Who’s Your Pick for 2018?
Some of you might be sick of hearing about him by now, I don’t know, but I’m endlessly fascinated by the fact that Aaron Judge just put in a whole season as the best player in baseball. Now, sure, that’s just me looking at WAR, and, sure, it was only possible because Mike Trout got injured, but think about what Judge was before, and think about what he became. We like to tell ourselves that we can see the best players coming. Judge, in spring training, was a major question mark. In his initial cup of coffee, he batted .179 with almost three times as many strikeouts as hits. Judge was terrible, and then, almost without warning, he was the best. That’s incredible!
Judge is endlessly fascinating just in general. One of the other interesting things about him is the sense I get that people remain unconvinced. Like, we all saw what he did in 2017 — it was impossible not to — but the jury’s still out on what Judge really, truly *is*. The playoffs left a certain impression. Judge was a fine hitter, by the results, but he struck out a whole bunch. He almost felt exposed, and there’s some doubt here that remains.
So this is another post built around some polls. There are three polls in here, the last of which will ask who you’d rather have next season: Aaron Judge or Paul Goldschmidt? The question itself is pointless, artificial. No one will actually have to make that choice in real life, certainly not based on WAR. But I want to know what all of you think. Judge is here for obvious reasons. Goldschmidt is here because he’s been super consistent. Nobody out there is a Paul Goldschmidt skeptic. Give this post feedback! Give this post the feedback I so deeply crave.
Aaron Judge was just worth 8.2 WAR. For his brief career, he’s been worth 6.2 WAR per 600 plate appearances. He’s projected, by Steamer, at 3.9 WAR/600. Paul Goldschmidt was just worth 5.3 WAR. For his career, he’s been worth 4.7 WAR per 600 plate appearances. He’s projected, by Steamer, at 4.1 WAR/600. The three polls in here: project Judge’s 2018 WAR, project Goldschmidt’s 2018 WAR, and then select the player you think will finish better. I might as well include some brief summaries. Some information of significance.
Aaron Judge
Why would you expect more big things from Judge? I can turn that question around: why wouldn’t you expect more big things from Judge? He did, again, just lead the majors in WAR. Yeah, there’s the Trout-related asterisk, but a WAR over 8 is a WAR over 8. The most obvious single trait is the quality of Judge’s batted-ball contact. He dominated the exit-velocity leaderboards. Judge has exactly one potential equivalent: Giancarlo Stanton. Judge might even be better than that. He hit balls at speeds that made him something like the hitter version of Aroldis Chapman.
Beyond that, did you know that Judge has above-average sprint speed? Did you know that he made an above-average number of catches? Judge isn’t a one-trick pony. Despite being a giant person, he’s shockingly mobile and he plays pretty good defense. That would get him more attention if it weren’t for, you know, the dingers. The eye-popping highlight dingers.
The argument against Judge is based on one thing. I guess it’s based on two things. One is your ordinary, run-of-the-mill regression to the mean. Then you’ve got the matter of league adjustments, which has something to do with Judge’s tendency to swing and miss. First-half Judge was on a 9.2 WAR/600 pace. Second-half Judge was on a 5.2 WAR/600 pace. That’s a big drop-off! Although I should note that Judge had an outstanding September. Although he followed that with a strikeout slump in the playoffs. Playoff Judge struck out 27 times in 57 plate appearances. There was enough there to justify some worry. There’s some chance that playoff opponents found a way to expose the league’s best hitter.
I don’t know how much stock to put in that. There’s nothing particularly original about the idea of throwing a guy low-away breaking balls, with the occasional high, hard one. That’s a style of pitching that dates back dozens of years. Judge isn’t the first guy to get that treatment. The question is, basically: How well can Judge continue to keep his swings and misses under control? This is probably why he’s still kind of a mystery. But you have an opinion. I know that you have an opinion. Express it below!
Paul Goldschmidt
It’s not that Goldschmidt is boring. There’s nothing boring about Paul Goldschmidt. He’s just so clinical, methodical. I think of him kind of like the offensive version of Cliff Lee: his goal is to systematically dismantle his opponent to the point at which said opponent can’t be put back together. Goldschmidt loses sometimes; because he’s a hitter, he actually loses more than half of the time, technically speaking. But Goldschmidt is never defeated. Pitchers don’t ever get to stop worrying about him. They just sometimes get to tuck that worry into a corner for an inning or two. The thought of Goldschmidt still lingers.
It didn’t have to be Judge and Goldschmidt. It could’ve been Judge and Joey Votto. It could’ve been Judge and Anthony Rizzo or Judge and Jose Altuve. The idea is just to contrast against some great player who everyone agrees is steadily, consistently, undeniably great. Ideally, a great player with a similar-looking Steamer projection. One thing I do like about Goldschmidt is that, like with Judge, he has a secondary skill that goes mostly unnoticed because of the focus on the hitting. Judge is a great hitter who plays solid defense. Goldschmidt is a great hitter who’s solid on the bases. He’s at +20.2 baserunning runs for his career, and he just stole 18 bases, a season after stealing 32. Goldschmidt has more career steals than Austin Jackson, Jason Heyward, and Hunter Pence. He lags only 10 steals behind Lorenzo Cain. Goldschmidt is a statistical value machine.
If there’s any kind of particular risk here, it’s tied to the fact that Goldschmidt recently celebrated his 30th birthday. 30-year-old first basemen tend to get worse more often than they get better, and Goldschmidt’s body might gradually start breaking down. Yet there’s zero sign of injury-proneness. All this is is loose speculation. Goldschmidt feels like one of the safer bets around, which is what makes him a perfect choice for this article. Way to go, author.
*****
And so we have reached the end. Thank you again for your participation.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Goldschmidt’s probably a better offensive player as of next season, but the defensive adjustments are really rough on 1B. I suspect their WARs are going to be similar.
I’ve long had the opinion that positional adjustments on first basemen and DHs is to strong.
I tend to think the positional adjustments need to be valued in wins, and then converted to runs when applied.
It seems obvious to me that the run environment changes the positional adjustment. If the average game had a cricket like score in the hundreds of runs, then it would be absurd to claim that a DH is only indistinguishably different in value from a league average short stop, and actually defensively better than a slightly below average short stop, but that’s what would happen with positional adjustments in runs rather than wins.
It isn’t too much if you have a lot of amazing hitters who can’t play other positions. But for whatever reason some of our better hitters play shortstop and other “premium” defensive positions.
The positional adjustments may not adequately reflect our current offensive environment, where finding a mashing DH is really expensive.
I feel like this could be an article. I’m not sure of the answer.
I wholeheartedly agree. A good base runner in your DB cleanup spot who plays good defense and is consistent? And should I mention he’s done this for 6 years?
Jeff, I thought you didn’t do fantasy baseball questions?
I get that not many guys have 8 win seasons, but in general how many guys have their career year in their rookie seasons? It feels like that’s a low number. I think we haven’t seen the best of Judge yet, just based on what I think is a historic precedent that good players improve on their first seasons. Maybe not next year, but some year, I think we see a better version of Aaron Judge.
It happens – by WAR, Dick Allen’s best year was his rookie year. Kevin Seitzer. Tom Brunansky. Bernie Carbo. Alvin Davis. All of them notched at least 5 WAR in their rookie year and never came close to matching it again.
There are also a bunch of hitters whose 2nd best season was their rookie year: Fred Lynn, Mike Piazza, Tony Oliva, Carlton Fisk.
Dick Allen is the biggest “what if” story in my mind. He probably had a Hall of Fame-level career and yet it could have been so much more.
One of the most fascinating stories ever! If he’d prioritized baseball, he would have been incredible instead of merely very good.
It’s not that he didn’t prioritize baseball, it’s that he had major substance abuse problems, an injury that never really healed, and a workplace where people threw batteries at him and held protest parades against him. Kind of hard to focus in that kind of environment.
The longer he played, the larger the chip on his shoulder became, and the more divisive a presence in the clubhouse. Check the section on Bill James’ Politics of Glory HOF book, it was covered comprehensively.
Bill James is pretty wrong about this one. I got interested in this because Mike Schmidt very clearly disagreed with James’ assessment. So one day I started trying to find out what other teammates said about him. James’ claims don’t come out looking good.
Here are a couple of stories:
http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/news/baseball-hall-of-fame-dick-allen-phillies-white-sox/cxspg789tju21g1mm49z9wvnr
http://www.whitesoxinteractive.com/rwas/index.php?category=11&id=2065
He was at least a little more.
Oh man. I forgot about that. The dude had pipes.
Eric Hinske comes to mind
Mike Trout has never been better than his rookie season really
Among all active players with at least 600 PAs, Aaron Judge is currently 2nd in career wRC+, ahead of Votto, Cabrera, and Pujols, and behind only Trout. He is also currently #10 all-time in career wRC+, ahead of people like Stan Musial, Jimmie Foxx, Mark McGwire, and Willie Mays. But some people wanted him to be benched in the postseason.
Comparing him to a bunch of dudes who went thru their inevitable “decline phase” seems dumb.
Also, Judge’s rookie year came at age 25…
Votto – 23
Cabrera – 20
Pujols – 21
Musial – 21
Foxx – 19
McGwire – 23
Mays – 20
I don’t think myself or anyone else is arguing that Judge will maintain such a high wRC+ for his career. And most of the active players he is ahead of (Votto, Harper, Bryant, Altuve, etc.) have not yet reached their decline phase.
You do raise a valid point that most players debuted younger and went through initial struggles. It should be noted that Judge’s numbers are also pulled down somewhat by his brief struggles in 2016.
I don’t actually think Judge is close to the 2nd best active player or close to the 10th best player of all time. I just personally think it is a cool fact that his career wRC+ is so high. However, anyone who thinks that is dumb is certainly entitled to that opinion.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=200&type=8&season=2017&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=17,d
…if you lower the bar to 200 PA, Rhys Hoskins is right there with Judge!
And Matt Olson isn’t far behind!
don’t forget John Paciorek!
did you just compare a player with 600 PA to a players who produced 150+ wRC over a career spanning more than 20 years? WOW, I mean I know we haven’t seen these players play but come on don’t be disrespectful to legends.
I would rather simply say that he had the fifth-greatest rookie year since integration (behind Trout, Seager, Dick Allen, and Doc Gooden) and leave it there. No need to go out on a limb…
A limb? You’re being kind, it was a twig.
Actually it was tied for third best with Allen (behind Trout and Doc). You forgot to do “split season” 😉
This all depends on how you define “year” :-).
(is also actually sort of relevant, given that WAR is a counting stat)
I would not buy into the postseason slump narrative for Aaron Judge because of two reasons:
1. He was facing teams best pitchers in every at bat which will obviously not be the case in a regular season
2. As was mentioned on this site, the postseason strike zone was bigger than the regular season’s. For Judge, this was very apparent when balls at his ankles were being called for strikes. People see the huge strikeout numbers and think Judge does not have a solid grasp of the strikezone. This is false. Judge has a very good batting eye. However, do not underestimate the impact those low strikes had on Judge expanding his strike zone which is something he doesn’t usually do (he lead the league in full counts).
All in all, I think Judge would benefit greatly from a move to robo umpires.
I can’t totally agree on that. He had serious problems with sliders low and in from righties and low and away from lefties all postseason. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a good eye, and they were mostly very good pitchers, but that’s a big hole in his approach right now.
Judge’s peak happened because people didn’t know how to deal with him. I compare him to how people kept pitching Tyler Naquin down in the zone with offspeed and breaking balls, even though he was killing them, just because most rookies struggle against that type of approach. Then the league adjusted, started throwing him mostly high fastballs, and Naquin cratered. Judge had the reverse happen, but the principle is similar.
Judge is /much/ better than Naquin and was actually able to adjust, but in my opinion, his peak is just that: peak Judge. He’s probably never going to reach that again except in small samples.
That doesn’t mean he won’t be excellent. That power, contact quality, and the ability to adjust will carry him far. 5-6 WAR seems reasonable for a guy with his ability and solid defense. Heck, he’s probably got a few 7-win seasons in him. But his swing and miss tendencies and naturally gigantic strike zone will always weigh him down. I don’t think he’ll ever have another season like this one.
It is worth noting that Judge could do exactly what EonADS is predicting for ten seasons (5-6 WAR for 8 seasons, a 7 WAR season for 2) and he’ll wind up with 66 career fWAR, which is nothing to sneeze at. That’s Jim Thome territory.
uh you must not have paid much attention to his season. pitchers tried a bunch of different approaches and they all did not work, until he got hurt a bit.
I think it was Eric Longenhagen who said that there was likely always going to be some streakiness to his game, as his mechanics get out of whack/as pitchers adjust to him/as he adjusts back. I think this is still true, it is just that the hot streaks have been way hotter (and a little longer) than anyone could have expected.
Judge has shown the ability to adjust right back to whatever pitchers are throwing at him (read: his monstrous September), so I think given a full offseason to work on his approach, he can cut down on some of the holes in his swing without sacrificing much (if any) of that power.
Besides, even when he was slumping his plate discipline stayed relatively steady even if the K numbers were going up, up, up. If I had to choose I’d bet on Judge being near the top of the WAR leader boards for seasons to come.
Also of note, he was getting killed in the postseason with the expanded strike zone and still slugged .500 with a 114 wRC+.
How do you work on approach in the off-season?
outside of the playoffs and some of his likely injury related slump time, judge’s swing and miss rate isn’t that bad. it’s mainly his patience and tendency to take long and deep at-bats that’s driving his strikeout count.
his playoffs performance is actually encouraging in that he’s made some swing adjustments on low pitches. his regular, fairly flat line drive swing absolutely cannot hit low pitches, but if he adopts a more uppercut swing for pitches low in the zone, provided that he can identify those early enough to make the adjustment, then he could do a lot more damage vs these low pitches.
if he does make this adjustment for an extended period of time, then he’ll get even better.
I always hate polls like the one for Judge. I picked a category, but Judge is more likely to finish with more WAR than the the category I picked. Judge is also more likely to finish with less WAR than the category I picked.
It’s just a thought exercise, don’t get too bogged down into having to be exactly right…
Should have picked the bottom or top category. Can only be wrong in one direction that way!
Unless Judge gets his K% under control, it’s hard to envision him being a consistently elite player. There just haven’t been any hitters who strike out 30% of the time who are great. The counter to that of course is that there is no reason to think that he won’t bring his K% down a little bit.
I’m a little up in the air on which direction he’s going to go.
Depends on what you consider elite. To be great despite a 30% K rate requires both plate discipline and exceptional output on batted balls. Judge just posted an 18.4% walk rate and the sixth highest single-season rate of home-runs per ball-in-play of all time (McGwire 3 times, Bonds, Gallo). If anyone’s gonna do it you’d think Judge would be the guy.
“There just haven’t been any hitters who strike out 30% of the time who are great.”
While this is technically accurate…
For his career, Babe Ruth struck out at a rate 65.55% above league average.
For his career, Aaron Judge has struck out at a rate 66.16% above league average.
I think the moral of the story is that an absurd number of home runs, combined with hard hit balls leading to a high BABiP, can potentially more than make up for striking out 65% above average. Therefore the question isn’t whether he will bring down his K%, but whether he will keep hitting an absurd number of home runs.
TLDR: If Aaron Judge struck out 32% of the time next year, but outhomered the rest of the American League, he would probably join the discussion of the greatest baseball players of all time.
Maybe it’s just me, but seeing Judge struggle and then regain his MVP form in 2nd half makes his season feel more real. The league seemingly made an adjustment, and he eventually figured things out again. Had those two months of struggles not occurred, his hypothetical stat line would have nearly the same WAR, and a much better wRC+, but would have only 400-450 PAs for the season. I imagine the projections would like a season like that more, but rational or not, seeing his dip and rebound makes me more of a believer.
The exit-velocity leaderboard you linked has Stanton’s max distance in feet at 646! Obviously that can’t be correct, what happened there?
I am going to vote for Goldy based upon the assumption that no humidor is installed for baseballs in Arizona. However, if it is installed, this could greatly impact how I would project him.
Wouldn’t park factors take care of that adjustment in terms of WAR?
I honestly don’t know which stats are adjusted for park factors in WAR. Which are?
wRC+ is park adjusted so I just assumed that made its way into WAR.
The question is how quickly they update the park factors.
Color me a skeptic. With Goldy, you know what you’re going to get. Judge’s vanishing act in the middle of the season bothers me more than it seems to bother his defenders. Pitchers made adjustments, it took him quite awhile to make his own, and he exploded again. And that’s the sign of a great player. But adjustments never stop and the excuses made for his post-season performance are weak. We’re even being told that he was still good in the post-season because his RC+ was 114. Expanded post-season strike zone? Uh, that’s called exploiting a player’s weakness. Didn’t seem to bother a lot of the hitters in that home run fest of a World Series when the all-time dinger record had been set in only the first 5 games. Defend him if you must, but not with weak excuses like that. Not saying he’ll suck…but regression to the mean seems like the most likely outcome.
I’m sorry, what? This is the first time I’ve seen a tendency not to swing at balls out of the strike zone referred to as a weakness.
I was referring to his tendency to chase bad pitches. If I wasn’t clear, that’s my fault. To be clear….he struck out in the post-season 27 times in 48 at bats (56%). He’s expanding the strike zone, chasing bad pitches, not getting good pitches to hit. He only walked 9 times. Chasing pitches out of the strike zone is a weakness and it was being exploited.
“regression to the mean seems like the most likely outcome.”
Regression to the mean, by definition, is always the most likely outcome. It’s just a question of what is the mean towards which one will likely regress.
I’m going to betray my idiocy around understanding sequencing, but I’d think that given the same offensive performance in terms of WRC+, that the Goldshmidt version while generating the same value attributable to the player, has more value to the lineup and team than the more intermittent production (of equal individual value). How wrong am I?
Fun question for me, but I have no dog in the hunt. IF you could trick Yankees fans into believing that a Judge-for-Goldschmidt trade was in the works, though, and ask them to vote their opinion while that rumor was out there, my guess is the Yankees fans would vote Goldschmidt over Judge.
In my experience, that’s not how most fans think. When a trade of major league players happens, the fans remain more strongly connected to the player who was lost. That allegiance only shifts after a number of games have been played. So Yankee fans would not decide they like Goldy better simply because a trade seems imminent.
Judge put up fantastic numbers in the playoffs against the Twins and Astros. He struggled against the Indians, but I’m not sure if that’s a case of the league adjusting or if its a case of a hitter running into the best pitching staff of all time.
Except the Indians put up 4.40 ERA during the series with Yankees.
So Judge struggled against a great pitching staff that was also struggling against the good but not great Yankees hitters.
I think Judge gets the nod to higher WAR based solely on the power numbers. Goldschmidt’s great, but especially at that park, Judge should still put up some crazy numbers. Even allowing for regression. Add in the reduction to Goldy’s steals, and I have to give Judge the upside.
Gun to my head, I would assume Goldschmidt would have more WAR in any given year because he is a known quantity, Judge is so big he feels like more of a natural injury risk, and he only has had one year. That said, I voted for Judge because without my life on the line, I think he has more ceiling than Goldy. I voted both for 5-6 wins, and would be guessing it’d be like 5.2 for Goldy, 5.7 for Judge, just spitballing. Fun exercise.
Assuming the midpoint for each WAR range (and 9.5 for the 9+), the current percentages of votes result in:
Goldschmidt @ 5.7 WAR
Judge @ 5.55 WAR
The headline fooled me. I wanted to answer, “Astros repeat!”
Bold prediction #2: Judge will fall victim to the MLB the show curse. He’ll miss 40+ games.
Any expectation that his first half of Judge’s 2017 isn’t likely the best half of baseball he will play in his career is incredibly optimistic. If he doesn’t get those strikeouts under control he’s looking at a 6 WAR ceiling. Still a fantastic player, but the likelihood that his career peak is going to be his 5 WAR half-season is much higher than the likelihood that he ever produces another 8 WAR season.
Injuries or prevention of injuries I think is also a skill. One that Mike Trout lost when he broke his finger stealing a base. Imagine the final numbers on a healthy Mike Trout 2017 or Aaron judges home run total/defense without Yankee Stadium right field’
That being said if Aaron judge were to keep up the offensive and cut down the strikeouts dramatically it would be the first time and probably the best season ever
I also think you left out goldschmidt’s defense and judges running, although not Elite definitely not a detriment
Here’s to another season of trout (potential goat) goldy (underappreciated), an judge(just now entering prime)
gold wont run as much next year. manager for arizona doesnt like his players running