Uribe Bounces Back
The San Francisco Giants win in spite of their offense, not because of it. However, they are getting some positive contributions from their position players, including the surprising Juan Uribe, who they picked up on a minor league deal in spring training. Uribe not only made the club, but has become one of the team’s more valuable players while swinging a ridiculously hot bat of late.
For the season, he’s hitting .282/.320/.492, good for a .344 wOBA. Toss in quality defense at second and third, as well as passable work at shortstop, and Uribe’s been worth 1.9 wins in 341 plate appearances this season. He’s going to end the year as around an average major league contributor, and the Giants got him for next to nothing. However, even with his struggles the last few years, perhaps we shouldn’t be totally surprised at Uribe’s production.
His overall profile hasn’t changed at all. Coming into the season, CHONE projected he would walk in 6.2% of his plate appearances, strike out in 18.3% of them, and hit for a .158 ISO. His actual marks? 6.0%, 20.1%, and .211. The power number is up a little bit, but he posted ISOs over .200 in 2004 and 2006, so it’s not like this is a new skill for him. His plate discipline numbers are practically identical across the board to his career averages. He’s the same guy he’s always been, but just getting better results.
Why? Our good friend BABIP. When Uribe posts a reasonably normal batting average on balls in play, he’s a decent hitter. From 2005 to 2008, however, he posted four straight years with below average numbers on balls in play, bottoming out at .244 in 2006. This year, he’s at .319 – the highest mark of his career.
Hitter BABIP isn’t nearly as luck related as pitcher BABIP, but it’s still subject to significant fluctuations around a player’s “true talent” level. That Uribe can run the following six BABIPs in succession is a great example of this: .311, .271, .244, .262, .289, .319.
The only major difference between Uribe this year and the one that the White Sox saw the last few years – and of course, the one no one wanted to employ this winter – was the amount of times the balls he hit found the fielders gloves. Even the most accurate projectors of BABIP will have fairly significant variation, and finding these types of players is a great way for teams to find hidden value. Not all low BABIP guys are “unlucky”, but if you want to find a guy who can take a pretty big step forward in a hurry, look for players like Uribe who have established levels of skill and could be productive hitters with some better results on balls in play.
The Giants are sure glad they took a shot on him.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
so how many seasons does a player have to actually suck for before we can declare that he sucks?
apparently 4 seasons of horrific production in a row was the fluke, it’s not THIS season that’s the fluke?
Uribe has horrible plate discipline, why should anyone other than a desperate team have taken a chance on him?
this isn’t Nick Swisher here, he had 4 seasons in a row with an OBP of .301 or lower.
The Giants got lucky that Uribe has hit a few more HRs this year. Good for them. But the “I told you so’s” ring a little hollow here.
You couldn’t have possibly missed the point any more than you did.
No, I get it.
I just think it’s horseshit.
Thanks for reminding me why I don’t bother responding to you guys.
Dave, maybe you should just limit your responses to people who seem reasonable…?
I’m sorry, was your response supposed to generate a productive dialogue?
Now, to clarify, here is the sentence I was talking about:
“The only major difference between Uribe this year and the one that the White Sox saw the last few years – and of course, the one no one wanted to employ this winter – was the amount of times the balls he hit found the fielders gloves. ”
It had been FIVE years since Uribe was productive. My point was simply that after some very long stretch of poor BABIP, it wasn’t unreasonable for most of baseball to assume that this wasn’t just variance.
I was disagreeing with the implication that Uribe’s rebound should have been apparent to anyone who was looking in the right place.
I am sorry that you disagree with my opinion and that I dared challenge your infinite wisdom.
You missed the point and acted like a prick in the process. That’s way too common in the comments around here, thanks to the anonymous nature due to the lack of comment registration.
If you want to have a productive conversation, don’t be an ass. Otherwise, go away. I’m beyond tired of our comments section reading like a bunch of nine year olds got on the internet for the first time.
I wasn’t trying to act like a prick (initially). If you took it like that, I apologize. I haven’t follow the comments that closely, so if this is a common problem, I can understand your reaction.
I didn’t catch an ounce of “I told you so” attitude in this article at all…
Dave calls Uribe’s season “surprising,” then gives an overview of his BABIP numbers and says “perhaps we shouldn’t be totally surprised at Uribe’s production.”
That’s a far cry from implying it was obvious and that he has infinite knowledge. I know this is an inherant problem with the written word and the interwebs, but if people would stop attempting to infer attitudes from articles and responding in kind, that would be a major step forward for this site right now.
I don’t think he missed the point at all. After this year’s bump up Uribe is still a career .309 wOBA hitter. I do not think his initial response was any different from the general attitude the writers for this site take towards major league team front office types who make moves with which they disagree. He didn’t call you a name or anything.
No offense but I think the remark about the quality/tone of commenters is a little late is it not? I don’t recall anyone at FanGraphs complaining a couple of weeks ago when ‘Nick’ was swearing and ALL CAPPING anyone who dared disagree with him on the John Smoltz posts.
I don’t agree with Steve’s position – as Davidceisen pointed out below Uribe has dropped his flyball rate/increased his gb rate which certainly will help his BABiP. However his comments aren’t even in the ballpark of inappropriateness as compared to what’s been on the site recently. I suppose I’m being cynical in suggesting that the difference is that Steve didn’t agree with the author here………
BTW – I’m registered with FanGraphs, you have my e-mail address and name.
“Not all low BABIP guys are “unlucky”, but if you want to find a guy who can take a pretty big step forward in a hurry, look for players like Uribe who have established levels of skill and could be productive hitters with some better results on balls in play.”
Yeah, I mean, this does seem like “I told you so.” Except, not. He didn’t even say at any point that the White Sox could or should have expected this, his main point was just that Uribe’s a good example of the (correct) idea that players with very low BABIPs are pretty good bets if you want to look for value. And yeah, this season is probably a little fluky in the other direction for Uribe (he’s been a little lucky this season with balls in play) – I’m pretty sure Dave would agree with you there. I don’t know why there’s this reductionistic tendency to have to declare that players ACTUALLY suck, like there’s this threshold for sucking beyond which we don’t care about someone’s peripheral numbers. Obviously, this doesn’t exist, and I think Dave would also say that we shouldn’t have assumed that Uribe was a valuable major leaguer last year, just that the natural variation of BABIP should be taken into account when projecting him forward. But congratulations on your impressive combination of straw man arguments and aggressive, smug posting style: it was impressively infuriating.