What Byron Buxton’s Struggles Have Meant Historically

Back in June, Eno Sarris discussed with Byron Buxton some adjustments the latter had made in his attempt to succeed at the major-league level. Then, about two weeks ago now, shortly after Buxton was sent back down to the minors, August Fagerstrom discussed whether any of the aforementioned adjustments had helped or hurt Buxton’s production. We know both that (a) Buxton has attempted to make adjustments and that (b) he possesses tools that have distinguished him, at points, as the top prospect in all of baseball. We also know that his stat line is pretty much terrible so far. Here I’d like to ignore the tools and focus only on that latter part. What does Byron Buxton’s awful stat line tell us about his potential for future success?

In August’s piece on Buxton, he mentioned Milton Bradley, Jackie Bradley Jr., Carlos Gonzalez, Brandon Phillips, and Miguel Tejada as examples of players who struggled and then recovered. Surely there are other examples of players who fit that description — and probably an even greater number of players who were terrible from the start and quickly found themselves out of the league. Before finding those players, we should acknowledge just how difficult the transition to major-league can be, especially for a player like Buxton, who’s still just 22 years old.

Even if Buxton doesn’t get another plate appearance this season — a scenario which seems unlikely given the possibility of a September call-up — he’ll end his age-22 season having recorded 356 career plate appearances. In the last 50 years, only 334 position players have reached 350 PA by the end of their age-22 season — or, roughly 13% of all players over the last 50 years who’ve recorded at least 350 PA total. Of those 334, only around 40% have produced even average offensive numbers (100+ wRC+), and just one-third of those players have actually excelled at the plate (in this case, recorded a 120 or greater wRC+). Out of all position players to record at least 350 plate appearances in the majors, the population to produce a line above 120 wRC+ by age 22 is under 2%. Increasing the pool to all position players — regardless of plate-appearance thresholds — drops the percentage of players who excelled by age 22 to under 1%. Essentially, simply making the majors at Buxton’s age and earning the playing time Buxton did is a feat unto itself, and success at that age is rare.

That said, Buxton has been really bad up to this point. A .199/.248/.319 slash line with a 5% walk rate, 35% strikeout rate and a 49 wRC+ renders him at best a replacement-level player if we assume Buxton is great defensively. For a moment, let’s forget that Buxton was one of the top prospects in all of baseball. Let’s set aside the skill set and tools over which scouts have drooled. And the fantastic minor-league numbers. If all we know is that Buxton played in the majors at ages 21 and 22 and was generally terrible, who are the similar players and how did they end up faring?

To find similar players to Buxton, I looked at players between 1966 and 2011 who recorded between 200 and 500 plate appearances at age 21 through age 22 who (a) recorded at least 20 plate appearances in each season and (b) hadn’t recorded more than 500 plate appearances by the end of their age-22 season — i.e hadn’t logged significant time before age 21. Then, to find players similar to Buxton, I narrowed down the group only to those players who produced a wRC+ below 80 during that time. While Buxton’s mark is quite a bit lower, the idea here is to capture the players who were poor offensive players to start their careers. There are 45 players who meet all these criteria. Here are their average numbers along with Buxton’s:

Looks like we’re in the ballpark here. Keep in mind, the only thing we know here is the age, plate-appearance totals, and poor offensive lines of the members of this sample. How these players ended up doing is going to be based on expectations. Many of these players likely struggled because they weren’t great hitters and never would be. That said, there are quite a few successes. As Chris Mitchell does with his KATOH projections, I looked at proceeding numbers through age 28, essentially giving every player six more seasons. Here’s a general breakdown of how the players performed from age 23 through 28.

The bad news, of course, that half of these players essentially busted, providing little to no value in their time in the major leagues. However, one quarter provided at least marginal value while the top quarter provided good to very good production despite a very poor start. If we break the group above down by quartile for the top two and then lump the bottom half all together, here’s what we get:

That 5.6 overall average might seem a bit low for a former No. 1 prospect, but a little context might help. When Buxton was called up in 2015, KATOH projected Buxton for 13.3 WAR through his age-28 season, and that number made Buxton one of the very best prospects in baseball. After a disappointing 2015 season, KATOH projected Buxton for 5.7 WAR heading into this season, which still made him one of the best 50 prospects in baseball. While there are certainly differences between the methodology that produces KATOH and the one I’ve utilized here, they both produce fairly similar numbers. Given that the study above was done after Buxton’s struggles this year, it might even be a small sign of encouragement that hope is not lost for Buxton and this season shouldn’t change significantly your thoughts on his potential future.

For reference, I found a similar group of young players such as the one described above — except, in this case, instead of identifying players who’d performed badly on offense, I sought to identify players who’d recorded something between an 80 and 120 wRC+ at ages 21 and 22. There are 34 players in that group, and they had a better bust rate than the poor-hitting group, at just 32%, and nearly one quarter went on to produce at least 20 WAR between ages 23 and 28, with another 18% reaching at least 10 WAR. Their overall average was 10.1. So we can see the effect of getting off to a slow start versus holding your own.

As for the players who struggled like Buxton and recovered, here are their numbers from age-23 to age-28:

On the negative end, there are former top prospects like Andy Marte and Karim Garcia, but the above list also shows that many players in nearly identical situations to Buxton have succeeded in the past. It’s perhaps most comforting that the top player identified by this method was an athletic center fielder like Buxton. Willie Wilson put up a six-win season at age 23 after spending the previous two seasons striking out too much, walking too little and putting up a wRC+ of 63 — i.e. not too far off from Buxton’s numbers. Buxton’s major-league career has been a disappointment thus far, but he’s not alone in that regard and many similarly situated players provide optimism even without accounting for the tools, the scouting reports or the minor-league numbers.