Richie Rumors
Posted by Chris - 25/07/07 at 11:07 amA quick post this morning on a interesting rumor that I read this morning from Fox’s Ken Rosenthal.
Quoting from an article entitled ‘First basemen hot deadline commodities’:
The Mariners, blanketing the majors with scouts in their pursuit of rotation and bullpen help, are drawing mild inquiries on first baseman Richie Sexson.
Trading Sexson would enable the team to move left fielder Raul Ibanez to first, opening up a spot for the team’s top outfield prospect, Adam Jones.
The Giants have expressed past interest in Sexson, who is owed the balance of his $14 million salary this season and $14 million next season.
The two teams apparently are not talking, but a Sexson-for-Matt Morris trade would make sense. Morris, also signed through next season, has struggled of late. Then again, Sexson is batting just .204.
This seems like the quintessential Brian Sabean trade. A player that the team has had interest in before? Check. A player that’s in his early 30’s, Sexson is 32, and has experienced big league success before? Double check. Mike Muprhy had better get cracking on a Richie Sexson jersey.
Rosenthal mentions that Sexson is only hitting .204 this year and has had a disappointing season. Sexson hasn’t even come close to approaching his career numbers of (.265/.347/.518) and he’s stunk just as badly on the road as he has at Safeco. Should the Giants try and make a swap for Big Sexy? Let’s take a look at some numbers.
In Sexson’s prime he was worth between 7-8 wins, in 2006 he was around 6 wins and this year he’s dropped to just to under 2 wins. PECOTA had Sexson projected at (.258/.352/.508) which were in line with his career numbers, but he’s greatly underperformed this year. He’s currently around his 10% PECOTA projection. Sexson’s highest diagnostic score in PECTOA was his collapse diagnostic, which was rated at 34%. For those unfamiliar with PECOTA’s diagnostics, heres what the BP glossary has to say about the collapse rate.
For hitters, Collapse Rate is the percent chance that the player’s EqR/27 will decrease by at least 20% relative to the weighted average of his EqR/27 in his three previous seasons of performance. For pitchers, Collapse Rate is the percent chance that a pitcher’s EqERA will increase by at least 25% relative to his baseline EqERA over his past three seasons. High Collapse Rates are indicative of downside risk.
What concerns me about Sexson is that his power he been dropping the last couple of seasons and when a player like Sexson who has only has one skill set, power, you become a little tense when that skill starts to fade. In his best years Sexson’s ISO, or isolated power which is (SLG - AVG), hovered around the mid .270’s.
Richie Sexson ISO numbers from 2005-2007
| Year | ISO |
|---|---|
| 2005 | .278 |
| 2006 | .240 |
| 2007 | .202 |
Fangraphs has a nice chart of Sexson’s ISO right here, Sexon’s ISO is still above the ML-average but I don’t like the trend. Right now if you compared Sexson to our starting 1B Ryan Klesko, you would find that Klesko is actually more valuable. Sexson’s huge slump this year has really done a number on his stats. Comparing by VORP between the two, Klesko rates at (8.3) and Sexson at (-2.6) Sexson is performing under replacement for 2007.
So, is everything bad with Sexson? Mostly, I don’t like the chances of Sexson’s player-type aging well. I haven’t seen him on TV much this year so I don’t know if his swing has slowed down or whats happening to him. Maybe a Mariners fan or someone familiar with him could chime in? His LD% is down this year so maybe something is up with his bat? Line drives tend to fall for hits 75% of the time. I also don’t like the declining power in a one dimensional player who can’t do much else, he’s a bad fielder (costing you about 9 runs per 150 games according to the newest UZR) and a bad baserunner.
If Sexson has one saving grace this year it’s his super low BABIP. BABIP usually hovers around .300 for the average hitter but this year Sexson has a cellar dweller BABIP of (.210) more of Sexson’s hits theoretically should have found holes in the defense. In the context of BABIP he’s been very unlucky this year and should finish better than his current stats indicate. I guess also based on contract, Sexson would be a low-risk scenario if he came very cheap. After 2008 he’s a free agent.
Trading Sexson makes perfect sense for Seattle, with Adam Jones tearing up AAA, trading Sexson opens up a spot for him on the big club. A Sexson-for-Morris deal would have to include another prospect from Seattle because the salaries don’t match up between Morris and Sexson. Unless that prospect included something great like Clement or Balentien with SF sending back a relief arm, I would pass on this one. It doesn’t make sense for the Giants to take on another older player with question marks.
If the Giants plan on playing another guy at first this year I’d like to just see them call up AAA Scott McClain and just let him go. He’s not much of a prospect because he’s old at 35 but he’s been hitting a bunch of HR’s this year in Fresno. Maybe a Jack Cust-lite? I like seeing career minor league journeymen getting a chance.
Comment Starter: Thumbs up / Thumbs down to a Sexson for Morris trade?
July 26th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Actually, it is pitchers who tend to regress to .300 BABIP (some like to use .290 but the book I trust use .300; and I think I just read a BP book stating .300 too). No solid theory on hitters other than most hitters have a career BABIP level that they establish and then that becomes their mean point. Obviously, if it is not high enough to begin with, the team would drop him at some point before allowing him to have a career.
Here is an analysis of Sexson by Ron Shandler for ESPN Insider (probably subscription needed so I’ll highlight): http://insider.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?page=shandler717
He goes over Sexson’s component skills and finds that his BABIP this year is much lower than the past three years (hitters tend to stick to mean of recent history) and that his line drive% is down also, from 18% to 14%, which means less hits as line drives becomes hits much more often than GB or FB. Improvements in both would increase his second half stats.
Also, his component skills - BB%, CT%, PX, xBA (walk rate, contact rate, power index he uses, and expected BA) - are actually better first half of 2007 vs. 2006, so he is actually ahead this year of where he was last year and last year he hit .308 BA, 20 HR and 52 RBI in the second half. Plus he hit .337 after August 1st.
“Given that his underlying skills are still right in line with his career marks, there’s reason to believe Sexson will rebound again in 2007 — perhaps not to last year’s lofty levels, but at least to his usual standards. Acquiring him at a discount from a discouraged owner now could pay off nicely for your team down the stretch.”
Of course, this is for fantasy baseball, but it could apply to reality as well. The Giants could trade for him to get his value and then either trade him again in the off-season, after presumably losing Morris’s salary in the trade, and get good prospects for him once he brings up his overall numbers, or he could just be our 1B in 2008, he provides right-handed power that we currently don’t have, but probably doesn’t play 1B that well and you know Sabean loves the defense at 1B (Snow and Niekro were good 1B). Then we get picks for him in 2009 draft.
McClain is OK, but at 35, he’s the Brian Dallimore of 2007, he won’t do much up here and if he did, it won’t be for long. I would rather bring up Ishikawa again and see what he can do, at least we know he’ll play good defense there and maybe he can learn something from the lefties on our team, Bonds, Roberts, Klesko in particular, since they both walk a lot and hit for power. If Niekro wasn’t injured again, I would platoon him with Ishikawa up here once Klesko is traded.
Ishikawa’s not a premier prospect anymore, but his hitting in San Jose indicates that whatever hitting skills he had before goint to AA was not lost in Connecticut, just buried under the crud of their stadium. Just play him up here and see how he does, maybe he’ll be like Brandon Webb, can’t do much down in the minors, but come up to the majors and do well. Probably not, but at least we’ll be playing some sort of a prospect with some potential, instead of a washed up AAAA minor leaguer like McClain (no offense intended).
And if he doesn’t do well, he’ll get some more MLB experience, maybe hunger for it more, giving him more motivation, and we start him in AAA next season. He’s still only 23 years old, so it’s not like there couldn’t be more development time before bringing him up, there are plenty of prospects who take until 25-26 before shining in the majors, so you never know.
July 26th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Hi OGC,
You’re right that hitters tend to have more influence on their own BABIP than pitchers do. For example, Derek Jeter has a career BABIP of .364. Sexson’s career BABIP is .299, so he’s still underperformed on that area this year.
Thanks for the hitter BABIP correction, I should have been more clear in what I was trying to say. The average BABIP for hitters tends to be around .300 in MLB.
I agree on the LD%, which I noted originally, if I recall correctly it’s the lowest it’s ever been for Sexson, since we both know that line drives go for hits about 75% of the time it’s easy to see why Sexson has scuffled this year. Lower LD%, horrible BABIP = a bad year.
I don’t like players like Sexson with basically one skill set, once he starts to age and lose bat speed, he’s going to have a hard time. I would be interested to look at Sexson’s contact rate this year and previous years, do you know of a resource with contact rate stats?
I’m not sure what to think of Ishikawa anymore, he’s struggled in the minors and I’m not sure if he’s deserving of a call up right now. I also thought he was hurt right now or something?
July 27th, 2007 at 2:08 am
This was a very informative post, by you both.
I am wondering if this “bad year” by Sexson isn’t the same thing that has happened to the Giants (Aurilia, Roberts, Durham, Omar in particular). Just as Sexson is expected to bounce back to the mean, aren’t these 4 guys also expected to bounce back to the mean - and thereby raise their BAs by about 25 points? I don’t have access to the stats to answer my question.
July 27th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Hey Frank,
Here’s the BABIP’s for the players you listed.
BABIP’s for Aurilia, Roberts, Durham, and Vizquel
Aurilia - .270 (Career BABIP of .297)
Roberts - .310 (Career BABIP of .302)
Durham - .261 (Career BABIP of .310)
Vizquel - .276 (Career BABIP of .299)
Aurilia and Vizquel are getting close to their career BABIP’s while Durham is still the furthest away from the players you’ve listed. Durhams LD% has taken a hit this year too (16.7% in 2006 and just 11% this year which is terrible). What’s hurting Durham the most is that he’s hitting more flyballs this year and they aren’t leaving the park like they were last year. In 2006 16% of Durhams flyballs left the park compared to just 6.6% this year, thats a huge drop.
Meanwhile, Roberts is actually considered “lucky” this year in terms of his BABIP, he’s both exceeding the league average and his own career average.
The difference between these Giants and Sexson, is that Sexson is vastly under his career BABIP and the league average. Durham, Vizquel, and Aurilia should see a slight correction in their numbers this year but Sexson should have the biggest correction, if it happens.
July 28th, 2007 at 1:47 am
The best one I know (and you have to do math in your head) is Fangraphs: http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=709&position=1B
Go to the middle section of stats, look at K% and subtract from 1. Thus, in 2003 his contact rate was “1 - 24.9%” or 75.1%, which is pretty low, the minimum you want to see in a hitter. 2004 he missed most of the season, so don’t bother. In 2005, 29.9% means 70.1% contact rate. In 2006, 26.1% means 73.9% contact rate. And this year, 22.4% or 77.6%, the best contact rate in years, so it means that he is actually putting more balls into play, about 25 more balls than last year if he continues at this rate. For his career, 26.4% means 73.6% contact rate, so he’s hitting above this year.
Ishikawa has been struggling in Dodd Stadium - which I’ve shown to be a stadium detrimental to power hitters - but has been clobbering the ball around in San Jose, just as good as he did two seasons ago, which means that he didn’t lose his hitting skills, it was just being masked by the stinkage that is Dodd Stadium.
According to a study I’ve seen, they found that typically - for pitchers - their HR/FlyBall ratio will regress to the mean of 10%. I assume that for hitters, something similar to BABIP happens: a hitter establishes his own level that he regresses to.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Oh, and what Chris notes on BABIP is spot on: the others are pretty close to their career numbers, so it might just be a “bad” year where they end up under for the season, whereas Sexson is so far below that he should rebound the rest of this season, particularly since his key hitting skills appear to be still intact and not declining (or gone).