 154 wRC+ that outpaces Bryant thus far, and he provides some hope for the future in a dismal season for the Phillies.

Franco signed out of the Dominican Republic for $100,000 in 2010 without a lot of bulk, but he has beefed up considerably since that time and made a power bat his ticket to the majors. He was noticed as a prospect in 2013 when the 20-year-old Franco tore up High-A and Double-A pitching, hitting 31 home runs with an on-base percentage above .350 despite taking very few walks. Baseball America put Franco at No. 17 on its prospect list entering 2014. Franco was young for the level and struggled with the transition to Triple-A hitting just .209/.267/.318 the first three months of the season before posting excellent numbers in July and August and earning a promotion to Philadelphia in September. Read the rest of this entry »

A Golden rule of developing prospects is, “Never move a player off a more valuable defensive position until he proves incapable of playing there at the Major League Level.” This leaves the Texas Rangers in an enviable, but difficult position as they have a 10 win left-side of the infield and both the best third base and shortstop prospects in baseball.

Jurickson Profar is untouchable, but Mike Olt has been discussed in a number of trade rumors. first, he was rumored to the Braves for shortstop Andrelton Simmons. More recently, Olt’s name was thrown as a key piece in a package for Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey. This leaves me questioning if the Rangers are working to sell high on the former UConn Husky. Read the rest of this entry »

People care about home-run distance, because people like impressive home runs, and impressive home runs tend to have considerable distances. One is impressed when a batter drives a baseball 480 feet and out of the yard. As far as quality of contact is concerned, though, what might be more significant is the baseball’s speed off the bat. All a hitter ever wants to do is hit the baseball hard, so looking at the speed off the bat tells us who hit the baseball the hardest. The ESPN Home Run Tracker provides this data for dingers, and unsurprisingly, the hardest-hit homer of the year so far was hit by Giancarlo Stanton. It was a homer that damaged a scoreboard.

You can sort the data in the other direction to see the weakest-hit home runs. On average, home runs have left the bat at 103.5 miles per hour. The weakest homer was hit by Jayson Nix, to right field in Yankee Stadium. It left the bat at 89.8 miles per hour. The next-weakest was hit by Chris Iannetta, also in Yankee Stadium. Then the next two weakest after that were hit in Fenway Park. These aren’t astonishing results — people are familiar with the idea of Yankee Stadium and Fenway conceding some cheap dingers. People love dingers, but some of those cheap ones can make them roll their eyes.

The fifth-weakest dinger of the year so far was hit in Petco Park.

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Looking to re-establish his value following an injury-marred 2009 season, Adrian Beltre signed a one-year, $10 million contract with the Boston Red Sox over the winter. By virtue of fantastic third base defense, Beltre still managed 2.4 WAR in his last season with the Mariners while battling a left shoulder injury requiring surgery to remove bone spurs, among other misfortunes that won’t be spoken of here.

As Beltre’s Seattle tenure came to a close, some characterized the five-year, $64 million pact that the M’s gave the third baseman prior to the 2005 season as a waste of team resources. Beltre, according to the narrative, went bonkers during his last season with the Dodgers, landed stacks-o-cash in free agency and then returned to mediocrity. Unfortunately, the facts get in the way of good copy.

Beltre played six full seasons for the Dodgers. He put up an astonishing 10.1 WAR in 2004, but he was an asset those other years, too. From 1999-2003, Beltre averaged 3.3 WAR per season. And, while uttering Bill Bavasi’s name in Seattle still might produce dirty looks and suggestions of physically impossible acts, Beltre was worth every penny the Mariners gave him.

Safeco Field is a crippling environment for right-handed power hitters. Adjusting for league and park factors, Beltre’s bat was slightly above-average — his wRC+ as a Mariner was 102. That decent lumber was coupled with upper-echelon defense, as Beltre posted UZR/150 marks of +8.8, +19.2, -2.7, +13.4 and +21.2. The former Dodger racked up a combined 16.7 WAR with Seattle, a performance that our Dollars system valued at $67.3 million.

In Boston, Beltre is enjoying his best season since that double-digit WAR total back in ’04. After a four-for-four night against the Rays, he’s batting .349/.387/.561 in 310 trips to the plate, with a .410 wOBA that ranks ninth among qualified major league hitters. He’s flashing the leather again, too, with +12.9 UZR/150. Beltre has already compiled 3.8 WAR this season, trailing only Justin Morneau, Robinson Cano and Carl Crawford among position players. With $15.1 million in Value Dollars, he has already more than justified Boston’s investment.

Beltre won’t keep up this pace at the plate, of course — his batting average on balls in play is .387. By contrast, his expected BABIP is .321, and his rest-of-season ZiPS projects a .327 BABIP. But he’s creaming the ball, with a .211 Isolated Power, and it certainly doesn’t hurt that Beltre moved from a park that decreased run-scoring by six percent over the past three seasons (according to the Bill James Handbook) to Fenway and its inviting Green Monster, which boosted runs by 11 percent over that same period. ZiPS has a .362 rest-of-season wOBA for Beltre, and an overall .387 wOBA for 2010.

Beltre’s deal with the Red Sox included a $5 million player option for the 2011 season, which increases to $10 million if he reaches 640 PA this season. Barring some unforeseen injury, the 31-year-old Scott Boras client will opt out and land himself a lucrative multi-year deal this coming winter, whether that be with Boston or elsewhere.

Adrian Beltre is in the midst of a sublime season that’ll almost certainly go down as his best since that monstrous ’04 campaign. But it’s not as though he has been a bust in between those high marks — this guy has always been good.