For the first four-plus months of the season, Chicago White Sock Brent Morel played pretty similarly to how one might have expected Brent Morel to play, striking out rarely and walking even more rarely while displaying what is referred euphemistically to as “gap” power.
Over the past month, however, he’s basically turned into a third base-playing Ian Kinsler, walking and striking out at about the same rate while hitting home runs at a pretty excellent pace, but with the low-ish BABIP that Kinsler routinely posts.
To wit:
Because you’re a nerd, you’re definitely prepared to inform the author about the sample size with which we’re dealing here and its relative small-ness. Please understand that your warnings are being considered, one-by-one, as carefully and lovingly as possible. And, indeed, it’s true: even James Loney can look good for 100 PAs at a time.
It’s worth noting, though, that it’s not just Morel’s slash line we’re looking at. The other numbers here become reliable with smaller samples — samples such that, even if we were to regress to the reliable sample size with Morel’s career numbers, we’d still be seeing what basically amounts to a different guy. Speaking anecdotally, that’s a less common thing.
There are zero hard conclusions to be drawn from this. But I, personally, will be watching Morel with more interest over the remainder of the season and into next.
You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.
In case you didn't read all that, here's the short version. Membership includes:
✓Ad-free browsing
✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
✓Historical & platoon projections
✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps
✓One-click data exports
✓Customizable player-page dashboards
✓Dark & Classic site modes
✓Weekly Members-only mailbag
✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review
✓Optional homepage photo removal
✓Gift articles to non-members
Thank to you Baseball Reference for their sweet game logs.
What about his groundball rates? If he made a change in his swing to get more lift, more balls in the air would probably result in a drop in BABIP and an increase in slugging. Not uncommon for young players to work on increased power in the majors after getting more comfortable there. Also looks like he might be more selective looking for a pitch to drive out of the park, resulting in more walks and a slight increase in Ks.
Smart point. His ground-ball rates have been lower — about 43-44% since the beginning of August, after sitting in the mid-50s before that.
So, I clicked on James Loney. And holy crap. He’s hitting .308/.365/.471/.836 over his last 397 plate appearances. I’d thought he still had like a .500 OPS on the season.
So, yeah, sample sizes. Even James Loney can look good for 400 plate appearances at a time. But he’s still terrible.
So, Yeah, Sample Sizes: The James Loney Story
Having watched him all season, he’s one of those guys who looks like he’s being hurt by an ‘opposite field’ approach. Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t look like he could be Kinsler if he started trying to pull the ball, but he does strike me as very similar to Brandon Inge, and a changed approach might raise the K’s and HR’s enough to make him the exact same player.
That’s not awesome news, but considering how little everyone has expected from him, I’d be totally alright with it.
The defense is plus, right? That’s what I’ve heard about him and the numbers mostly support it.
Defense is definitely a plus. He looked so tentative for most of the year – as if he was satisfied just slapping the ball in play and not striking out. He’s been more aggressive for the past month. He’s not afraid to take a close pitch if it’s not what he wants. He’s turning on mistakes. I didn’t realize he had as much power as he does. When he hits them out they’ve usually gone a long, long way. He looks like a much more confident hitter.
Yes, defense is plus. A few too many throwing errors this year, but good range (from the naked eye) and great hands.
I was wondering this exact thing as I’ve been watching him over the past month (why I’m still watching the Sox other than for personal torture I don’t know). He has undoubtedly seemed to be making more effort to drive the ball with authority instead of being the slap hitter he essentially was the first 4 months of the season. I’m curious to see if this is simply a guy cutting it loose once his team fell out of contention or if we will see a somewhat similar player moving forward. I personally don’t expect these type of numbers to continue but I’d love to be wrong. And yes, he has played very solid defense throughout the year, he sometimes gets lazy with his throwing mechanics and gets to the side of the ball too much causing some throws to sail.
Carson, I always thought gap power wasn’t a euphemism for banjo hitters, but someone who hit less than 20-25 homers and hit a ton of doubles/triples. Something like Reyes or Zobrist. Or maybe Lyle Overbay, back when he was decent.
That’s actually a good question. Project: find instances of players being described as possessing “gap power” and find average homers for said players.
Anecdotally, I’ve considered it to be a Placido Polanco sort — because, really, doubles and triples could be as much a product of speed as they could of hitting ability.
When I hear gap power I think of Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, and of course – the king of doubles hitting – Brian Roberts.
There’s also the ever-present archetype of the young player who hits a ton of doubles and is most definitely going to turn those doubles into 35 home runs someday when he hits his peak (I’m looking at you, Billy Butler).
Andrew: why are you looking at Billy Butler? Where are you even, that you can just see Billy Butler like that? Does Billy Butler know about this?
I’m looking at Carson. Andrew is sitting next to me, looking at me look at Carson. Capisce?
@Billy Butler: Reminded me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE.
Brent Morel did not display power earlier in the season, neither gap nor other known varieties
For the record, singular of Sox, Red or White, is Sox.
You could look it up.
The only thing more wrong than preferring “Sox” as a singular is asserting that there’s a definitive rule on this matter.
wikipedia thinks there is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural#Plurals_.28and_singulars.29_of_headless_nouns
I think what needs to be focused on here is that he walked FOUR times in 309 plate appearances. B-R says that a player has drawn only four walks or fewer in 300+ PAs only seven times since 1901. Obviously he’s gone and ruined that, now.
Can’t wait for your follow-up article on John Kruk.
Or even just a serious breakout from John Buck.
Or Mike Schmidt
We were thinking the same thing.
Beat me to the punch.
or the long-awaited revival of tony suck
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1012667&position=C
The big thing with Morel is that he’s actually walking. He had seven walks through the end of August, now has twelve in Sept. alone. That can’t possibly be a coincidence. I suppose one could explain the rest away with a combination of “small sample” and “diluted talent on expanded rosters,” but the bottom line is that he’s actually taking some pitches and getting in better counts.
He is definitely getting in better counts but I don’t know if that’s the cause of his power spike. IIRC, at least three of those 6 HR have been on first pitches. Maybe pitchers know he is hitting better and are not just saying “here it is, hit it.” Or maybe they are being careful with him because he has actually shown the ability to occasionally hurt them and he is taking those pitches.
Whatever, I just hope he continues it into next season.
I look forward — just as you do, Mike S — to Hawk Harrelson calling all of Morel’s future home runs.
HE GAWN
Why do you hate me so, Cistulli?
I’ve tried to love you and your writing but you seem determined to become my mortal enemy.
Sox fans who followed Morel through the minors should not be so surprised by his improvement. He consistently seemed slightly over matched initially as he climbed up through the minors. After a time at every level he made adjustments and proved to be at least a slightly above average offensive player. He should be a 2-3 WAR 3rd baseman for a few years in his prime if the Sox don’t dump him and attempt to upgrade.
His defense is on par with Crede although he tends to have an occassional throwing error. His upside at the plate is Joe Randa-esque. Sox is the proper singular and plural.
Hi Carson (or someone else):
Which of those numbers become reliable with smaller sample sizes, and how small of sample sizes are we talking about here?
Boom, answers:
http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/principles/sample-size/
There is also a date picking problem. You picked 8/20 as the break, and that further adds to the possibility of bias. If you were doing months, it would be less suspect.
True, but Carson isn’t claiming a lack of sample bias here. I think he’s purposely cherry-picking to make his point – i.e., if you want to show that Morel has had a hot stretch at the plate, your chosen window should exclude the time before the hot stretch started.
Brent Morel is a fun guy.