Friday, January 2, 2004

Whipping Boy

One of the great things about being a person addicted to the study of baseball and the Yankees is that I get to take constant Litmus tests on how fellow fans feel about the team’s personnel. Acknowledging this, a popular cause of discontent with Yankee fans of late has been Alfonso Soriano. There are a few main criticisms laid against him, one is that “he has no plate discipline and isn’t focusing enough on this”, two is that “he was a horrible 2B in 2001 and hasn’t gotten better”, and three is that “he doesn’t hit in the clutch”. Let’s tackle the issue and see if Soriano deserves the criticism he has been getting.

Ahhh, Soriano’s lack of plate discipline. This is probably the most infamous aspect of Soriano’s game as it has led some misguided analysts to compare him to Vladimir Guerrero and Nomar Garciaparra who in reality are very different hitters than Soriano, but those two are stories for another day. While many Yankee fans don’t necessarily care about things such as OBP and walking, they do, somewhat oddly to me, love to point that Soriano does not walk much and strikes out a lot. This theory is true to an extent. Yes, Soriano does in fact not walk much; here are his unintentional walk rates for each of his full major league seasons:

AB/BB
19.7
31.6
22.0

So yes, Soriano has been rather impatient thus far in his major league career, even more so after his rookie season, which ironically was his least productive year in the bigs. In fact, just looking at those 3 years, the less at bats it has taken for Soriano to walk, the more productive he has been, I have no explanation why that has happened with him and I won’t try to explain it now. Anyway, we have now established that just as Yankee fans think, Soriano does not walk much and he has not really made strides in that aspect of his game. Now, here are Soriano’s K rates thus far:

AB/K
4.6
4.4
5.2

So, the first question that must be answered is: Does Soriano strike out a lot or is that perception skewed because he walks so little and has so many at bats? Let’s look at the K rates for the top 20 players in Ks this past season outside of Soriano:

AB/K
Jim Thome 3.2
Jose Hernandez 2.9
Brad Wilkerson 3.3
Richie Sexon 4.0
Sammy Sosa 3.6
Pat Burrell 3.7
Jason Giambi 3.8
Preston Wilson 4.3
Carlos Delgado 4.2
Mike Cameron 3.9
Derrek Lee 4.1
Wes Helms 3.6
Dmitri Young 4.3
Rocco Baldelli 5.0
Jim Edmonds 3.5
Alex Rodriguez 4.8
Bobby Abreu 4.6
Adam Dunn 3.0
Bret Boone 5.0

So after looking at the list of the top 20 K guys in MLB we see that of that 20, Soriano struck out at a higher rate than…none of them. This disproves a large part of the Soriano K theory, which is that he is always amongst the top K guys making him detrimental to the team, when in actuality his place on this list is more a function of his position in the batting lineup than anything else. On top of that, Soriano has indeed improved greatly in this aspect of his game. So if a Yankee fan, you know, one of the ones that say they “watch all the games” tries to say, “Soriano has no plate discipline and isn’t focusing enough on this” it is only partially true. Yes, Soriano lacks plate discipline, but since he has become much better at making contact it would seem that he has been working/focusing on this.

Soriano’s defense is perhaps the aspect of his game most attacked by Yankee fans, ESPECIALLY the aforementioned ones who “watch all the games”. The general feeling amongst this crowd is that Soriano is horrible defensively, and if they choose to use statistical evidence, they point towards his somewhat consistent error totals. This is very faulty logic. What is ignored in this generalization of Soriano’s defense is his range…factor:

FP RF ZR Year
.973 4.45 .796 2001
.968 4.55 .813 2002
.975 4.82 .811 2003

So yes, Soriano his rookie year was pretty horrible, he made a lot of errors and did not get to many balls. Then his second year, Soriano made more errors, but his zone rating and range factor both went up. In his third year he had his best fielding percentage, along with his highest range factor by a wide margin and his second best zone factor. I think it is safe to conclude from these numbers that Soriano has made strides defensively each year. Therefore the theory about Soriano’s defense does not hold water.

Another weakness of Soriano’s according to those naysayers is that he does not hit in the clutch. With this in mind they point to the most recent postseason and his numbers with RISP this past season. In regards to these in general, I am of the belief that clutch hitting does not actually exist and if you give any player enough time, over the course of that time his “clutch” stats will resemble his normal stats very closely. However, let us take for example that RISP for Soriano does represent that he is “unclutch”. If that is the case, what was the case in 2002 when Soriano hit .329/.357/.564 (AVG/OBP/SLG) with RISP? Was he clutch then? If he was not clutch then, what is clutch? If he was clutch then, how come he was not clutch this year? It is simple. Clutch does not truly exist, but is more a function of small sample size variations.

After reading this, you may think I am a huge Soriano fan, in actuality, while I appreciate his talent I am somewhat wary of him because of how unique a player he is, making it more difficult than normal to know exactly how he will develop. In fact, I would have much rather had the Yankees trade him to get Vazquez than Nick Johnson. That being said, Soriano is still hugely talented and probably the second best 2B in baseball, and I appreciate him for that. He also does not deserve the negativity the average Yankee fan may throw at him, so I had to defend him.

*****

It’s been a little while since I discussed a prospect now, but I will be getting back to that soon. Questions, comments, suggestions, mcnallyf@taftschool.org

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