SBNation.com User Blog: RoyalTreatment

ZIPS 2012 and 2013: What to expect of the Royals?

RoyalTreatment — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 20:03:19 -0000

Pitchers and catchers reporting means I am really wanting baseball season to start, so I pulled up the 2012 ZIPS projections and compared them to actual performance and the coming year projection for the Royals we expect to be starting. This will help me set my expectations for the season, so that the Royals know exactly what they have to do to once again disappoint. One of these years…

Hitters

Sal Perez:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.274/.303/.393	.301/.328/.471	.286/.316/.422

Salvador outperformed any expectations last year, except for maybe his mother’s, but he did it without a full season of plate appearances. The new projection looks like they do not believe in his power, but that they are starting to believe in the average some. No matter what the projection looks like, Perez being healthy and in the line-up for the entire season will be a big plus over the sub-par production from catcher for the Royals in the first half of last season.

Eric Hosmer:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.304/.354/.474	.232/.304/.359	.273/.336/.435

One of the most disappointing players in baseball last year, Eric Hosmer was way, way, way below what was expected. ZIPS projections for 2013 are not optimistic that he turns back into the budding star that everyone expected either. He will almost certainly be better than last year, but expectations are starting to look like mediocrity rather than stardom. The most frightening thing to me is that his worst month last year was September. Yeah, you read that right, even after that atrocious start to the season he still had a worse finish. Consider me worried. Beautiful swings only work if they actually hit the baseball. I expect him to be better, and therefore a plus from last season to 2013, but being a Royals fan has ruined my bounce back hope. Alex Gordon and Zack Greinke eventually righted the ship, and maybe Hosmer can too.

Chris Getz:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.266/.323/.320	.275/.312/.360	.259/.310/.316

Johnny Gio:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.271/.320/.384	.238/.270/.304	.266/.316/.368

It is almost a certainty the Getzy will get the 2B position because the Royals LOVE him. I’m not sure how, since last year was a "good" year for him in which he hit for a mediocre average, bad OBP, and terrible power along with a propensity for being hurt. There is no upside to Getz, and he should not get the job based on his average glove work. Gio at least has some upside due to his significant power advantage, and it would be nice for him to actually get to be the starter for a significant amount of time. Last year he got under 200 Pas and only in September did he really get the shot at playing every day. Either way 2B is probably not going to be a position of strength, but it wasn’t last year either, so I will think of it as a wash going into the season with some upside if Johnny’s bat shows up.

Alcides Escobar:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.270/.309/.366	.293/.331/.390	.271/.312/.366

Escobar had quite a year last year, and the ZIPS projections expect it was all fluke evidently (along with every other projection system I’ve seen). I’m not entirely sure why no one believes that at least part of last year was sustainable. Alcides age and pedigree suggest that he doesn’t need to turn back into a pumpkin. I tend to think the average is likely to be a little lower, but his OBP could still be in the .320 range and his power will always be lacking. My expectation is a slight regression with hope that he will have a similar performance and create that as his base-line.

Mike Moustakas:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.274/.316/.436	.242/.296/.412	.264/.310/.430

Moose had a much worse season than most realize. His first half was solid, so his overall numbers didn’t look as bad as Hosmer’s most of the year, but he was really bad in the second half of the season. ZIPS feels that he will be better this year, but worse than their projection a year ago. Basically, if he and Hosmer don’t turn things around this season is going to be tough. My biggest concern is that his bat won’t bounce back and his defense will go back to our original expectation after being a very good defender last year. Moose calls may have a significant amount to do with Royal success in 2013.

Alex Gordon:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.278/.358/.464	.294/.368/.455	.269/.352/.434

Lorenzo Cain:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.259/.314/.370	.266/.316/.419	.259/.311/.383

Jeff Francoeur:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.273/.314/.437	.235/.287/.378	.261/.305/.413

Outfield is quite the mixed bag. At this point I believe Gordon is what he has been the last two years, and am assuming a similar season is coming. Why ZIPS hates Gordon is beyond me, and I will just ignore them. Cain showed a lot last year by flashing significantly more power than expected. His projections say part of that is real, and a line from center of his 2013 ZIPS would be a nice improvement over what the Royals got out of CF last year with Cain hurt for so much of the year. Then there’s Frenchy. There is almost no way Francoeur can be as bad as he was last year, or at least there is no way he can be that bad and stay in the everyday line-up, or at least I hope the Royals will pull the plug if he is that terrible. If he can just be a replacement level player, and Cain can meet that projection, then the Royals win 3 to 5 more games.

Billy Butler:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.295/.362/.462	.313/.373/.510	.295/.362/.476

Projections by nature are somewhat conservative, but this one along with Gordon’s ridiculous projection for 2013 make me question what these things are factoring in. Shouldn’t near term results (like last year) be weighted more? Shouldn’t this be more true for people in their prime production years? Anyway, Country Breakfast can really, really hit. Expecting him to repeat last year is probably a bit much, but it also wouldn’t surprise me. He will hit for a high average and get on base, so the only question is if he can repeat the power production. Now that I said it that way, I expect he will be very similar to last year. Seriously, he will turn 27 in April, and doubles turning into home runs for someone with his past is not surprising. When he hits 29 or 30 I am going to get nervous due to his build, but for the next couple of years I expect him to mash.

That’s all of the probably hitters. Butler, Gordon, and whoever plays second base I expect to produce at a similar level. The negative position is likely going to be a slight regression from Escobar. That means I expect better production from 5 positions. Hosmer, Francoeur/other RF, and Moustakas because it would be hard for them not to be better, and Cain and Sal Perez playing more should be helpful as well. Overall the offense will hopefully take a step in the right direction in 2013 (though a smaller step than it would have been with Myer in right). Last year they scored 676 runs and I would expect to make it to around 700 or slightly better in 2013, which puts them directly in the middle of majors.

Starting Pitching

I am going to forego posting ZIPS projections for the pitchers since they HATE the Royals’ starters. Their projection in summary is that Shields will pitch a lot, but way less effectively. Jeremy Guthrie and Wade Davis will be 5th starters and everyone else should not be starting in the major leagues. My starting five would be Shields, Santana, Guthrie, Mendoza, and Chen going into spring training. My expectation is that Mendoza is not going to get a shot despite earning it last year, and Davis takes his place. I also expect Hochevar to end up as the fifth with Chen getting the short end of the stick. Hochevar should be cut (actually shouldn’t have been signed) before the season starts, but he won’t be due to…Well, I actually have no idea why the Royals are doing the Davies bonus season again. Regardless, this starting rotation is much better than last year’s opening day rotation. Ervin Santana is a huge risk/reward player, like Sanchez last year, but without the ridiculous control problems that Sanchez has had his whole career. Ervin has never walked more than 3.5 per 9 in the majors, and Sanchez has never been under 4 per 9. Davis should be given every opportunity in the spring to get into the rotation, and I hope he makes it in place of Chen for my preferred starting five. That would, in my opinion, give the Royals a slightly below average starting rotation, which is way better than the slightly below atrocious starting five I am used to. Also, Duffy and Paulino could be helpful in the second half, and Will Smith looked like a capable fill in for injuries and such. No starts should go to the likes of the aforementioned Jonathan Sanchez, Vin Mazzaro, Nate Adcock, or Ryan Verdugo who combined for 26 starts a year ago. Couple that with a bullpen that should still be stout with Crow, Herrara, Collins, and Holland giving them four very deadly weapons at the back end, and I would not be surprised to see the Royals to go from 746 runs given up a year ago to something more like 700, which brings us to the problem.

This team looks like a team that will give up runs at similar pace to what it will score. That means I look at them as 500ish team, and maybe just a touch better than that due to the division being particularly weak. For the Royals to approach 90 wins and hope for a playoff birth a few things need to happen. Hosmer and Moustakas arriving, Hosmer like we expected last year and Moose approaching 30 HRs, could add another 5 wins or so. If you add those to the expected gains talked about in the hitters before, and the improved rotation, now we could project 85 wins which is starting to get into the contention ballpark. If they don’t quite arrive something else needs to give, and my best guess is that the starting rotation is better than average. That could happen in a couple of different ways. Ervin Santana being what he was in the second half of last year would be one, and ditto for Guthrie. Otherwise it would need to be a couple of Mendoza/Davis/Hochevar taking a step forward, and possibly a strong return from either or both of Paulino Duffy. What’s nice about these scenarios, as opposed to other years, is that we don’t need all of them to happen. A couple players having nice years, and not even out of the expected realm of possibilities, could push this team into contention. Maybe then we could even add a real right fielder before the trading deadline and really be talking about a solid team.

Anyway, this team has potential, but the current construction is pretty average. Hopefully the horrific beginning to last season can be avoided, and this team can put together a bit of a run. Either way I am ready for baseball.

Hitters

Sal Perez:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.274/.303/.393	.301/.328/.471	.286/.316/.422

Eric Hosmer:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.304/.354/.474	.232/.304/.359	.273/.336/.435

Chris Getz:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.266/.323/.320	.275/.312/.360	.259/.310/.316

Johnny Gio:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.271/.320/.384	.238/.270/.304	.266/.316/.368

Alcides Escobar:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.270/.309/.366	.293/.331/.390	.271/.312/.366

Mike Moustakas:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.274/.316/.436	.242/.296/.412	.264/.310/.430

Alex Gordon:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.278/.358/.464	.294/.368/.455	.269/.352/.434

Lorenzo Cain:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.259/.314/.370	.266/.316/.419	.259/.311/.383

Jeff Francoeur:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.273/.314/.437	.235/.287/.378	.261/.305/.413

Billy Butler:

2012 ZIPS	2012 Actual	2013 ZIPS
.295/.362/.462	.313/.373/.510	.295/.362/.476

Starting Pitching

Billy Butler's Home Runs Part 2: Other Sluggers

RoyalTreatment — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:28:18 -0000

To follow up on the idea of Billy Butler hitting home runs in bunches, I will look at all 29+ home run hitters in 2012. Yes, I cherry picked to get Billy in there, but I already had the data and 29 is no more arbitrary than 30. The link below goes to the first post.

http://www.royalsreview.com/2012/10/11/3485114/billy-butlers-home-runs

So, Billy seemed to cluster his home runs, meaning he hit a lot of home runs in the first few games after hitting one. This does not seem to be unusual in any way after looking at the other players' data.

As you can see, the graph shows that all of the 29+ home run hitters combined show the same tendency for heavy positive skewness. This graph includes all gaps between home runs for the top 28 home run hitters in 2012. There are 930 gaps total with an average of 4.2 games between home runs. About a third (66.8%) of the gaps are less than the average, and 57.7% of the home runs are hit in the same game or in the next three games after a home run is hit. Only one players, Alfonso Soriano, managed to have more than 50% of his homerun gaps above his average home run gap. He only managed that feat by having no home runs in his first 31 games, and the only gaps included were the number of games between home runs one and two, two and three, etc. That means long gaps before the first home run and after the last home run of the year were not included.

This rather cursory look at home run clustering shows that the probability of hitting the next home run on a cumulative basis looks something like this.

This is just another way to show that the majority of the density disappears rather quickly. There are several things that could contribute to what these graphs show. One is that series played in home run friendly parks cause players to get more home runs in those series, and therefore they are clustered. Another is the same idea, only that it is predicated on pitcher quality and handedness. I would like to use this data and regress it on those factors, which for the parks would not be terribly hard to do. The pitchers would be difficult as far as gathering the data is concerned, so if anyone knows how I can get this sort of match-up data easily I would appreciate it.

http://www.royalsreview.com/2012/10/11/3485114/billy-butlers-home-runs

This rather cursory look at home run clustering shows that the probability of hitting the next home run on a cumulative basis looks something like this.

Billy Butler's Home Runs

RoyalTreatment — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:08:44 -0000

More than once this year I have heard references to Billy Butler hitting home runs in "bunches". This tested my patience, but now that the season is over I thought I might look at the data and see if this assertion bears out. The following graph shows how Billy's home runs were distributed based on number of games between each homerun (y-axis is count of the times each gap defined by number of games appeared).

This chart seems to back up the bunching of home runs. As we would expect the average gap between home runs was 5.46, he hit 29 in 161 games played which would lead to a HR rate of once every 5.55 games. If the homeruns were normally distributed the expected histogram would have higher frequencies around the average of between 5 and 6, but we see a lot of 1, 2, 3, and 4 game gaps along with some very large gaps in the right-hand tail. This is a fairly small sample, so I did this again for 2011 with the following results.

He hit fewer home runs in 2011, so the average gap was higher, but the chart looks somewhat similar, and combining the two only serves to highlight it.

Over the last two season a Billy Butler homer will be followed by another homerun in the next four games almost 61% of the time. Otherwise a drought of 9 or more games shows up a little over 30% of the time. The composite average gap for the two years is 6.5 games between home runs, so a normal distribution would expect the preponderance of observations in the five to eight games between home runs area, and we see the exact opposite. Maybe Billy really is a streaky home run hitter. Once again there is a pretty small sample here though. My next step will be to look at all the batters who hit 30 or more home runs in 2012 and see if they all tend toward this, or if Billy might just be coming into his power and can be expected to be more consistent like the other sluggers in the future.

He hit fewer home runs in 2011, so the average gap was higher, but the chart looks somewhat similar, and combining the two only serves to highlight it.

Royals Don't Like Southpaws

RoyalTreatment — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:41:19 -0000

The Royals have seemed to struggle more offensively against lefties this year, so I wanted to see it that was really the case.

Including all games before the All-Star break there have been 87,188 plate appearances in the majors. Using those I went to look at the ones that were attributed to left or right hand pitchers, and then by team to see how the teams perform against specific handedness.

Overall in baseball this season batters are hitting .256/.324/.407 versus right handed pitchers and .250/.317/.403 against lefties. It seems that players have hit slightly worse versus left handed pitchers, but the difference is negligible. The sample sizes are significantly different with 70.3% of all PAs being against right handed pitchers. The next step is to look at the teams and see which ones are best/worst against left handed pitching.

When looking at team performance, 18 teams have a worse average against lefties, 21 have a worse OBP, 14 a worse SLG, and 18 have a worse OPS. As you can see the only thing more than half of the teams have done better against lefties is hit for power. There is some consistency as to who falls into these groups with 10 teams doing worse in all four statistical categories against southpaws. So, what teams hit better/worse against lefties?

To make these lists I just took the team OPS against left minus team OPS against right.

5 biggest differentials

Better against Left

	OPS differential
Twins	+.094
Diamondbacks	+.082
Orioles	+.076
Reds	+.069
Pirates	+.052

Better against Right

	OPS differential
Indians	-.096
Astros	-.089
Cubs	-.060
Mets	-.055
Royals	-.052

Only one of these offenses is in the top ten in baseball in runs scored (Mets at 8th), and seven of the ten are not in the top half of baseball. Without looking at prior years it would be hard to tell if being consistent as an offense versus both types of handedness in pitchers is an advantage, but it seems to have been the case so far this year.

The Royals line against lefties is .250/.309/.370, which means there average is exactly what the league has done against lefties, but they do worse by 8 points in OBP and 33 points in slugging. Power has seemed to be an issue for the Royals this year, but against right handed batters they are actually slugging .416, or 9 points better than the league average against right handed pitchers. Billy Butler crushes lefties (.361/.459/.627), but the other right handed batters are not offensive forces. Jeff Francoeur for his career has hit lefties very well, but he hasn't hit anything left or right this year. Alcides Escobar has hit righties better than lefties so far, and Yuni is not a good major league hitter at all as I think most people outside of Rex Hudler and Dayton Moore are already aware. Maybe Salvador Perez will help this lack of production against lefties in the second half. He has torched lefties so far (.500/.500/1.167), but that is only 12 ABs, so it doesn't move the needle much to this point.

Long Plate Appearances

RoyalTreatment — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 17:37:49 -0000

A couple of times on the Royals broadcast this year I have heard something to the effect that Jeff Francoeur does better on long plate appearances because he gets to see the ball. I'm not sure that this logically makes sense. Long plate appearances mean hitting with 2 strikes, and that is generally not good for the batter, and so I went to baseballreference.com.

# pitches 2012 MLB OPS Jeff Francoeur Career OPS

1 .853 .913

2 .838 .869

3 .682 .689

4 .632 .656

5 .650 .665

6 .677 .569

7 .733 .699

8 .793 .738

9 .781 .602

10+ .843 .543

A similar pattern for both exists. High performance in the appearances with 1 or 2 pitches thrown. Significant decrease to 3 pitches, and then it starts increasing, but Francoeur's doesn't increase toward the end as quickly and starts going back down after 8 pitches. Part of that could be the very few times he has been up and seen more than 7 pitches. Francoeur is not patient, which is why the original assertion bothered me. If he did better from seeing more pitches, then he would probably work hard to see more pitches. Instead, Francoeur may maximize through impatience. He has significantly more appearances with 1 or 2 pitches than average, which is where he performs best.

Alcides Escobar's Bat

RoyalTreatment — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:11:53 -0000

.300/.340/.413

That is Alcides Escobar's line through 161 plate appearances. According to this we now have an adequate sample to start discussing swing rate, contact rate, strikeout rate, line drive rate, and pitches per plate appearances. Can those things tell us if Escobar's improved production is here to stay?

.300/.340/.413

Last year Escobar went .254/.290/.343, and most projections had him taking a modest step forward in 2012. Right now he is ahead of last years line by 50 points of on-base and 70 points of slugging, and compared to forecasts for this year he is ahead by 30 or more points of both as well. That is a significant improvement taking him from an OPS+ last year of 74 (quite a bit below average) to 108 (slightly above average as a hitter) so far this year. If Alcides becomes a consistently average or better hitter while playing some of the best defense at a premium position in the majors, then he becomes an extremely valuable player. For that reason, I am looking at the stats that have stabilized to see if we can learn about what he is doing better, or if it is just a mirage. (everything comes fom fangraphs.com)

From looking at swing and contact rates, I would say that Escobar's swing rates look similar to the past two seasons, but his contact rate is actually lower, which would tend to be a bad thing. If you move onto his other rates true improvements starts to look like a possibility. Line drive rate for 2012 is 22.8%, and that is almost 5% higher than last year. To go along with that is ground ball rate is also up, which leads to his fly ball rate of 20.3%. That is a HUGE improvement over past seasons. Last year it was 28.7% and his first sub-30% rate. Fly balls, especially for players who don't hit home runs, turn into outs at much higher rates than ground balls or line drives.

Looking at this makes me feel pretty confident that Escobar has become a better hitter, and at his age that is to be expected. What is better than that is that his growth is faster than what most have expected. His defense is unquestionably good at a tough spot on the field, and now there are signs that is bat can be a positive rather than something you live with due to the defensive value. That contract extension he signed in the off season could become a huge boon to the Royals in the coming years if this progression continues.

What does 3 wins in the first 12 mean?

RoyalTreatment — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:04:10 -0000

Looking at the last couple of years I looked for teams 4 and 8 or worse through 12 games to see what the outcomes were at the end of the season. Way too many people think the Royals are terrible this year based on a couple of weeks worth of play. Hopefully this will help some of them simmer down.

2011

First 12

Final Record

Boston

2-10

90-72

Tampa Bay

4-8

91-71

Minnesota

4-8

63-99

Seattle

4-8

67-95

Houston

3-9

56-106

Average Finish

73 -89

2010

First 12

Final Record

Baltimore

1-11

66-96

Chicago AL

4-8

88-74

Boston

4-8

89-73

New York NL

4-8

79-83

Houston

3-9

76-86

Average Finish

80-82

So the last two years there were 5 teams each year that started very poorly to this point in the season, and the average wins in those years for those teams were 73 and 80 respectively. If you think the Royals are heading for 100 losses this year you are probably wrong, and 90 is still probably more than likely going to be avoided. More importantly look at who from these groups bounced back and who went on to have a really bad year. Do you think the Royals are more like the Houston team from last year that had almost no talent to speak of, or the Mariners who had one of the weakest offenses in recent memory, or are they more like the 2010 White Sox and Mets? Basically I feel that the Royals are still a 500ish team so my expectation is that they will still win between 77 and 84 games. Also, lets look at who is currently with the Royals this year. Boston (for a third year in a row), the Angels, Minnesota, Chicago, and San Diego. If you were betting on which teams rebounded and who continued to lose who would it be? Go look at Chicago and San Diego's lineups and it will make you feel better, I promise.

We are 7.4% into the season folks. Eric Hosmer and Alex Gordon are not going to hit under .200 this season. Bruce Chen and Danny Duffy are looking good. Felipe Paulino will be back soon so that Mendoza can be demoted out of the rotation. Plenty of things could still go wrong, but there is no reason to think this team can't get back to where we thought they would be this year based one bad week.

Danny Duffy start 1 to start 2

RoyalTreatment — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 12:54:28 -0000

The first start of the year for Duffy was really nice, but playing Oakland's lackluster lineup in their pitcher friendly ballpark seemed like it might have something to do with his success. Last night Duffy got a true test in the Detroit Tigers who have one of the top offenses in baseball this year, maybe even the best.

Well, I was hoping to post some PITCHf/x charts from fangraphs.com, but the SBNation interface isn't cooperating, so instead I will describe what I need to. I don't know how anyone could have seen Duffy's performance against the Tigers and been disappointed. He almost made it through the 7th inning, and only gave up three runs, had a strikeout an inning, and only one walk. The two home runs were the only problem, which you could argue cost the Royals the game, but I would give Verlander the credit there. Anyway, beyond the typical stats there is one very encouraging sign to take away from Duffy's performance last night and that is his fastball velocity. Against Oakland Danny was 90 to 96 with his fastball, but against Detroit he was mostly sitting 95 to 99 according to the fangraph charts. This will help in two ways if Duffy can continue to run the fastball into the upper 90s. The first is the obvious assertion that hitting a 98mph fastball is harder than hitting a 93mph fastball if they have the same break, and it looks like is vertical movement was even a touch better on his fastball at the higher speeds last night. The second reason this will help is speed differential. Duffy's secondary pitches tend to go in two tiers of velocity with one being in the mid 80s and the other in the upper 70s. This was consistent from game one to two, which means that the difference in velocity from his fastball to his offspeed pitches (PITCHf/x is not doing a great job of classifying his pitches so I won't try to identify which pitches these are cutter/changeup) was greater against Detroit. If Duffy can establish this fastball as his baseline it will give him one of the best power arsenals in baseball and improve the effectiveness of his secondary pitches. Now he just needs to work on being a little more efficient with his pitches so that he can get deeper into games and he could easily be the best pitcher for the Royals this season.

The land of Hoz

RoyalTreatment — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:34:44 -0000

The Royals have focused on locking up all of their key players by buying out a year or two of free agency, and it has lead to one question: Can we get a deal done with Eric Hosmer? The biggest part of getting this to be a yes will be how widely Dayton Moore can get David Glass to open his wallet, but there are a few other things that would help assuming the Royals can't come up with the money to match the Votto, Pujols, and Fielder ridiculousness.

1. Winning

This is obviously the most important non-pecuniary consideration in this sort of negotiation. Greinke left because he felt that his chances of winning in KC were not good, and Hosmer will too. Luckily for us, the future is much brighter now than it was during Greinke's tenure here. It would be helpful if in the near future a big time free agent was signed to a largish contract to prove that the Royals are serious and facilitate the winning that might make Eric want to stay.

2. Media

I don't see this being a problem, but I hope that the local media will bend over backwards to make Hosmer's time here as pain free as possible.

3. Other Players

It looks like this is one of the more promising areas. The players right now really seem to get along and hang out together outside of baseball more than any Royals team I can remember. Keeping a positive work environment could be very beneficial because leaving friends will make bolting for free agency less attractive, and don't underestimate peer pressure. But mister Boris, all my friends are signing extensions...

4. The Fans

That's right, we can help out too. We need to basically treat Hosmer like a demigod. Give him the metaphorical (or literal, I'd be fine with that as well) key to the city. So, although I like Jeff Francoeur, nice guy, it is time to abandon the French Quarter and start The Land of Hoz. It is only the first of many things the fans can do to let Eric know we really want him to be a lifer in Kansas City. Ideas from all fans should start being vetted in places such as Royals Review.

Young Power - Eric Hosmer

RoyalTreatment — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:34:17 -0000

Prior to the season my guess for Eric Hosmer home runs in 2012 would have been 25 to 30. I don't want to look at one series too much, but his two home runs in the opening series make me think the likelihood of 30+ might be better than my preseason projection. So, for fun, I went and looked at the list of players who have hit 30 or more home runs in their age 22 or younger seasons, and what a list it is.

Eddie Matthews (twice), Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Bench, Juan Gonzalez, Alex Rodriguez (twice), Mel Ott, Boog Powell, Frank Robinson (twice), Albert Pujols (twice), Ted Williams (twice), Jimmie Foxx (twice), Bob Horner (twice), Hal Trosky, Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Cabrera (twice), Jose Conseco (twice), Earl Williams, Tony Conigliaro, Andruw Jones, Jason Thompson, Jim Ray Hart, Ruben Sierra, Pete Incaviglia, Jeff Burroughs.

Most of the Hall of Famers (I'm including Pujols, A-Rod, and Miguel Cabrera) cracked the 35 HR barrier and/or made the list twice, but even a lot of the guys not in the HOF here were very good baseball players. Hosmer has a chance to be great, we all already knew that, but what I really want to point out is for everyone to remember how young he is. If Hosmer can have the season we are expecting he will be more accomplished than many of the big time contemporaries like Adrian Gonzalez, Mark Texeira, and Joey Votto were at this point in their careers. This does not guarantee that Eric Hosmer becomes a stud, but it makes it a lot more likely.

AHHHHHH Breakout!

RoyalTreatment — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:50:52 -0000

Last years’ performance by Alex Gordon was in some ways shocking and in others completely expected. Gordon was a stud in college, the minor league player of the year, and then quickly became something of an enigma due to struggles/injuries. In 2011 he finally put together the type of stats people, especially us Royals fans, were expecting. Now the big question is if he will continue that success in 2012 and beyond, or if last year was a fluke.

In looking at this question I started by going to baseballreference.com and pulling all position players in the expansion era (1961 and on) who were between the ages of 23 and 29, played in at least 50 games, and had an OPS+ north of 50. This gave me almost 9000 player years. My goal was to find players who had breakout years in their mid to late 20s (24-29), and I focused on hitting since Alex does not play a premium defensive position as long as he stays in left field. Gordon’s OPS+ went up by almost 61% from 2010 to 2011, so I searched all the data for instances where someone improved their OPS+ by 50% or more in one year. That narrowed the list down to 289 players and 1450 player years. From there I further reduced to try and get rid of improvements that were not akin to Gordon’s. There were five main reasons why I chose to eliminate someone at this point:

1. They had already had a very good hitting season prior to their big OPS+ jump, which actually subdivides into two sub-groups. Some of these players had big improvements after a down year (Justin Morneau for an example), or they went from good to great (Carl Yastrzemski went from 119 to 193 in 1967).

2. The breakout occurred in the player’s first couple of years as a major leaguer (Bernard Gilkey, Bobby Abreu). Gordon is in his 5th season although a couple of those years were not full seasons. Some of the people cut or included by this criterion were fairly subjective when dealing with partial seasons.

3. The breakout year had to have an OPS+ greater than 120. Gordon’s was 140 and I only wanted people putting up significantly above average years.

4. A breakout in 2011 meant I had no data after the breakout, so these were eliminated. They included Gordon, Jacoby Ellsbury, Peter Borjous, and Pablo Sandoval. Ellsbury, Borjous, and Sandoval would have been eliminated anyway due to rules 2, 3, and 1 respectively.

5. Other – Mostly part-time players, but also a few oddities like the two different Brian Giles creating a false positive.

In the end only 37 players were left, and even some of them are borderline. This shows just how odd Alex Gordon’s trajectory has been. My hope was that there would be enough to run some regressions to give a baseline for what to expect out of Alex next year. I tried this, but with such a small sample size there was no significance in any of my right hand side variables (breakout OPS+, BABIP in breakout year, age, year, pedigree) when using OPS+ in the year after as the dependent variable. That means that what I can tell you is going to be mostly anecdotal, but maybe we can learn something from looking at these 37 players. Here are the names:

The names here are quite the mixed bag. Hall of famers such as Sandberg, Yount, Rose, and Puckett show that Gordon could still be a very good player for years to come. The problem is that a couple of these guys, Puckett and Rose, pretty much had all of their struggles in their first two full seasons and then became the fantastic players we remember, so they almost didn’t make the list (granted there are some like Brooks Robinson who fell just on the other side of the cut too). It was also nice to see some good former Royals like Beltran and McRae, and of course any time you have an Alou show up during anything baseball related I take it as a good omen. Joey Bats probably deserves a mention too, but I will discuss him more later. There are also names that frighten me. I’m looking at you Jose Guillen and Rich Aurilia. More of the names would be scary if I was familiar with them, but I don’t remember much prior to the 90s. From here I will do three analyses. First I will look at how these players did in the year after their breakout, then I will discuss their long-term success, and finally I will discuss those with track records prior to breakout that most resemble Alex.

THE YEAR AFTER:

On average the change in OPS+ of the year following breakout was -19.4 points, and the range of outcomes went from -70 to +17. Also, only six of the 37 players had a better year the next year. Almost as many (5) fell far enough to be below average the year after breaking out. This means that there is a lot better chance that Gordon takes a step back this year than a step forward, and that the downside movement tends to be more severe, while any gains tend to be minimal. If this does happen to Gordon don’t worry too much, all of the HOFers on the list took a step back too. Really there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to the next year’s performance beyond the fact that almost everyone goes backward, but most remain above average hitters, which should at least be some comfort if you want Gordon to do well in the future.

LONG TERM SUCCESS

First the good news Alex Gordon fans, most of these players went on to have long and at least semi-productive careers. The average tenure in the big leagues post-breakout is about 7.5 years, and that is slightly low since a handful of the guys are still playing. Also, 89.2% of the sample was an above average hitter at least one of those years and 75.7% had two or more above average years after their breakout. Almost half were above average hitters 5 or more times over the rest of their career. Even better, a little over 40% managed an OPS+ greater than 140 at some point after their breakout season. The bad news is that almost 30% of the players never did much of anything again, and some completely disappeared within a couple of years. I looked at all of those I marked as pedigreed (first round picks like Alex) and the worst of the "big" prospects in this case played 6 more years with half of them being above average. If that is the basement for Gordon going forward, especially with some of the ceilings available, then sign me up. There is a good chance Alex will be playing for a long time to come and being productive. Just how productive though?

MOST LIKE ALEX

Jose Bautista-

Actually he isn’t as close of a comp as the next three, but I thought he deserved his own section. Joey Bats came up and floundered around in the majors for six years with a few 90ish OPS+ years that showed some ability, and then bam! In 2010 he exploded for an OPS+ of 164 and even more awesome, his BABIP that season was .233, yeah that’s right, he was very UNLUCKY in his breakout season, and just to prove it his next year was even better. Okay, he isn’t the best matchup for Gordon, let’s move to the three that really seem to fit.

JT Snow-

Snow had a cup of coffee at 24 followed by OPS+es of 95, 63, 112, and 81 before his breakout (135). This is very similar to Gordon’s three mediocre and one slightly above average seasons before finally putting it together. Snow went on to 11 more seasons, seven of which he was an above average hitter, and he had one more really big season late in his career where his OPS+ was 146.

Eric Karros-

The fact that Eric Karros and JT Snow had similar career arcs seems fitting to me based on collecting their baseball cards as they broke into the league. Karros had a similar career after as well with nine more seasons, seven above average, but his peak season after the breakout was an OPS+ of 132.

Robin Yount-

Finally, the guy that makes my Royal homerism hope that maybe Alex is going to turn into the true stud we all were expecting. Yount’s breakout for our purposes has been defined as his 24 year-old season, which is younger than Gordon because of Alex going to college. Still, Yount debuted at 18 so he spent a lot of time in the majors prior to that season and struggled through it all (albeit at shortstop). More important is that he had another breakout a couple years later at 26 and was pretty much awesome from then on. He was consistently above average and had a couple of times where he jumped up to an OPS+ above 150. I am putting him here as the Gordon ceiling. There is still hope that Gordon has a run of around 10 years where he is a very good baseball player with HOF potential. It isn’t likely, but it isn’t impossible either.

CONCLUSION

After looking at all of the mid-to-late 20 breakouts over the past 40 years it looks like those who breakout in a similar manner to Alex Gordon tend to be useful players for at least half a decade after the fact, and it is even more likely if they were high draft picks like Alex. If he ends up being like Karros and Snow, the two most similar career arcs in my opinion, then the Royals will have a solid major league player for the next five to ten years with another year or two were he could be All-Star caliber, but not a perennial stud. If the talent that everyone saw in Gordon when he was drafted manifests though, then we might be talking about a solid decade of very good to great seasons that could make everyone forget about his early struggles. The chances of that happening are very low, but not out of the question.