Xander and Hanley: Wunderkinds at 22
Hanley Ramirez is a good case study for Xander Bogaerts. The early-career personalities differ – Hanley was aloof and Xander is humble – but their profiles have a lot in common. Each came up through the Red Sox system with “Wunderkind” stamped on his forehead and nascent hitting knowledge under his helmet.
A notable difference is their rookie results. Ramirez captured NL rookie-of-the-year honors after being dealt to the Marlins. Bogaerts struggled to find his stroke and, relative to expectations, bombed in Boston. Before drawing too many conclusions, consider that Hanley was 22 at the time, a full year older than his counterpart was last season.
Contextually, Bogaerts was better as a 21-year-old than Ramirez. The youngster’s 2014 numbers weren’t enthusiastic — .240/.297/.362 with 12 home runs – but they came against big-league competition. At the same age, Hanley hit .271/.335/.385 with six home runs in the Double-A Eastern League.
Back when he was a Portland Sea Dog, the 31-year-old slugger had a rudimentary approach. “I like to stay through the middle and hit the ball at the pitcher’s head,” Ramirez told me in 2004. “I like to see what they throw and then react to their pitches.”
A few weeks ago in Fort Myers, I asked him what has changed since our decade old conversation.
“I know what I’m doing now,” responded Ramirez, who is back with his original organization after stints in Miami and Los Angeles. “Before, I just went up to the plate and hit. I tried to have an idea of what the pitcher wanted to do against me, but mostly I just saw it and hit it.”
After initially exaggerating that it took him 10 years to figure things out, Ramirez told me he was “a couple of years” into his MLB career before he gained a true understanding of his craft. Ramirez discovered the video room and learned he “could look at the pitcher, and also at my swing to see what I was doing wrong. From there I could go in the cage and work on it.”
The shortstop-turned-outfielder melded the mental and mechanical, and progressed to where he could “make my hands comfortable so I can get to the pitch I think he’s going to throw me. My legs, too. There are a lot of little things, and it takes time to learn them.”
Which brings us to Bogaerts.
The native of Aruba remains a work-in-progress as he enters his second full year in a Red Sox uniform. Bogaerts looks at a lot of video, but it takes more than studious film study to round out a learning curve. Addressing the nuances of his swing, he told me “the evidence can be tough to see, so I just come to the park every day and keep working, trying to figure it out.”
Bogaerts admitted his swing was often out of sync last season – “It’s not what I wanted, but the result was that way” – and the same issue crept up this spring. Becoming pull-happy has been the bugaboo. Bogaerts is at his best when he’s staying back and driving the ball to the opposite field gap, but he has a tendency to get too rotational and add length to his swing. At times he seems jumpy.
“It’s pretty weird,” said Bogaerts after a Grapefruit League contest. “Today I was thinking, ‘Let’s hit the ball to right field,’ and I ended up being out in front and pulling four or five balls down the line. I told myself. ‘Let the ball travel deep; don’t worry about getting jammed,’ and I broke two bats.’ It’s about getting your timing down and sometimes I just can’t control my body. It doesn’t agree with my mind.”
Much like a young Hanley, Xander is more of a neophyte than a knowledgeable hitter. He wants to discern the pitcher’s attack plan, but when push comes to shove, he looks fastball and reacts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but until he locks into a comfort zone – until the jumpiness subsides and everything clicks – he’ll remain an unpolished gem (or, if you’re a skeptic, another over-hyped Red Sox prospect).
Projection systems aren’t particularly bullish on Bogaerts – Steamer has him at .260/.320/.416 – which is underachiever territory given his elite prospect status a year ago. But again, Ramirez didn’t heat up until he was 22, and Bogaerts – talented but still rough around the edges – is now 22. It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to think he will break out this summer. Time will tell.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
Keep ’em coming.
Speaking of the Fangraphs’ coverage of the Red Sox, I’m going to attempt to hijack the thread on the off-chance Mr. Laurila looks at the comments:
Care to explain your pick of Steven Wright for Rookie of the Year in the Fangraphs staff poll? I mean, beyond the fact that you’re a Sox fan and knuckleballers are cool.
Fandom plays no role — I didn’t pick the Red Sox to make the postseason last year, nor did I pick them to do so this year. But I do work out of the Boston market, which means I’m pretty tuned into the pulse of the team. With the caveat that knuckleballers are extremely unpredictable, Wright is showing signs he could be the next Wakefield. John Farrell is seemingly very high on him, and there is enough fragility in the rotation for Wright to get a real opportunity. My prediction could easily crash and burn, but every now and again I end up being right.
which of Wakefield’s seasons were rookie of the year calibre?
Thanks for the response. To be clear, my comment may have been a bit snarky, but I’m a fan of your work (going back to your interviews for SoxProspects).
Personally, I wish they’d have given Wright more of an opportunity at some point after they traded everyone last year. He was pitching great in AAA, they weren’t trying to win, and none of the other starters were earning their rotation spots. They’re never gonna have a more ideal opportunity to see if he can handle MLB hitters.
Damaso:
In 1992, he only pitched 13 games, but finished 3rd in RoY voting. In 1995 (his first full season), he placed 3rd in Cy Young voting.
Tim Wakefield finished with an ERA below 4.00 three times (100+ season innings) in his career. If Steve Wright is the second coming of Wakefield… I think I’ll take my chances as a hitter. No chance he wins ROY. Biases opinion to pick him. You may know the Sox system well because you work out of the Boston market, but that doesn’t mean other teams don’t have their own collection of B type prospects who don’t get the same hype as top prospects. ALA Jacob DeGrom.
who was the guy that picked Hanley for MVP?
“Hanley Ramirez is a good case study for Xander Bogaerts.”
Not sure anything in the article actually supports that first sentence.
Agreed, but it’s probably worth noting that Hanley was the most popular comp for Bogaerts when he was coming up through the minors.
if xander ever wins an mvp, i promise to leave this site forever.
How about you leave now and if he retires without having won an MVP you can come back.
If he wins a triple crown will you kill yourself?
man oh man you work hard at this schtick.
why do you like tormenting your fellow sox fans like this?
Assuming that there really is a fake everdiso (for some bizarre reason), why don’t you just create another username rather than deal with this crap in every article?
oh that guy is definitely not me. and yup it is strange. and in fact the majority of everdiso posts aren’t me. though its too bad that registration has eliminated all the funny everdiso trolls and left us with this boring one.
i’m just letting sox fans know that they’re letting themselves get riled up by one of their own is all.
you see a one-liner like this post above, or one with a silly mistake like talking about a swihart injury, or one using simple one year non-rate stats..that kinda stuff…and just know you’re being trolled.
He likes attention. He likes to pretend the ‘other’ posters (nope) with that name annoy people in a different way than he does. He likes to imagine other people are ‘riled up’ by him.
You might too if the alternative explanation was that everyone dislikes you because you say stupid things in stupid ways a stupid number of times.
i’m not trolling nor do i care one way or the other about attention. i always give detailed and fact-based analysis of the topic at hand and never cherry pick numbers like the fakes
i’ll say it again though: i’ll retire from commenting if xander ever wins and mvp or if blake swihart retires with more career war than jp arencibia.
Everyone knows there’s a fake everdiso. It’s been going on for a couple of years at this point.
I don’t know why people do it. There have been a couple fake mes, and I’m nowhere near as abrasive (and I can be an absolute dick).
People have too much time on their hands.
It’s true that Bogaerts is too rotational in his swing. But it hasn’t always been that way. Everyone knows he stayed back on the ball and looked phenomenal in the 2013 playoffs, driving the ball to all fields. I am sure he is trying to get back to that form but he is trying to fix everything but the positioning of his hands, and it is his hands that need to be adjusted. In 2013, if you go back and watch, you’ll see that his hands are vertically oriented and at mid level. There was a lot of looseness in his swing back then that enabled him to adjust to pitches and pitch locations. Now you’ll notice that his hands are locked in a horizontal orientation at a high level with the bat almost dipping across below the level of his shoulders. That positioning is restricting his hands and forcing his upper body to rotate more for compensation. That’s why he is hooking everything and it’s why he has been making such awfully weak contact despite his size and bat speed. Go watch some video. And David, would you mind mentioning this to Boogie next time you see him? Thanks
It’s pretty apparent from these videos
2013 and beginning of 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghMN73rEj1o
2014: http://m.mlb.com/video/v36347591/bospit-bogaerts-plates-brentz-with-a-groundout/?c_id=mlb
If only it was as simple as a handful of suggestions… I imagine the person making the comment as a highly motivated travel ball coach aspiring to break into the professional ranks or some guy selling his hitting expertise as a service at the local youth facility. Not to say that your analysis is wrong, it just always makes me chuckle when people think they have it all figured out. Actual hitting is improvisation.
Ah shut the hell up. You bring nothing to the table. I played baseball once and I study swings. Those are my credentials, and my angle is nothing but enjoyment of the game of baseball and all its details. No one on this site has “SUPER BASEBALL PLAYER” credentials, and time after time major league baseball coaches and players show that they themselves don’t know what the heck they’re talking doing. Go chuckle down a gulch.
Of course hitting is more than just a handful of suggestions. And of course, you can be successful in a million different ways. Bogaerts could figure out how to hit given his current mechanics or he could do some sort of tilt where he brings his hands back to that vertical orientation as he brings his hands back (he sort of did that before). I am not trying to say he just needs to tilt his hands to a vertical orientation as he’s standing there staring at the pitcher…and then wham! holy nesbit! he’s fixed. The point is that he changed the way he was doing things (and maybe it did have to do with the wrist injury, thanks for bringing that up flysox) and it broke down the swing to the point where things were out of synch. If you try to bring a bat head through the zone with horizontally oriented wrists it’s gonna take longer for the bat head to come around. Just try it. The angle of rotation has more degrees. And if it’s taking longer you may try to rotate your upper body to help bring the bat head through the zone faster.
It worth noting that he was battling a wrist injury last year which he said fundamentally changed his swing. Said he lost the ‘whip’ through the zone or something to that effect. Can’t find an article atm, but I know he spoke about it in interviews.
http://m.mlb.com/video/v36566003/tbbos-bogaerts-rips-a-basesloaded-single-to-left/?c_id=mlb
Here is an example of him being way too rotational. Gets good results, but the swing is terrible.
You’re kidding, right? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that swing.
And here is him at AAA in 2013:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA5ciAbQcnA
I realize that there’s more subtly to your argument, but my main issue with this article is that it seems to imply that Hanley Ramirez–at 31–is at the height of his powers. Let us not forget that Hanley peaked in 2007-09, his age 23-25 seasons, and hasn’t quite been the same player since. After a career nadir in 2011-12, he’s had a bit of a resurgence over the last couple years, but except for his unreal 86-game 2013, he still hasn’t been the same player (or hitter) that he was 6-8 years ago.
Maybe Xander will develop in a completely different way. Maybe he’ll take more of a Robin Yount-esque path, with a developmental phase in his early 20s and then a breakout season at 24 or so, like Yount.
Anyhow, it is good for us to remember that Xander has only one season under his belt, and he was 21-years old. He maybe getting some of the treatment that Bryce Harper has received, which is perhaps due to the presence of Mike Trout, who casts a long shadow. Most players, even very talented ones, don’t really break through to peak level until their mid-20s. All that the Red Sox really want to see from Xander, or at least all that they should expect, is continued improvement, even if it is incremental. He’s got plenty of time.
Can’t wait for the Jackie Bradley-Ken Griffey Jr. comparison piece coming up next.
Could you be more of a loser?
He’s got something of a point.
Bogaerts really doesn’t have that much experience at any upper levels. He breezed through AA and AAA. Those are good thing! He did so because he was so good! Heck, he even hit pretty well in MLB for a player his age. Also a good thing!
Hanley Ramirez has one of the greatest offensive bats a SS ever had, though. Even if we expand that to include 3B, he still has the same career wRC+ that David Wright has.
I’m not sure what the point of the article is other than to say that young hitters have a lot to learn.
What boggles my mind is 1) that Bogaerts’s super slump last year surprised people, and 2) that people continue to insist that Bogaerts’s season should be judged as a single lump.
We all know that players can lock in and lose their feel, have strong seasons (or half seasons, quarter seasons, etc) and weak ones. Naturally, younger players, especially very-young players, are more susceptible to this and can see greater extremes.
And yet all I ever see from people is Bogaerts’s entire 2014 line. Insanity.
Here is what we know so far. Bogaerts succeeded at most every level throughout his minor league career. When he was called up late in 2013 and into the 2013 playoffs, you could see why he was being ticketed for excellence: he had clear power potential, was quiet at the plate, and had a very advanced feel for the strike zone for a player his age. He wasn’t afraid to let the count develop and work a walk (or strikeout) while waiting for his pitch.
And then there’s the part that everyone misses: he kept it going, exactly as expected, for the first 56 games of 2014. His line says it all, .304/.395/.464 with a 162 game counting line of 47 2Bs, 15 HRs, 73 BBs, and 157 Ks. He was working the count, walking at a very good rate, had major doubles power that would eventually translate into around 30 HRs, and a high K rate that would likely quiet with experience.
Then, OVERNIGHT…he lost it. Not “pitchers figured him out” lost it, but “he doesn’t look like the same hitter” lost it. Not as quiet at the plate, rushed, and somehow no longer able to judge a breaking ball. In the 62 games starting at the end of that previous period until he took a 6 game break at the end of August, Bogaerts was an unreal .149/.195/.215, equivalent of 16 2Bs, 8 HRs, 32 BBs, and 168 Ks. Simply not the same hitter. Interestingly, he hit .311/.315/.485 over his remaining 26 games IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING that 6 game break, adding to the evidence that he had suffered (again, AS SHOULD BE EXPECTED) a crazy mental fluke. He wasn’t back to his usual self, as evidenced by a very low walk rate, but the reconstruction had begun.
The point is that the crowd continues to insist that “he struggled [ALL of] last year”, and that “he isn’t there yet”. That is misguided…what we instead have seen is that the “normal” Bogaerts, the one we have seen steadily develop for the near entirety of his professional career, is already an .800+ OPS MLB hitter. But we have also seen that Bogaerts can lose himself. In other words, he doesn’t need to get BETTER on a skills or everyday basis, but rather needs to learn to not LOSE HIMSELF again.
Mediocre players tend to be mediocre. Even in the usual ups-and-downs of a player’s season, there tends to be a limit as to how high a player flies and how far he falls. What we saw with Bogaerts couldn’t have been more stark. Heck, to hammer it home one more time…
Last 17 games before June 4: .406/.468/.696
First 17 games starting June 4: .121/.169/.182
Look at that! How do you lose yourself that much, that quickly? The answer would seem to be something along the lines of “be a 21 year old MLB player who really, really loses his feel at the plate”.
None of this guarantees that Bogaerts will regain his approach in 2014, or even ever. Perhaps something vanished and won’t come back. But we need to keep our eyes on the ball, on what the ACTUAL problem is. Bogaerts does not need to get better; he needs only to be his usual self.
An interesting and good point, but let me add something to the mix. One of the things that differentiates great players, or even merely very good ones, is consistency. Sure, even great players have their ups and downs, but generally their lows aren’t so low. So while I agree with you that Bogaerts has already displayed the player that he could be, in order to actually be that player he has to do it consistently – and until that point, he is not that player.
Or look at Kole Calhoun. Last year was interesting because for about a month he was Babe Ruth (can’t remember the exact date span, but you can look it up). But for the rest of the year he was Joe Average. In other words, for about one-quarter of his season he was amazing and for three-quarters he was just OK. Who is the “real” Calhoun? By your logic it would be Babe Ruth, but clearly that isn’t the case. Calhoun is the combination of his best and and his worst and everything in between – and so it is with Bogaerts.
the only issue there is that it seems like those hot and cold streaks are well explained simply by babip. and he has yet to put up any good numbers in any split without an unsustainable babip.
though last september was legitimately encouraging – he posted an .800ops with high but not crazy .338babip, and managed to find his power stroke (.177iso) while cutting down his K% in a huge way from high 20s to high teens. the only negatives there would be he stopped walking (though when you’re hot that’s understandable) and that september competition is a bit more questionable with all the callups.
if that September was genuine progress then he’ll be just fine. still just one month, though.
What boggles my mind is 1) that Bogaerts’s super slump last year surprised people, and 2) that people continue to insist that Bogaerts’s season should be judged as a single lump.
It boggles my mind that you can read Fangraphs and not understand this. If there is a reason to explain poor performance (usually injury), then it makes sense to parse the data a little more. Without external causes, chopping up a small sample size into a smaller sample size is nothing more than data mining.
Last 17 games before June 4: .406/.468/.696
First 17 games starting June 4: .121/.169/.182
Look at that! How do you lose yourself that much, that quickly? The answer would seem to be something along the lines of “be a 21 year old MLB player who really, really loses his feel at the plate”.
This is kind of exactly what I am talking about. His May BABIP was 0.421! His June BABIP was 0.149.
As of today, Xander Bogaerts is a guy that either needs to hit for more power or put more balls in play. That’s pretty much expected out of a guy that young. No need to look at 17 game sample sizes.
Chow – the Sox shud hire u bruh
Another fine piece from my fellow OG “Royal Rooter”. Keep ’em coming, Dave.
Kid’s a stud. He’ll be fine.
I’ll still take him over Mookie, and I love Mookie beyond all reason.
So bitchy and hateful