Minor Improvements: Offense
by APV on Oct 24, 2009 4:00 PM EDT
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PrintWhat is impressive about two of the Indians most improved seasons by minor league offensive players is that they were already top prospects. Amazingly, Carlos Santana might have had the most improved season of any Indians minor leaguer, despite coming off a sensational 2008 season.
Carlos Santana, in case you forgot, put up a .326/.431/.568 last season, spending most of his time in high-A Inland Empire and then Kinston. That included 21 HRs, 65 total XBHs, and more walks (89) than Ks (85). This year he advanced to AA and spent the entire season as the constant rock in the middle of the Aeros potent lineup. Any adjustment time Santana needed to AA talent was minimal, as he put up a .290/.413/.530 line with 55 XBHs (23 HRs) and even more walks (90) than Ks (83). Part of what made his 2009 so impressive however was that there was good reason to suspect some regression in his numbers coming into the season. His 2008 was built on the back of a +.370 BABIP. What he did this year he did with a totally reasonably .314 BABIP...no getting lucky argument for 2009, it was just the real thing.
| BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | aOPS |
| .290 | .413 | .530 | .943 | 1.028 |
| BB% | K% | HR | Net | PS |
| 16.8 | 15.5 | 23 | +60 | 10.9 |
Michael Brantley, like Santana, was a top prospect coming into the season. As a member of the Brewers AA Huntsville team Brantley put up a .319/.395/.398 line with a phenomenal 5.6% K-rate. Again - Brantley's baseline may not jump out as much improved. In fact, in a lot of ways, it does not look improved at all. This year in Buffalo he put up a .267/.350/.361 line (before hitting .313/358/.348 for a month in Cleveland). Aside from advancing to AAA, where's the improvement? Again the answer lies deeper in his numbers. Michael Brantley had an underwhelming .288 BABIP this season despite putting up line drive rates well over 20% essentially every month - just as we saw in September, Brantley is a line drive machine. Corrected for this, Brantley's adjusted OPS for 2009 was actually .821, up from .767 in 2008. And despite being hobbled early in the season with a hamstring issue he stole 46 bases in 51 attempts. Now if only we could say with certainty he was a great defender (or even a good one)...
| BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | aOPS |
| .267 | .350 | .361 | .711 | .821 |
| BB% | K% | HR | Net | PS |
| 11.2 | 9.1 | 6 | +76 | 9.1 |
John Drennen is not a top prospect. There was a time (after the 2006 season) when Drennen was a good looking young prospect, and not just because he managed to take Roger Clemens deep in a minor league game. Then came a disappointing 2007, and then a truly terrible 2008 despite repeating Kinston. Starting in Kinston for a third straight time seemed to light a fire in Drennen, as he began the season hitting .270/.395/.397 in the season's first month. The improved plate discipline was a particular surprise. Following his promotion to Akron his plate discipline regressed, but his power spiked to a career high (36 XBHs, including 8 HRs, in 354 plate appearances). Drennen's final cumulative line, .273/.333/.441 is not going to earn him a ticket to Cleveland, but given that he just turned 23 in the season's final month, it does put him back in the picture somewhat.
| BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | aOPS |
| .273 | .333 | .441 | .792 | .821 |
| BB% | K% | HR | Net | PS |
| 7.7 | 16.0 | 8 | 0 | 5.4 |
Other offensive players who showed solid improvements from 2008 to 2009: Matt LaPorta, Jordan Brown, Donnie Webb, Lonnie Chisenhall, Matt McBride and Nick Weglarz. Pitchers will come later in the week.
UPDATE: A couple other players probably deserve a slightly longer shout-out...
It was in many ways a good year for Andy Marte. Certainly his best season since his final season with the Braves organization in 2004 at AAA Richmond. Between Columbus and Cleveland Marte put up 24 HRs and 30 2Bs. Marte seems have morphed into contact/BABIP driven offensive player, perhaps reflective of his strong pull tendencies. To be worth anything with that kind of approach he needs to show considerable power, and this season was pretty much his best power display as a pro player.
This year was also Jordan Brown's best season as a pro. Brown has followed a similar trajectory of plate discipline regression/power increase that Marte has. Unfortunately for Brown the power isn't really quite as good (.196 ISOP to Marte's .266 in AAA) and the defensive is more of a limiting circumstance. The MLE (from minorleaugesplits.com) line from Brown's season is .301/.339/.464.
Finally, Nick Weglarz rebounded pretty nicely from a disappointing 2008 season interrupted by injuries and the olympics. Weglarz baseline numbers, .227/.377/.431, are considerable deflated by a .253 BABIP (his previous career low was .311 in his rookie campaign at Burlington). His power jumped back towards his 2007 figures, which were solid, if not yet into the light-tower territory people expect from him. His BB-rate reached a career high of over 17.5% while his K-rate remained pretty stable at 18.3%. Amazingly he'll still just be 22 next year, perfect time I hope for a huge season and preparation for a 2011 rookie presence in Cleveland.
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I didn’t realize until a while ago that Brantley was regularly putting up LD% of 20% or more all year long. I don’t know much about how the data is collected, but I would think (and I seem to remember the Indians doing something like this) that LD% would be one of the best statistics available, provided it is recorded accurately.
What is impressive about two of the Indians most improved seasons by minor league offensive players is that they were already top prospects.
Now that’s what I wanted to hear.
Steel Nick
There’s a good side and a down side to it. One the positive side, it does really reinforce the notion that Santana’s 2008 season really was a step to being an elite prospect, and not a lucky season with inflated numbers. And Brantley really looks like he has the potential to go from a Shapiro to be named later to the best component of the CC trade.
On the less positive side, it means we really had no offensive players emerge with breakout seasons. I was really optimistic that Beau Mills was really going to have a breakout season – instead he had the most disappointing season of any Tribe positional prospect who didn’t suffer major injury (I’ll post on the disappointments later).
The pitchers had more interesting ups and downs.
Though counter intuitive it would have kinda, maybe, almost looked better if Mills had a horrendous season where you might be able to point to something. The blah season he had makes you fear that he ran in to his own personal ceiling.
Seems more likely that he ran into a wall, that he hasn’t done enough to make the adjustments he needs to make.
Just an aside, but in another disturbing trend, it’s another relatively high draft selection (#13 overall) not showing much. Jason Heyward was selected with the very next pick. [sigh]
Thankfully, it’s much harder to miss at draft slot #5 than #13. Better get it right this year…though it’s still far too early to write off Mills. Mills, if the Indians do promote him to Cbus, will play almost the entire year at AAA at age 23. That’s encouraging— if he’d start hitting.
I don’t find it encouraging, as it’s not any different than their promoting Crowe before he really earned it. It seems more like the stubborn assertion that a prospect is of a certain caliber, in the face of mounting evidence that he is not.
If you think about it, their attitude towards Crowe is not all that different than their attitude towards Wedge.
What’s the better risk/reward move? promoting him (assuming there was some positive scouting/coaching comments on the player in the face of mediocre or worse results) so that he can maintain a modicum of “prospect” stature by being at least age-appropriate for his level and potentially being able to put together a solid season, or concluding a player is not ready until the results on the field dictate so but increase the probability that said player will no longer be a viable prospect because of age?
I don’t lean either way in particular, just wondering what others might think.
I’m not sure there’s any point to challenging a guy who is already under-achieving. Few moves are all about the evaluation of one player; most are choices among different options. The better move is to focus on and give opportunities to better players.
Crowe didn’t under-achieve, did he? He was just overvalued. We can’t say we didn’t see the real Crowe this past season, and if he just applies himself he’ll be a first-rounder, can we? It seems to me the more appropriate explanation is that he isn’t a first-rounder, and what you see is what you get.
I was surprised – in 2008 he seemed to make the positive changes he needed. He increased his BB-rate to just under 10% while keeping his K-rate steady just under 20%. While doing this he increased his power considerably over his rookie season. He hit both LHP and RHP pretty well and what really sold me was his spray chart (viewable on minorleaguesplits.com) which showed him hitting the ball with power to all fields. I thought he had already incorporated these improvements and was going to have a huge season. Instead, his BB-rate collapsed (his K-rate went down, too, but not enough to keep pace), and his power dropped. After destroying LHP the previous two years he really struggled against them in 2009. He hit a huge number of infield flies last season (18%) which is just death and seems to me to suggest a mechanical problem at the plate. Lots of bad, not a lot of good.
Could be. But just 7 walks in 192 plate appearances against lefties this year just seems like he wasn’t seeing the ball very well against them.
It does seem like that. It may take him a while to get used to seeing the ball out of the hand of a lefty at this level. Still, the odds are very good that eventually he makes this adjustment and thrives against lefties.
I’m just happy that the guys at the top continued to show why they’re at the top. It’s disappointing to see the season Mills had, sure. But the hand-wringing would have been much worse—for me, anyway—if someone like Santana or Weglarz took a big step back.
Steel Nick
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