MLB Notes: September 9th

For my weekly column this week, I wanted to dig into something I noted in the latest episode of The Warehouse podcast, namely the sad state the 2022 season has left our young face-of-the-sport stars in. 

Every off-season we all get sucked into a conversation about the future of the game’s young stars. And you can count on that happening again this off-season because wow have they collectively had a lousy season. 

Any list of the hottest young stars in baseball last season would have had to start with some combination of Vlad Guerrero Jr, Ronald Acuna, Juan Soto, and Fernando Tatis Jr. Those guys have been the poster boys for the covers of video games, baseball card boxes, and the like. They’re the players MLB has tried to market most and let’s just say it’s been a tough season for MLB’s marketing firms. 

Let’s start with perhaps the best of them at least as far as 2022 goes, Vlad Guerrero. He’s having a good season! He’s put up a wRC+ of 133 (33 percent above league average), he’s got 27 homers, and the Blue Jays are very likely a playoff team. The problem is, after his ungodly 2021 season, more was expected. Much more. Vlad was the best hitter in baseball in 2021, putting up a 166 wRC+, an OPS over 1.000, all while belting 48 homers. He would’ve won the MVP going away had it not for Shohei Ohtani recreating vintage Babe Ruth (except probably better). He’s not been close to that level this season.

It might not be fair to expect that from a player every season, and Vlad likely has a decade plus to make another run like that (or 10), but when you put up a season like that at age 22, people expect you to do it again at age 23. And what Vlad has done this season is a lot more like what he did in 2020, when he put up a sub-.800 OPS. It was a fine season considering the circumstances, but it wasn’t nearly what was expected of a generational talent. 

The problem has been grounders. In 2020, Vlad hit the ball on the ground 55 percent of the time. Hard hit grounders are good, but there is a ceiling on them. Ground balls can’t go over the fence, thus why so many players have focused on hitting the ball in the air in recent years. In 2021, his almost-MVP season, Vlad cut down on the grounders by 10 percent, leading to a lot more doubles and homers. He wasn’t hitting the ball harder. He’s always hit the ball extremely hard. The only issue is where he’s hitting it. 

After the success of last season, it was expected Vlad had solved this particular problem. Nope. In 2022 he’s back to worm-killing. This season 51.4 percent of his batted balls have been grounders. So we’re back to more singles and doubles, rather than doubles and homers. It sounds like a first world problem, but it’s really the difference between a good player and a superstar. Add to that that Vlad is no longer a third baseman, but a full-time first baseman, and the excitement over his future starts to fade a tad. First baseman with .800 OPSs aren’t face-of-the-sport types. 

Ronald Acuna doesn’t know much about under-performing. He does know about serious injuries though. Half way through last year, Acuna tore his ACL, halting what had been a fantastic season (almost a 1.000 OPS, wRC)+ of 157). He missed the rest of the ’21 season (including his team’s World Series winning playoff run) and a large portion of the ’22 season as well. Since he’s come back he’s been, well, not quite himself. 

Acuna’s walk rate and strikeout rate are roughly what he’s done in his career, but his power has dropped way off. This isn’t entirely unexpected considering the nature of his injury, but it’s concerning just the same. Some players just never fully recover from serious injuries, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Acuna is one of those players.

Like Vlad, Acuna has a ground ball problem. He is hitting a lot more grounders than he typically does (so not shocking that his power is way down), though not nearly as many as Vlad hits. Also his speed is down a bit from his otherworldly pre-injury form, which is, again, not shocking. 

The speed may never fully return, but Acura’s power could return next season, or at least it’s reasonable to think so. We’ll have to see if he returns to the generational-type player in 2023 that he was in his early 20s, but now it’s another blow to the MLB marketing department. 

Another generational talent having a tough season is Juan Soto. Soto is another player who, if any other name were on the back of his jersey, you’d say he was having a good season. He has a wRC+ of 146, 24 homers, and a 20 percent walk rate. But this is the third straight season Soto’s wRC+ has dropped. Admittedly the numbers have fallen from a great height, but they’re falling just the same. 

This all speaks to expectations. A supposedly generational talent, Soto is hitting .243 on the season, and his defense in the outfield is trending towards “DH.” All of a sudden it’s easier to see Soto as a good but not great player, someone the Nationals traded at the literal peak of his value. Not that that’s necessarily true, but at least from where we sit right now, you could see it.

Like Vlad and Acuna, none of these individual problems are disqualifying to a normal player, but to a player who has put in his application for “Face of Baseball” it kinda is. The face of baseball can’t be a DH whose best skill is walking. It can’t be an outfielder who can’t hit for power, or a first baseman who overwhelmingly hits grounders. I’m sorry, but it just can’t. 

Something else it can’t be: a steroid cheat. After injuring himself in multiple (yes, multiple) motorcycle accidents over the off-season, Fernando Tatis, Jr. was recently suspended 80 games for ingesting a substance on MLB’s list of banned substances. This is unfortunate for the Padres and their 2022 season, it’s unfortunate for the Padres just generally, and it’s unfortunate for baseball as a whole. Because, as good as Acuna, Vlad, and Soto have been, perhaps there is no player who grabbed baseball’s collective attention like Tatis. 

From his style off the field, to his style on the field, to his hitting prowess, Tatis was a prime candidate for the next Mike Trout, but one with, sorry to say it, considerably more personality. Tatis was a player the next generation could love as much as the previous one, because what baseball fan doesn’t love a great ballplayer? 

The injuries were stupid, but young people are sometimes stupid and there was every chance to think Tatis would learn from those mistakes going forward. Now? Things are different. You don’t come back from a steroids suspension, at least not fully. Fairly or not, everything Tatis does from now on will have an invisible asterisk next to it. And most importantly for the purposes of this article, that’s simply disqualifying. 

Don’t expect Tatis’ face on 2023 baseball cards, or MLB: The Show. And I’m not so sure about Vlad, Soto, or Acuna either. All of them may end up having the wonderful careers we assumed were their birthright as of a few years ago, but now, maybe for the first time, we’re not so sure, and that’s a sad thing.