Shandler's Fanalytics
Ron Shandler has been publishing his unique brand of statistical information for baseball analysts and fantasy leaguers since 1986. He is the author of the Baseball Forecaster, the publisher of Baseball HQ.com and the first to develop sabermetric applications for fantasy league play.
Sample Column
Wasted talent
August 30, 2007
What do Julio Lugo, Jerry Owens and Chris Young all have in common?
Not a lot, actually. Their ages range from 23 to 31. Two of the three are outfielders. Two of the three are rookies. Two of the three are right-handed. Two of the three have little power to speak of. Two of the three play for contenders.
All three are rosterable players, for the most part. That is, in part, thanks to their stolen base output. Those bags alone have driven their balance-of-season projected values, which range from $12 (Owens, due to lower playing time) to $20 (Young, due to his additional power).
But the stolen bases alone are not what make these players similar. They are also the only three players in Major League Baseball this year with at least 20 SBs and an on base average under .300.
In the Baseball Forecaster I refer to this phenomenon as having "wasted talent." Defined in the glossary as "a player with a high level skill that is negated by a deficiency in another skill," the trio above possesses all that great speed but can't get on base consistently. In the "Other Diamonds" section of the Forecaster's Toolbox, I define the "Doug Glanville List" as players with excellent speed and sub-.300 on base averages who get a lot of practice running down the line to first base, and then back to the dugout.
The fact that this trio has managed 70 SBs between them is a tribute to their respective "green lights." Young has attempted a stolen base in 28% of his available opportunities. For Lugo, his stolen base opportunity percent is 30%; Owens' SBO is a whopping 37%. The MLB average is under 10%. If this trio had a collective on base average of even .325 -- which is still not great -- and maintained their SBO, their current stolen base output might be as much as 93, a full 33% higher.
However, if they had a more sedate 15% SBO, that SB output of 70 would drop to 35. That's the real danger here. Those bags are tied so tightly to the green light that any change in managerial strategy could completely derail the value of these players. A higher OBA mitigates that downside.
Plate patience is not an innate skill like speed; it can be taught. That alone should tell us that there is hope for these players with "wasted talent." But how often does this really happen?
Over the past 10 years, the following Major League players had a season where they posted at least 20 SBs but with an on base average under .300:
PLAYER TM YEAR AB SB OBA SBO ================== === ==== === === === === Cameron,Mike CHW 1999 396 27 277 42% Encarnacion,Juan DET 1999 509 33 275 51% Everett,Adam HOU 2005 549 21 282 23% Glanville,Doug PHI 2001 634 28 283 24% Gonzalez,Alex S. TOR 1998 568 21 275 22% Goodwin,Tom LA 2001 286 22 288 42% Grissom,Marquis MIL 2000 595 20 290 20% Grudzielanek,Mark MON 1997 649 25 298 24% Guzman,Cristian MIN 2000 631 28 298 26% Hairston Jr.,Jerry BAL 2001 532 29 292 31% Hunter,Brian L. DET 1998 595 42 296 36% Hunter,Brian L. SEA 1999 539 44 281 37% Kennedy,Adam ANA 2000 598 22 299 22% Martin,Al PIT 1998 440 20 290 21% Reese,Pokey CIN 1997 397 25 284 27% Reese,Pokey CIN 2001 428 25 281 29% Williams,Gerald MIL 1997 566 23 277 27%
Only 15 players (and 17 instances) since 1997, and only one in the past five years, which makes this season's trio all that more interesting. More important is that there are very few players on this list who've had careers worth investing in. We might conclude that Mike Cameron successfully developed into a solid on base player. For Marquis Grissom, 2000 (and also 2001) was the point at which his otherwise fine career started heading south. Al Martin's 1998 campaign was a blip on the radar of a solid career. All the others constitute a wasteland of mediocrity, with SB success wholly driven by inflated SBO rates.
At the minor league level, the situation is equally stark. There have been plenty of low-OBA speedsters over the past 10 years, but few have seen much more than a cup of coffee in the bigs:
Avg No. with even YEAR Age No. 100 MLB At Bats No. with minimum one full MLB season ==== === === =============== ==================================== 1997 26 15 11 2 (Marlon Anderson, Miguel Cairo) 1998 26 3 2 0 1999 26 5 3 0 2000 24 13 1 1 (Cesar Izturis) 2001 25 16 4 3 (W.Bloomquist, A.Everett, C.Figgins) 2002 25 18 3 1 (Ryan Freel) 2003 25 8 3 1 (Omar Infante) 2004 25 5 2 0 2005 26 22 4 0 2006 27 6 0 0 TOTAL 25 111 33 (30%) 8 (7%)
The first interesting observation is the volatility in the number of 20-SB sub-.300 OBA players each year. There is no trend in how minor league teams are developing these skills, nor the average age of players who possess this particular skill set.
The names of the players who have managed even one full major league season show a wide range of fantasy value. Figgins was a first-rounder in most leagues in 2006, but he and Freel are the lone stars in this group. However, neither have been able to maintain their value. The other six players are all end-game roster filler.
The 33 players who've managed at least 100 major league ABs include lots of familiar names. The large 1997 class had failed fantasy commodities like Kim Bartee, Lou Frazier, Charles Gipson and Dante Powell. Other familiar failures include Reggie Taylor, Gene Kingsale, Elvis Pena and Kerry Robinson.
Of the 111 players, 17 appear more than once. Most of these are names that never came close to the majors, such as Dwaine Bacon, Pat Hallmark, Belvani Martinez and Demond Smith. A few that had a fleeting glimpse of the bigs include Justin Baughman, Trent Durrington and Tim Raines, Jr.
But there is one player who exemplifies this phenomenon more than any other...
ESIX SNEAD YEAR AB SB OBA SBO
================== ==== === === === ===
1999 249 35 281 73%
2001 520 64 307 64%
2003 472 61 287 84%
You will be hard pressed to find SBOs that high anywhere else (except maybe Herb Washington in 1974-75). It is in honor of this accomplishment that I will officially rename the Toolbox entry as the Esix Snead List.
All of this only goes to confirm what we already know: Stay away from these types of players.
