The Future for David Denson on the Field

Milwaukee Brewers prospect David Denson made history yesterday when he revealed he is gay. With his announcement, Denson became the first active, openly gay player in the history of affiliated baseball.

Given his significance to the game, there’s unlikely to be any shortage of coverage regarding Denson in either the near- or long-term. As some of the authors of that coverage have already noted, attempting to become a major leaguer is difficult enough without having to contend with questions of personal identity and concerns about acceptance at the same time. Denson himself has stated that he’s relieved that he can divert more of his energy now to baseball itself.

What I’d like to do here is set aside for a moment the implications of David Denson, gay ballplayer, and to utilize my KATOH projection system to consider briefly Denson’s prospects for reaching the majors.

Just 19 now, Denson was drafted by the Brewers in the 15th round in 2013, and has split the 2015 season between Low-A Wisconsin and Rookie League Helena, where he currently plays. In 268 trips to the plate this year, the first baseman has hit just .229/.313/.360, due in no small part to his elevated 26% strikeout rate. Denson opened the year in Low-A, where he also spent the second half of the 2014 season. But the Brewers reassigned him to extended spring training in May when he was hitting .195/.264/.305. He’s put up a more respectable .247/.339/.390 line since joining the Brewers Rookie League affiliate in June. Based on his 2015 numbers,  forecasts Denson for just 0.2 WAR through age 28, with a meager 6% chance of cracking the big leagues.

Denson performed much better last year, however, when he hit .244/.371/.351 in 291 plate appearances — mostly at the Low-A level. He struck out in an alarming 30% of his trips to the plate, but did enough in the other 70% to be one of his league’s better hitters. Very few 19-year-olds are capable of out-hitting the average Low-A hitter. However, Denson’s success had a lot to do with his 16% walk rate, and walks aren’t very predictive of big-league success for hitters in the low minors. As a result, KATOH pegged him for an unspectacular 1.7 WAR through age 28, with a 31% chance of making the majors.

We can’t know for sure why Denson’s performance cratered in his second go-around in the Midwest League. There are countless factors that influence players’ performance, and given the small sample sizes at play, pure luck almost certainly played some role. But Denson feels his struggles had a lot to do with his internal conflicts about hiding his sexuality.

“It became a depression level,” Denson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It started to affect my game because I was so caught up in trying to hide it. I was so concerned about how they would feel. I was pushing my feelings aside.”

Most of us can’t begin to relate to what Denson has gone through, let alone how it’s affected his performance on the baseball field. But one could certainly imagine how Denson’s internal struggles might have served as a distraction. The grind of playing minor-league baseball is hard enough for a late adolescent, even without the added stresses with which Denson has dealt.

In his preseason write-up of the Brewers organization, Kiley McDaniel ranked Denson 17th among prospects in the team’s system. He gave Denson a FV of 40, which is the equivalent of a big league backup. Kiley had glowing words for Denson’s hitting abilities:

“Denson is deceptively quick, has an average arm, plate discipline so advanced that low minors umps frustrate him with their inconsistent zones, easy plus raw power and makeup that coaches love. He already looks like a steal after a strong 19-year-old season at Low-A and there’s still work to do, but the elements are here.”

Let’s pull up some statistical comps for Denson to give us a sense of his offensive upside. Since Denson’s 2015 performance has come over a relatively small sample size — and one that likely doesn’t appropriately reflect his abilities — let’s refer back to his 2014 campaign for this exercise. Using league-adjusted, regressed stats, along with age, I calculated the Mahalanobis Distance between Denson’s 2014 performance and every Low-A season since 1990 in which a batter recorded at least 400 plate appearances. Below, you’ll find a list of historical players whose performances were nearest and dearest to Denson’s, ranked from most to least similar.

*Hitters who have yet to play their age-28 seasons.

Just five of his top 20 comps ever made it to the show, which jibes with KATOH’s unenthusiastic forecasts. Only one of those five — Mike Napoli — was worth more than a modicum of value to his big league teams. The history of players similar to Denson isn’t particularly encouraging.

It’s possible Denson’s prospect trajectory will improve now that this burden is no longer on his shoulders. But going by what he’s done in the past, he’s something of a long shot to make it to the big leagues. That’s the way it is for most players who are plugging away in the low minors. Still, even if he never makes it past A-Ball, Denson’s likely already had more of an impact on the game than many players who advanced much further. Not only was his coming out publicly a tremendous act of courage, but it will help clear the path for other baseball players to do the same.