Quantifying Jacoby Ellsbury's Value

As a fan of the Boston Red Sox, it is clear to me that fans love Jacoby Ellsbury because he is a handsome man and because he is an exciting ballplayer. His scouting report coming out of Oregon State as a first round pick in 2005 suggested that he was essentially a 4-tool player with blazing speed, but very little in terms of power projection. He put the ball in play and was a gap-type hitter who projected to be similar to Johnny Damon, but with less power. It was projected he would be a plus defender, but I always found it odd that Baseball America considered Ellsbury a top 20 prospect considering his lack of impact power. It was not like he had Dexter Fowler's power potential, but they were ranked similarly for awhile.

Between Ellsbury's 2005 stint at SS Lowell and his 2007 stint at AA Portland, Ellsbury routinely walked almost as much as he struckout, and he never struckout in more than 12% of his PA. He was excellent at putting the ball on the ground, never averaging less than 56% of the balls he put in play on the ground, and he continually raised his Line Drive percentage as time went on, as well, as it morphed from 10 to 14 to 16% on his rise to AA. Of course, with the exception of a very brief stint of power at AA in 73 PA, Ellsbury never posted an IsoP over .126, so he was living up to what could be expected. 

After those 73 PA in 2007 at AA, Ellsbury was pushed to AAA, where his IsoP dropped below .100 and his slugging percentage sat at just .380. Still, he maintained his K% at 11% and continued to put the ball on the ground effectively. He posted just a .740 OPS at AAA as a 23-year-old, but it was on-base heavy and the Red Sox were desperate to energize the team with a struggling Coco Crisp playing center at the time. Ellsbury delivered at a better clip than his performance at AAA, raising his IsoP all the way up to .156 and and maintaining a steady K% around 11%. Of concern was a diminishing walk rate, as he walked just 6.3% of the time he appeared, but it is hard to nitpick with a near .900 OPS in his debut.

2008 saw a not surprising return to the player who had some problems at AAA, and who also had some problems competing for a job with Crisp. After struggling much of the season, he managed to hit .280, but he struckout an alarming 13.2% of the time, which is very high for a guy that lives on making contact and using his speed. It did not help his cause that his BABIP was an unusually low .312 for a player with his speed. His IsoP dropped to .118, but that was largely in line with his minor league numbers. Additionally, Ellsbury's RZR rating would rank him as the eighth best centerfielder in baseball last year, in terms of outs that he recorded on balls in his zone. 

To me, Ellsbury is a case of managing expectations. He is not, and never was, worth the label he got as a "top" prospect. What he can do is provide you with above average defense, steal 50 bases with a high percentage, and get on base. The two things that Ellsbury needs to work on are putting the ball in play more consistently so that he can take advantage of what should be an improved BABIP, and he needs to control the strikezone. I'd like to see his K% numbers under 11 this season, and his BB% numbers approaching that, as well. He is not generating enough power to do otherwise. Still, he stands the potential to be a very useful player if he can improve on his .280 average, which he should. 

As a current update, he's hitting .289 right now, but the BB% is a very weak 5.2%. On the bright side, his K% is just 8.2%, so he's definitely putting the ball in play. Unfortunately, his GB% is at a career low 51% and his IsoP is at a miserable .067, which is a suggestion of no power at all. He looks like he has a Placido Polanco-esque line right now, and he's capable of more than that.

Cody Johnson

The Braves, more than most, are big fans of going the prep route, and they've grabbed a number of interesting players that way, with Jeff Francoeur, Jordan Schafer and uber-prospect Jason Heyward coming to mind immediately. They should reap similar dividends with early prep picks on Brett DeVall and Ezekiel Spruill in the 2008 MILB Draft, with DeVall seeming earily similar to Brett Anderson of Oakland.

One name that often goes forgotten in that list of early prep picks is OF Cody Johnson, who was a first round pick in 2006, and was widely regarded as more of a supplemental or second-round talent because of his rawness. What got Johnson selected was his plus raw power, and that continues to keep him afloat on the prospect radar, and has me intrigued by his upside as time goes on.

Johnson opened up 2006 in the Gulf Coast League, walking a respectable 9.8% and fanning a catastrophic 38.9% of his plate appearances. He hit just .184 and posted an IsoP of just .097, but again, he was just 18 and it was just 127 PA. In 2007, he again was in rookie ball, but this time it was with Danville, and he showed marked improvement. In 270 PA, he cut his K rate down to a still very high 26.7%, and he also raised his average to .304, helped largely by putting more balls in play and getting fortunate (.370 BABIP) on those balls in play. He raised his IsoP all the way to .325, which is extremely impressive considering he raised his LD% only one percentage point. He was also starting to get old for Rookie Ball by the end of it, as he was 19, but it was clear there was reason for excitement based on the 1.004 OPS and the 17 HR in half of a season.

2008 was a very controversial year for Johnson, as prospects began to sour on him based on his inability to make contact as a 20 year-old in A Ball. Indeed, his K% ballooned to 34.7% and his BB rate dropped 2 percentage points to 7.6%. He hit 26 homers in 511 PA, but he struckout 177 times and he hit just .252 despite a .346 BABIP, largely because he was not putting enough balls in play to take advantage of his massive power. On the bright side, he did boost his LD% from 18% to 20%, and his IsoP was a still strong though less impressive .225. For all the credit that Mike Stanton was getting as a draft pick from the Marlins, it seems to me that Johnson was unfairly penalized for having a fairly similar line to Stanton's, though Stanton did hit for a far higher average. I ultimately do not think there 2008 campaigns were THAT different, though it is easy to argue that Stanton's across the board tools (speed and defense, namely) help to separate him from Johnson.

I think it's important to remember that Johnson was 19 for most of his experience in A Ball, and will be 20 for most of his experience in Hi-A, as he doesn't turn 21 until late August. He's opened up with 7 homers in 71 AB's, while also fanning a concerning 37% of the time. On an exciting note, though, Johnson's BB rate has come back to form, walking 12.3% of the time in this small 2009 sample size, and he has maintained his 20% LD%. He is still just hitting .254, but that power is carrying him right now.

Johnson is ultimately a fairly interesting case. Depending on who you talk to, some people think that his ability to make contact is never going to be good enough to utilize his massive power at higher levels. It seems fairly clear that his 2007 season in rookie ball can be chalked up to becoming very familiar with a level that he was starting to be older than, and with some pretty good luck in terms of BABIP.  At the same time, his power is very clearly for real, and he has started to demonstrate better patience at the plate. I don't know if the increased patience is causing him to take more called third strikes or not, but he is at least making an effort to better understand the strike zone. My suspicion is that he struggles with off-speed stuff, but at his age, I believe that Johnson has the time to understand what he is looking for and learn how to put more balls in play. He is young enough where he could repeat Hi-A and still be considered a prospect, and with a guy with his power, he'll get every chance to be successful. 

He's not on Jason Heyward or Mike Stanton's level, obviously (and I don't mean to claim Heyward and Stanton are similar players, I just mentioned them in this post), but Johnson is not a guy you should sleep on, and should be worth keeping an eye on as the season progresses. 

Jeff Francoeur

Jeff Francoeur is the poster-child for why you generally need plate-discipline to have long-term success in the big leagues. Unfortunately for him, he is also the poster-child for how quickly people can give up on someone with legitimate talent.

To start, Francoeur did not have a particularly large amount of developmental time in the minors before being rushed to the majors during the midst of a playoff run to help the Braves. He began his first full season (2003) in A Ball, and posted an impressive .769 OPS as a 19 year old. More impressive than the OPS is the fact that he struckout just 67 times in 567 PA, though he did walk just 34 times, as well. In 2004, the Braves bumped him to Hi-A, and he responded by posting an equally solid .788 OPS between Hi-A and AA, where he finished the season. Unfortunately, his peripherals worsened, fanning 82 times in 467 PA while walking just 22 times. He continued improving slightly, this time posting an .808 OPS in 367 PA in 2005, again at AA, before inexplicably being called up to the big leagues.

So, to recap, while Francoeur showed plenty of talent, the numbers of levels he mastered in the minor leagues matches the number of major league baseball games I've played in during my career. In fact, the early success Francoeur had in his big league debut in 2005 likely hurt his development more than it helped it, as he was not allowed to return to the minors to master AA or even AAA before becoming a full time outfielder. Even one more season in the minors could have helped his ability to identify pitches.

After posting an absurd 126 OPS+ as a 21-year-old in his debut, Francoeur posted just a .293 OBP in 2006, though he still slugged .449. There were reasons to expect the drop to the .293 OBP, from .334 in his debut. For one, he had a BABIP of .341, which while not generally high, is out of line with both his career numbers and for the numbers of someone who struckout in more than 20% of his plate appearances. He actually cut both his K's and his BB's in his first full season, and he was pretty unlucky, posting just a .286 BABIP. While he was not putting a ton of balls in play with a K% over 19%, he should have had a higher BABIP than that.

He impressively rebounded in 2007, posting a .788 OPS, largely as a result of walking 42 times, an improvement on the 23 walks he had in 2006. While he slugged just 19 home runs, a downgrade on the 29 he slugged in 2006, he raised his double total from 24 to 40 over that same span. He had the same rate, but was demonstrating quality defense, as he won a gold glove.

Everyone is familiar with his disastrous 2008, of course, as he posted a 72 OPS+ and walked three less times than he did in 2007. What is lost in the equation is that he struckout 18 fewer times and posted just a .277 BABIP. For how often Francoeur was putting the ball into play, an improved BABIP would mean a serious improvement of his line. In addition, he had similar GB% and LD% to his previous two full major league seasons.

Ultimately, Francoeur is a limited but intriguing player, and there are very strong indications that his 2009 line will be eerily similar to his 2007 performance, which makes him a useful player, at least in a platoon role, as his splits tend to favor facing LHP. His defense, at least currently, is at least average, and potentially above average. He has also cut his K's to start the season, fanning just 6 times to date over 72 PA, and he is hitting .327, despite just a .297 BABIP. Those numbers should actually be better than they currently are. Still, his OPS is barely above .700 v RHP, so he appears to be doing most of his damage against lefties.

Clayton Richard

Clayton Richard burst onto the scene as a prospect last season in an admittedly weak White Sox farm system, but is he for real? I’m going to attempt to prove that his success was at least partially real, and that his stint in the bigs in 2008 was better than it looked. In a weak farm system that has little behind Aaron Poreda, Gordon Beckham and Tyler Flowers, Richard has a chance to really shine if given the opportunity.

To start, baseball was not Clayton Richard’s main priority for quite awhile, as he signed on to be a quarterback at Michigan before being beaten out and trying out for baseball. He was eventually drafted by the White Sox for his potential, but he was pretty raw. In terms of repertoire, Richard offers a fastball and a reasonable, but unspectacular curveball, and he lives on a sinking fastball that induces a number of groundball outs. He is not going to miss a ton of bats with his offerings, so you can almost immediately eliminate him from front-of-the-rotation standing because of that, but it would be foolish to write him off entirely.

Richard was a middling prospect until 2008, as I mentioned, when he traveled across three levels culminating in a big-league trial with the White Sox. It’s important to look a bit deeper into his performance before 2008 however, as he may have been a bit better than some were giving him credit for. In his first two seasons with the White Sox (2005 and 2006), Richard never walked more than 7.1% of the batters he faced, and he maxed out at a still respectable 8.6% in 2007. Richard also never sported a groundball percentage worse than 57%, and never had a Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) of worse than 4.16. He also twice sported a BABIP of over .360 in that span, which is an unusually high number and suggests he was a victim of some potentially poor defense. Needless to say, while Richard’s reputation was as a middling prospect, there were some signs that he was better than he was regarded at the time.

In light of the fact that Richard was pretty raw when he started pitching because of his focus on other sports, it seems prudent to overlook his age relative to league. He was old for every level, but considering his experience, he was on the same curve as the others at those levels. He was likely punished by those who looked at his age and nothing else. Thus, despite his excellent numbers in 2008, they were largely written off because he opened the year at 24 in AA.

Let’s take a closer look at those AA numbers in 2008. He pitched 83.2 innings, allowing just 66 hits and walking just 16 batters, making for a WHIP of less than 1. He allowed just 2 homers, but sported a career low 52% groundball percentage and struck-out only 53 batters. Considering his FIP was 3.04 and his ERA was 2.47, and his BABIP was just .257, he was getting pretty lucky with regard to balls in play. Just 2% of the fly balls he allowed went for home runs, which was also an abnormally small number. Still, his strikeout and walk percentage were not that out of whack with his career numbers (4.9% BB/PA and 16% K/PA, both slightly better than previous years) and the improvement can likely be chalked up to having a better understanding of pitching with more experience.

After those 83 innings, Richard moved up to AAA and threw another 44.2 innings. He dropped his walk rate from 4.8% to 2.4%, and raised his strikeout rate from 16.2% to 19.8%. In this case, this represents a substantial in-season improvement against better competition, and thus, makes it less easy to chalk it up to improvement on Richard’s part. I think he was probably lucky here, and got hot over a relatively small sample size. His BABIP was abnormally low again, this time at just .230, and his FIP of 3.07 was again higher than his ERA of 2.45. Still, Richard kept 58% of the balls he allowed in play on the ground, and his HR/FB rate moved to a more reasonable 6%.

Based on the BABIP, FIP and rise in peripheral percentage, there is no doubt that Richard overachieved at both AA and AAA last year, but it was not because of being old for the competition or from pure luck. His normalized numbers would still put him at a fairly decent pitcher, and you can chalk up even some of the success to natural improvement and becoming more comfortable with pitching.

Regardless, Richard got the call to the bigs after those 44.2 innings in AAA, and saw 47.2 innings with Chicago. He posted a 6.04 ERA and allowed 60 hits in those 47.2 innings. Still, there are reasons to believe that he is better than that, and more than just a flash in the pan at AA and AAA. For one, Richard’s FIP was 4.13, which was almost two runs lower than his ERA. His percentages normalized, and he posted a 6% walk rate and a 13% strikeout rate, both in line with his standards for previous years. He also maintained a 53% groundball rate, and continued with the 6% rate on homers during fly balls.

So what do we have here? Well, let’s first reiterate that Richard is never going to miss enough bats to be a front of the rotation pitcher. Even when he was “lucky” in AA and AAA, he got by with avoiding walks and not by missing bats and overpowering hitters, so he is absolutely going to be someone that nibbles and pitches to contact. Even as he masters his craft further, Richard does not have the kind of stuff from the left side that will allow him to be a front of the rotation lefty, so you can dismiss any claims at John Danks right away.

On the other hand, Richard has a strong understanding of pitching to contact and knows how to keep the ball on the ground. He would be best served with an infield defense that has good range and can reach the bevy of grounders that he will produce, but he has strong potential to keep a team in games. He is going to get shelled if his control is off, because he does not miss bats, but he is not going to give up easy bases, either, because his walk percentage suggests he is around the plate regularly. Also of note is the fact that he is still learning how to pitch and should improve with more experience.

I think we can expect a performance similar to the one that Aaron Laffey gave Cleveland last season. Like Richard, Laffey keeps the ball on the ground effectively, doesn’t allow a lot of free passes and does not get a lot of outs by the strikeout. Laffey posted a 4.38 ERA and a 4.92 FIP in his 2008 debut, with almost 94 innings pitched. I expect Richard will do much of the same, given the opportunity. There is too much evidence in his past seasons to suggest that his 2008 campaign was a complete fluke (though it was probably at least partially one). Not everyone can be a number one starter, and Richard has the potential to provide 4-5 million dollars in positive value over the course of the season with those kinds of numbers.