Predicting the AL East: Shortstops

We’re nearing the halfway mark of the 2014 season, which makes this a great time to dig in past where the teams will rank at the end of the season. In honor of JJ Hardy hitting his first home run of 2014 on Saturday, the first group to be examined for rest-of-season potential is the AL East shortstops.

Discuss your thoughts on the shortstops of the AL East on the BSL Forums.

In order of current fWAR:

Xander Bogaerts, Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox shortstop in his first full season in the majors is leading the five AL East shortstops with 1.5 fWAR so far this season. Bogaerts is slashing .265/.350/.405 and holds an OPS+ of 109, which should be a pretty strong signal about the relative strength of this year’s AL East shortstops as much as it is about Bogaerts himself. The Red Sox rookie holds a -4.0 UZR/150 at short and a -7.9 UZR/150 at third (139.1 innings) so far this season. On defense, Bogaerts makes the plays he should, according to Inside Edge: 50% of even plays, 75% of likely plays, and 95.9% of routine plays.

Since Bogaerts has less than a year of Major League experience, it’s impossible to say whether he should regress in any way. In the minors, Bogaerts was typically batting around .300. It’s safe to assume that the Red Sox hope he can match that in the Majors, but they probably aren’t expecting it this year, and neither should anyone else. The Sox are also looking for Bogaerts to start hitting for a moderate amount of power from the shortstop position: his SLG was between .475 and .525 in each of his three longest stints in the minors. If Bogaerts can match that, he’d be hitting for power at about the same rate that JJ Hardy did in 2013, when he hit 25 home runs and 27 doubles.

He might start putting better power numbers up as early as the second half of 2014. Bogaerts is hitting to a 0.63 GB/FB ratio but only hitting a home run on 5.7% of his fly balls. Xander Bogaerts is no Chris Davis (2013 model), and he might lag behind the league average in HR/FB over the course of his career, but it’d be surprising to see him continue to hit home runs this rarely while still putting the ball up in the air this often. Even an 8% or 9% HR/FB rate would give Boagerts much better power figure. At 8.5% HR/FB, Bogaerts would have hit 9 home runs (instead of the 6 he has) and have a SLG of 0.451.¹

ZiPS’ full-season updated projection has Bogaerts slashing .266/.343/.414 at the end of this season (which includes a .423 SLG the rest of the way) and to record a total of 3.0 fWAR before the year is over. Look for Bogaerts to continue to grow – and to hit a few more home runs.

JJ Hardy, Baltimore Orioles

The shortstop of the Baltimore Orioles has always been heralded as a rare breed: a sure-handed and above-average fielder that also hit for a lot of power. This career-long narrative has come to a screeching halt in 2014, and many fans in Baltimore are asking the same questions about his power, his long-term viability as a core piece of the Orioles, and the right thing to do with regards to his contract after this season.

Hardy hit his first home run of 2014 on Saturday, June 21, the first day of summer, meaning he went the entire spring of this year without hitting a round-tripper. Prior to that, FanGraphs had put together a terrific piece analyzing the outcomes of Hardy’s at-bats. What they found was that Hardy was hitting infield flys more often and hitting non-grounders shorter by about 13 feet shorter than ever before.

Many Orioles fans can remember Hardy crushing balls in the top of the zone; he’s not doing that this year. He has an ISO/P of .028 on pitches in the middle of the plate and in the top third of the zone in 2014 (for reference, he had an ISO/P of .085 in the same portion of the strike zone in 2013). According to FanGraphs, he’s been getting a steady diet of pitches outside to start this season, an area with which he’s typically struggled.

Going forward, Hardy is bound to hit for a bit more power than he has so far. We know the bat is real and we’ve seen him crush high fastball after high fastball into the seats for years. Hardy currently holds a 1.1 fWAR and  ZiPS predicts that Hardy will end the season with a 1.9 fWAR. I think that’s a little low for a guy who has been the best defensive shortstop in the American League. If Hardy gets more pitches inside and makes good on pitches high in the zone (his first homer of the year was on one just like that), he could easily rebound to form in the second half and pull together a total of 2.3 fWAR by the end of this season. Maybe the power is gone suddenly at 32 – not as likely, in my opinion, as a timing issue. Look for 10 home runs in the second half of the season from Hardy.

Jose Reyes, Toronto Blue Jays

So far in 2014, Jose Reyes has the same 1.1 fWAR as JJ Hardy. How he has earned it is entirely different. Reyes is average on offense where Hardy has so far been well below average, but is hardly above average on defense either. Of course, Reyes spent some time on the disabled list, as is tradition.²

 What else is Reyes doing well in 2014? He’s projected to add about 3.4 runs above average on the base paths (BsR) by the end of the season, but has already logged 2.1 runs above average. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a (healthy) Reyes notch a total of 5 BsR by the end of 2014. Reyes is by far the best baserunning shortstop in the AL East, and trails only Elvis Andrus and Alcides Escobar in the American League in BsR.

It’s a shame for the Blue Jays that Reyes isn’t getting on base at his usual clip. He’s walking more than normal, but also striking out more often, hitting more fly balls, and hitting way more infield fly balls than he usually does. Mostly because of those infield flys, Reyes has a BABIP of .266, well below a career .310 clip and not exactly what you’d expect from someone with the speed of Reyes. As a result, his OBP is at .314, well below his career mark of .341.

I can see Reyes ending this season with an fWAR above Hardy’s, if he stays healthy. He’s hitting line drives about 20% of the time, in line with career norms. If he brings some of those fly balls to the ground, he actually has a chance to increase his BABIP and his OBP because of his speed. Reyes’ infield hit percentage is above career averages, which is likely a product of needing to beat out fewer ground balls than normal and benefitting from a slightly smaller sample.

Reyes is a dangerous player with the bat and on the basepaths. The improving of – or, really, the regression of, one, which would gives him more opportunities to excel at the other, will only improve Reyes’ value to the Blue Jays.

Derek Jeter, New York Yankees

Jeter is the second worst shortstop in the AL East and the entire American League. He has currently recorded 0.4 fWAR, which is in scrub range, according to the FanGraphs Sabermetrics Library. This week’s edition of The 30, by Jonah Keri, Jeter’s failure to contribute in any meaningful way to the 2014 Yankees is put on display – and Girardi’s refusal to sit his long-tenured shortstop is questioned.

Derek Jeter’s defense has been the subject of much ridicule among the advanced statistics crowd³ for a long time, but his redeeming quality for many, many successful years was his terrific bat. Regularly hitting an isolated power (ISO) mark of .125 and often higher at the shortstop position was a boon for the Yankee teams of the late 90s and early 2000s, but that power has all but vanished since 2009. This year, Jeter is posting an ISO of .050. FanGraphs defines .080 as awful.

Jeter is hitting fewer line drives than normal, more fly balls than normal, and beating out fewer ground balls for infield hits. He’s just aging and that’s okay, because the Yankees don’t have anyone better to put at shortstop and even if they did, they wouldn’t, because #FarewellTour14. He’s actually swinging and making contact at about the same rate as his career average, save for his contact rate on pitches outside the zone. Maybe he’s due for some positive regression as well, but my initial impressions are that this is the new normal for Jeter.

Swing doctor and former Mets consultant Chris O’Leary⁴ wrote:

I would argue that Derek Jeter’s linear hand path, dominant back arm, leaky back elbow, and resulting extension at the point of contact are much better candidates for the root cause of his recent performance fall-off than any problem with his stride. Jeter strikes me as your classic incredibly gifted athlete who, as he gets older, is no longer able to get away with a highly unusual, and fundamentally flawed, swing.

…in 2011. I’d say that he’s been right for a long time.

Yunel Escobar, Tampa Bay Rays

Ah, Tampa Bay. The team for which absolutely nothing can go well in 2014. That statement includes Yunel Escobar, who was the best American League shortstop in 2013 by fWAR (3.9). So far this year, Escobar has recorded -0.1 fWAR. He’s literally been worse than a warm AAA body. Is the third 31-year-old shortstop⁵ in the division showing his age more than the other two?

Escobar is also hitting more fly balls – and more infield fly balls – than he has at any other point in his career. His OBP and SLG percentages are down below career norms. He’s never really been a source of offensive production for the Rays, though. Where he has really suffered in 2014 is on defense.

Usually an above-average defenseman, and one that recorded a dWAR of 1.4 in 2013, Escobar has posted a dWAR of -1.0 so far in 2014. Coupled with a weakening of the bat, he’s quickly gone from first to worst among AL East shortstops. Per Inside Edge data, where he’s suffered is on plays categorized as “unlikely,” meaning that they’re converted 10%-40% of the time. In each of the last two years, Escobar converted 25% of these plays (which admittedly are few and far between – just 16 chances in 2013), but in 2014, he’s converted 0 of 5 chances.

Whether this is aging or a few bad breaks to start the season remains to be seen, but ZiPS seems to think Escobar can pull a 0.9 fWAR for the season. That would be a pretty dramatic turnaround from the first half, but passing Jeter and his walker (zing!) shouldn’t be too difficult. Escobar has shown as recently as last year that he can perform at a higher level, especially defensively, while Jeter has just looked old for a few years.

At the end of 2014…

I expect the fWAR standings among AL East shortstops to look like this:

1. Xander Bogaerts
2. JJ Hardy
3. Jose Reyes
4. Yunel Escobar
5. Derek Jeter

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¹ This figure was determined under the assumption that the extra home runs Bogaerts would have hit with a HR/FB rate closer to the league average would have been instead of outs that he actually did record.

² Bonus points for relating this clip to a Canada-based franchise. What a wonderful day for Canada, and therefore, the world.

³ You know, the people who recognize the jump-throw as an occasional need and a regular crutch for the inability to reach a ball and set up for a throw in advance. I wanted to be meaner in the body of this article but thought better of letting my homerism show through that significantly.

⁴ I know nothing about Chris O’Leary besides what is presented on his website. He seems thorough but I am nowhere near qualified to talk about swing mechanics.

⁵ JJ Hardy and Jose Reyes are both 31. Derek Jeter is 70, as far as I can tell.