Yoán Moncada’s Quiet Breakout

Maybe his breakout has gone a bit unnoticed because his name broke out when inked to a huge signing bonus four years ago. Maybe it’s quiet this season because three years ago, he was involved in one of the biggest trades of the decade and the next spring he was the top prospect in all of baseball. In his first year and a half in the big leagues, he was merely an average player. He’s playing this season on a non-contending team and he’s lost time due to injury, but in the 100-plus games he has appeared in, Yoán Moncada has not just been one of the game’s most-improved players, he’s been one of the 10-best position players in baseball.

To provide some sense of where Moncada rates among today’s players, let’s start with the youngest set. Here are the best 2019 campaigns from players 25 years old and younger (all stats are through games on August 26):

There are only three players younger than Moncada with a higher WAR this season. Rookie Peter Alonso is having a monster season, yet Moncada has been just as valuable. Given Moncada’s lesser playing time, he’s arguably been better than Alonso  and a cut above a rising star like Juan Soto and a no-doubter like Francisco Lindor. How about his ranks among third basemen, Moncada’s new position this season?

Moncada is behind Alex Bregman, Rafael Devers’ own breakout season, Anthony Rendon, Matt Chapman, and that’s it. He’s a whisker ahead of Kris Bryant and Nolan Arenado in considerably less playing time. How many conversations about the top five third basemen in the game include Moncada? Probably not very many, but his numbers are right there with the best in the game. We don’t have to narrow down the type of players to show Moncada is playing well. Even if the tables above don’t speak to his season, he’s in the top 20 among all position players.

Moncada currently sits at 19th in the game this season. He’s not a great hitter, but he’s certainly a good one, as his 136 wRC+ ranks 27th this season. He’s a good baserunner with his 4.2 BsR ranking 21st in the game. The only players with a higher BsR and wRC+ than Moncada this season are Mike Trout and Christian Yelich. If we were to prorate every qualified batter’s season to 600 PA, the leaderboard would look like this:

On a rate basis, Moncada has been one of the 10 best position players in the game this year. We don’t know what Moncada would have done with the missing three weeks in August if he had not been felled by a hamstring injury, though he did put up a 140 wRC+ in the month before that and hit a home run and a double in each of his first two games since coming off the injured list last week. His defense is still a bit of a wild card. We don’t have enough statistical data to make a determination either way given this is Moncada’s first real exposure to third base, so it is possible that his current WAR is inflated by a small-sample UZR that is above average, but we can’t say for sure.

After the first few weeks of the season, I wrote about Moncada’s change in approach to be a more aggressive hitter. Moncada still strikes out a good amount with 28% K-rate, but that’s a significant decrease from last season’s 33% mark. Moncada is swinging at more pitches both in and out of the zone, and more importantly, he’s making more contact on pitches in the zone, where he’s most likely to do damage. His walks are down some, and that’s going to make Moncada more reliant on hard contact to get results. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for the White Sox third baseman.

Moncada hasn’t been some huge beneficiary of luck, either. His .488 xwOBA on contact ranks sixth in the game behind Trout, Yelich, Cody Bellinger, J.D. Martinez, and Matt Olson. His average exit velocity at 93 mph is second only to Yelich. His 91-mph average exit velocity on ground balls (second to Carlos Santana) and relatively high 41% ground-ball rate suggest Moncada might be able to unlock even more power by hitting the ball in the air a little more often.

I ran a quick study on position players in their age-24 seasons since the strike ended in 1995. I looked at players with a WAR/600 between five and seven and a wRC+ between 116 and 156 and at least four total WAR. There were 18 non-catching position players who fit the criteria who had played through their age-29 season in 2019. Those players averaged a 127 wRC+ and four wins per season for their next five years. Culling the list down to only players who hadn’t yet broken out (no four-WAR seasons) by 24 years old, we see a really good list of players with no busts and only a couple players who even ended up as near average.

It’s a small list, and Moncada could still end up going a number of different directions, but he’s having a breakout season right now even if nobody is noticing. The White Sox rebuild was a bit of a disaster in 2018 between injuries to Michael Kopech and disappointing seasons from a number of young players including Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López. The rebuild looks a little bit different this season thanks to pitchers like Giolito and Lopez making strides, Tim Anderson looking better, Eloy Jiménez getting his feet wet, Luis Robert destroying the minors, recent top picks Nick Madrigal and Andrew Vaughn getting closer to the majors, and Kopech now aiming to return next season. However, there’s been no bigger development for the future of the White Sox than Moncada taking a big step forward. The White Sox might have multiple future stars on their hands, but they only have one right now, as Yoán Moncada is fulfilling his potential in just his second full major league season.