Paul Goldschmidt’s Glowing Projections
http://tinyurl.com/7wb2d4b
If over a beer and a ball game, a buddy said, “Paul Goldschmidt will outhit
Jason Heyward in 2012〃, I would have assumed he had had one too many. With
the release of Bill James‘ 2012 projections, the SABR legend said just that
as the Diamondbacks first baseman is projected to produce a wOBA of .382.
Having scouted Goldschmidt in July, I came away believing he would take
advantage of lesser pitching, but struggle with top flight velocity. If
Goldschmidt hits to his wOBA projection, then I greatly undersold his overall
hitting ability and he’s on the cusp of becoming one of the top-25 hitters
in terms of wOBA in all of baseball based on final 2011 leaderboards.
This type of production would make Goldschmidt one-of-a-kind as no hitter
with a .382 wOBA or higher in baseball last year struck out as much as the
Diamondbacks first baseman (25.6%) is projected to in 2012. Back in
September, I wrote a piece on power projection using metrics and an obvious
conclusion to come from it was that more contact equals more opportunity for
power. Whether prospects or big leaguers, this holds true.
In fact, only Curtis Granderson (24.5%), Alex Avila (23.8%) and Matt Kemp
(23.1%) struck out at anything close to a comparable rate. Mike Morse (21.9%)
and Alex Gordon (20.1%) are the only other two who struck out at a 20% or
above clip to post such gaudy wOBA totals. This leaves 17 other players who
posted a .382 wOBA or above who struck out at a less than 20% rate or 77% of
the total number of players.
Additionally, Goldschmidt’s projected walk rate (13.8%) would have placed
him 10th amongst all big leaguer hitters with only Indians Carlos Santana
posting a comparable walk rate with close to the same number of plate
appearances entering his first full season. The remaining eight players on
that list each have at least 2400 plate appearances with legitimate
superstars Evan Longoria and Joey Votto bringing up the rear in terms of
career plate appearances.
In researching this piece, I stumbled across Carlos Pena‘s career walk and
strikeout rates which are almost identical to what Goldschmidt is expected to
post next season. With a walk rate of 13.9% and strikeout rate of 26.4%
respectively, Pena has posted a career .239/.352/.486 line at the big league
level across six organizations and nearly 5,000 plate appearances. At this
point, Pena has a legitimate shot at 300 career home runs (258 currently) and
1,000 runs batted in (730 currently) – Not bad for a player many believed
was essentially finished as a productive player in his mid-twenties.
However, Pena’s career wOBA (.359) includes only one season of production at
or above the .382 Goldschmidt is projected to produce – a .430 mark in his
career season where Pena challenged the 50 home run plateau. This means
Goldschmidt’s expected power production will need to be quite a bit better
than what Carlos Pena was able to produce at an equivalent age.
Fortunately for Goldschmidt, this question deserves an answer of at least a
maybe as Pena’s slugging percentage of .500 as a 23-year old in Texas came
from a miniscule 72 plate appearances. At 24, Pena’s slugging percentage of
.448 fell well below that initial mark.
It’s not as if Goldschmidt’s 177 plate appearances are that much better of
a sample size to draw conclusions from, but both his walk and strikeout rates
did improve considerably during September-October after his first month in
Arizona. However, his better ratios seem to have come at the cost of power
production leading to nearly an identical wOBA.
For me, the most fascinating part of a player projection is what exactly
needs to go right in order for a player to match that projection. In the case
of Goldschmidt, I’m struggling to find a way to fit the puzzle pieces
together and explain how his ascent to one of the game’s more dangerous
hitters is possible. However, even if he winds up more Carlos Pena than
consistent middle-of-the-order threat, I doubt Goldschmidt would complain
considering Pena’s career earnings stand at about 40 million and counting.
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 140.109.64.175
推
11/30 22:04, , 1F
11/30 22:04, 1F
討論串 (同標題文章)
以下文章回應了本文:
完整討論串 (本文為第 1 之 2 篇):
Diamondbacks 近期熱門文章
PTT體育區 即時熱門文章
72
121