The Giants never develop any young hitters. That’s a constant criticism of the Giants and one that’s not entirely unfounded. The Giants haven’t developed hitters — good hitters — at the same rate that they’ve developed good pitchers. Part of this could be that the Giants have always focused on drafting pitching and then attempting — I say attempting — to trade them for valuable hitters. Whether or not this strategy has worked out really isn’t important for this post but the Giants have had trouble acquiring or developing young above average hitters.
We all know the old familiar names of Todd Linden, Lance Niekro, Damon Minor, Calvin Murray, Dante Powell, Jacob Cruz, Tony Torcato, and so on and so forth. But something very strange has been happening this year in foggy city of San Francisco — The Giants have a hitter, farm developed, who’s actually, wait for it … hitting!
Enter, Fred Lewis.
Many Giants fans have always had a soft spot for Fred Lewis. He was always a patient hitter in a system that seemed to be full of hackers — career minor league OBP of .377. He hit for a little pop and was speedy, despite never swiping bags at a great rate in the minors. Fred was your typical ‘toolsy’ prospect. Lots of developing tools but not always the results that you would want from those tools. He was a multi-sport athlete growing up and because he never focused on baseball completely until he went to college, he was always considered to be a little raw.
The Giants drafted Lewis in the 2nd round of the 2002 draft, 66th overall, and began his minor league career playing for the short-season Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. From 2002 and onward Lewis gradually climbed his way through the minor leagues. He got a cup of coffee with the Giants in ’06 and in ’07 he netted 157 successful AB’s in which he hit (.287/.374/.408) with a memorable game or two mixed in. Lewis was heading into the ’08 season as a 4th OF that could play all three positions and give players like Roberts or Winn a breather now and then. Instead, Lewis was moved to a starting role after Dave Roberts went down very early in the season with a knee injury that he’s still rehabilitating. Setting aside the unfortunate injury, this couldn’t have helped Fred Lewis any more. Roberts is 36 this season and if he was healthy, the Giants would have played him regularly much like they’ve done Durham and Aurilia. After all, Roberts is earning $6.5M this year and the team would surely want to play him to keep his trade value up. The idea fits with the past behaviors of the Giants as a franchise.
The Giants moved Lewis into the leadoff spot and he’s adapted very well to the role. In nearly one-half of a full season Lewis has hit (.276/.356/.458). That’s pretty close to what Lewis has done in the minor leagues (.282/.377/.420). His OBP has dropped a little but he’s hitting for more power. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Having a slightly above 800 OPS left fielder isn’t anything special.” but consider the context of the Giants, a team that’s had problems developing hitting talent, and Lewis looks a little better. But, Lewis also stacks up well against other left fielders in the National League.
Lewis is an above average LF right now and that’s something to be proud of. Let’s look at some numbers.
Here are the top left fielders in the National League by OPS+ (Minimum of 200 PA’s)
Cnt Player **OPS+** PA Year Age
+----+-----------------+--------+---+----+---+
1 Pat Burrell 156 272 2008 31
2 Jason Bay 142 287 2008 29
3 Matt Holliday 135 227 2008 28
4 Adam Dunn 132 262 2008 28
5 Ryan Braun 129 284 2008 24
6 Alfonso Soriano 123 232 2008 32
7 Fred Lewis 112 253 2008 27
8 Carlos Lee 111 272 2008 32
9 Luis Gonzalez 108 206 2008 40
10 Skip Schumaker 106 244 2008 28
11 Scott Hairston 95 212 2008 28
12 Juan Pierre 74 232 2008 30
13 Eric Byrnes 71 200 2008 32
Currently Lewis ranks 7th, ahead of Carlos Lee who’s making $12M this year and $18.5M next year. Lee plays terrible defense and could eventually have to leave the OF due to his body size. Remember that OPS+ only judges if a hitter is better than league average or not. It doesn’t take into account position that the player plays, defense, or baserunning. Purely on the basis of hitting, at this point in the season, Lewis is hitting as well as Carlos Lee.
Judging Lewis only on his hitting ability is a little unfair because he’s swiped 12 bags out of 14 attempts this year. You’ll notice that many of the hitters on our ERA+ list are plodding slugger types. Guys who mash the ball but don’t run much. Hitters like — Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, and Carlos Lee — all fit that mold. Like he was in the minors, Lewis is more of a guy with a little power, good OBP, and with some speed — though his minor league SB-rate was never very good, this year he’s running well.
We can use a handy Baseball Prospectus metric called EqA to help us sort out our left fielders even more. EqA is desirable because it includes a baserunning component into it’s score, which should help Lewis’ value because he is adding value with his stolen bases. EqA works like a batting average, .260 is league average. So, a score of .300 indicates a better than league average player. It should also be said that EqA has no defensive component, so the defense of a player neither hurts or helps his score because it’s not included. The average EqA for a LF in major league baseball is .270, an above average hitter, which means that your team is probably hurting itself when they play a Juan Pierre-type player.
Here’s our 13 left fielders again, but sorted by EqA (Minimum of 200 PA’s)
# YEAR NAME POS PA EqA 1. 2008 Pat Burrell lf 272 .332 2. 2008 Jason Bay lf 287 .324 3. 2008 Adam Dunn lf 262 .311 4. 2008 Matt Holliday lf 227 .310 5. 2008 Ryan Braun lf 284 .293 6. 2008 Alfonso Soriano lf 232 .286 7. 2008 Skip Schumaker lf 244 .286 8. 2008 Fred Lewis lf 253 .282 9. 2008 Luis Gonzalez lf 206 .276 10. 2008 Carlos Lee lf 272 .274 11. 2008 Scott Hairston lf 212 .255 12. 2008 Juan Pierre lf 232 .253 13. 2008 Eric Byrnes lf 200 .225
Lewis is still in the middle of the pack for left fielders in the National League but check out his EqA score. It’s about 12 points above average for a left fielder. Surprisingly, Skip Schumaker got a nice boost on our EqA list, moving slightly ahead of Fred Lewis. The expensive Carlos Lee isn’t much better than your league average left fielder in baseball. Even with stolen bases added into a players value, Juan Pierre still isn’t any good. I’ll thank Ned in L.A. for trumping Sabes’ offer for Pierre.
We haven’t touched on defense yet but we can use Revised Zone Rating to rank our left fielders in an attempt to try and get a even better overall picture of how much they are helping or hurting their teams.
Year Last First BIZ Plays RZR OOZ 2008 Byrnes Eric 62 59 .952 11 2008 Holliday Matt T 74 70 .946 13 2008 Lewis Fred D 76 71 .934 19 2008 Pierre Juan 75 69 .920 24 2008 Bay Jason 98 87 .888 23 2008 Dunn Adam 105 93 .886 17 2008 Soriano Alfonso 79 69 .873 18 2008 Braun Ryan J 104 89 .856 24 2008 Burrell Pat 81 68 .840 26 2008 Lee Carlos 87 72 .828 28
Lewis got a nice bump by RZR. By Revised Zone Rating, he ranks as the 3rd best defensive LF in the National League. 76 balls were hit into Lewis’ “zone” and he turned 71 of them into outs.
A zone is defined as:
The areas on a ballfield in which at least 50% of batted balls are handled for outs. Zones are standardized and defined separately for each position.
Our defensive rankings confirm some of the popular notions of some of these players. Carlos Lee — is the move to 1B going to happen soon for Carlos? — and Pat Burrell are both at the bottom of the list. Ryan Bruan is most likely still learning his new OF position after being moved off of third base because of poor defense. The defensively challenged Dunn has been respectable. Juan Pierre got a big bump in his overall terms of value, but it’s probably not enough to offset his incredibly weak bat. It’s also amazing that Eric Brynes is the top defender in left field because before going on the DL, he had been playing with leg problems all year. He was a top LF defender last year.
When you combine all of Lewis’ abilities, he forms into a nice player. His bat is competent enough right now to play in left and he’s also adding some positive value with his speed. Defensively, for a guy with a mixed reputation in the OF, he’s doing very well. The knock on Lewis is that he’ll take weird routes sometimes and he has, but his foot speed is usually good enough for him to make adjustments on the fly. His arm profiles better for LF, too. It would be stretched in RF and might be passable in CF — although the Giants might not care too much since we had Dave Roberts and his noodle arm play most of CF last year.
Not a bad package for a team that’s struggled to produce above average hitters.
Is he likely to have continued success?
Lewis has been a great surprise this season but he has a few underlying signs that are just a little worrying. His batting line on the year has been aided by a higher than expected BABIP. His BABIP is currently at .356 which is really high for a guy that’s not knocking a ton of line drives. Lewis’ LD% is at 16.6% right now and if you crudely calculated his xBABIP (expected BABIP) it should be closer to .286 than the .356 it currently is. So, we could see Lewis take a slight dive at some point in the season but his above average defense will help him stay in the lineup. If Lewis could hover around league average production while in LF, the Giants will be getting great value.
Lewis’ higher than expected BABIP isn’t entirely flukey. It’s helped by his good foot speed and it’s one reason why it might not regress as harshly as someone with similar hitting stats but with lesser speed. Lewis is getting his fair share of infield hits this season, with an IFH% of 8%. Because of his foot speed, Lewis has beat out 7 infield hits this year. Speedsters like Ichiro routinely hit double digits on IFH% and Lewis, while not Ichiro fast, is taking advantage of his speed.
My only other concern with Lewis would be his K%. In the minors he was routinely right around 20% but this year he’s up to 26.7%. One reason could be that he’s hitting for more power and is changing his approach slightly, but he’s still a very patient hitter. Swinging less than your average hitter and swinging outside of the zone less than your average hitter. The good news is that his BB% is still pretty good and around the same levels that he established in the minor leagues.
—
Whew, that felt good.
As a Giants fan you rarely get the chance to write positively about a hitting prospect at the major league level but Fred Lewis is having a nice season to this point and has been a pleasant surprise. He’s always been high on tools and this year he’s making good on some of those tools. Lewis already 27 and he should be at peak physical condition, hopefully he can keep this level of production up for the next couple of years and continue to be of great value to the Giants. The season is still young and Lewis has a long way to go before he can successfully call this season a good year, but he’s made a great start.
Comment Starter: Did you expect Lewis to play this well, so far?
Outstanding analysis. Our Freddie impressed last year, and I hoped he would get the chance to do so this year. He is a late bloomer in many ways, but he seems like a quick study as well. His baserunning and fielding have greatly improved these last several weeks. (Good coaching?) I worry about his high K-rate. I can live with it if he keeps getting on base. He takes a lot of pitches, which I like in a leadoff guy. He’s 12th in the MLB in P/PA, I have to think his power numbers will improve with that selective approach. I could see Fred being our LF/leadoff hitter for the next several years (trade Roberts NOW!), esp. if we can get some pop from the other corner (Schierholz?).
First off, no, I didn’t expect him to do so well, I tip my cap off to him.
Some additional notes to a great post:
First, Lewis said in an extended interview with Baggarly last season that he doesn’t know where this story of him being raw and not baseball focused started, but he’s been playing baseball all his life and that’s always been his love.
About his SLG being higher, perhaps he’s finally reaching his potential. The Giants envisioned when they got him that he would initially be a leadoff type but then would become a middle of the lineup type of ballplayer with power, because of his tools. He’s also reaching that age when some hitters start to show power, like Niekro did, Bowker, now Horwitz (much like Niekro, was not envisioned a power hitter ever).
And just think, we could have had Carlos Lee a few years back, blocking Lewis’ way today.
Say, that brings up an interesting “What If?” If we had signed him, I doubt we would have signed Zito, so what would have been worse, having Lee but blocking Lewis, or what we currently have? Not sure what would be worse, because if we don’t have Zito, Morris might not have been traded and/or Misch would be the starter right now.
About OPS+, if you are getting that from Baseball-Reference.com, I believe that they use a position adjusted league average to calculate OPS+.
About EqA, for my clarification, I recall that BP manually set the average EqA to be .260, so when you say the average RF is .270, I just want to verify what that means. What I interpret that to mean is that, using .260 as the base, the EqA for RF in the league right now is averaging .270 (and not mean that they use a base of .270 for RF).
About Roberts or any other player deficient in some matter (like Grissom), it is not that teams don’t care, but sometimes you just deal with the situation you are given in terms of available free agents and the cash wherewithal to use. They needed an OF and that OF ideally plays CF because Bonds was in LF and Winn is more suited for RF, from what I’ve read about his defense. I’m sure Sabean would have loved to have gotten Rowand instead of Roberts that season, but that wasn’t the hand dealt him.
Again, great article on Lewis, keep up the good work.
Hey Mark,
>> His baserunning and fielding have greatly improved these last several weeks. (Good coaching?
Maybe Roberto Kelly has something to do with it? Cool statistic in that he’s 12th in pitches per PA, he seems patient enough to say in the leadoff spot and it’s something that’s always been a strength for him.
On a side note, I just discovered your beer blog, very cool! I’ve always wanted to home brew.
OGC,
>> First, Lewis said in an extended interview with Baggarly last season that he doesn’t know where this story of him being raw and not baseball focused started, but he’s been playing baseball all his life and that’s always been his love.
Good call, Martin. It’s probably one of those things that got stuck with him since he was a multi-sport athlete. I’ve always thought he looked “raw” at times but I’m no scout. He’s made nice progress regardless of how anyone wants to classify him.
>> Say, that brings up an interesting “What If?” If we had signed him, I doubt we would have signed Zito, so what would have been worse, having Lee but blocking Lewis, or what we currently have? Not sure what would be worse, because if we don’t have Zito, Morris might not have been traded and/or Misch would be the starter right now.
This is like one of those “What If” books where the Nazi’s actually won WWII and we are all speaking German
Tough question, though. And I think I’d have to take Lee? I dunno, I’m not sure if he’ll age well but he’s still an above-average hitter — albeit over payed, witness the power of the HR total. Zito hasn’t hit league-average yet, though he may, through some miracle. You can move Lee to first and let him play there, you can’t really do anything with Zito other than keep starting him.
>> About OPS+, if you are getting that from Baseball-Reference.com, I believe that they use a position adjusted league average to calculate OPS+.
I’m pretty sure that there is no positional adjustment for OPS+, at least that’s what the Wikipedia entry says and I can’t find anything on BB-Ref that states a positional adjustment. To my knowledge, it’s only league average and not positional average. So, a SS with a 100 OPS+ is much more valuable than a 1B with an 100 OPS+. Correct me if I’m wrong.
>> About EqA, for my clarification, I recall that BP manually set the average EqA to be .260, so when you say the average RF is .270, I just want to verify what that means. What I interpret that to mean is that, using .260 as the base, the EqA for RF in the league right now is averaging .270 (and not mean that they use a base of .270 for RF).
That’s correct. They set EqA to .260 but they include positional averages on their site. The average LF is hitting .270, meaning that it tends to be a position that has above-average offense. The average SS is hitting .248, meaning that the SS position tends to have below-average offense. So, if you’ve got a SS hitting .270 by EqA, you’re getting some great production for that position.
>> About Roberts or any other player deficient in some matter (like Grissom), it is not that teams don’t care, but sometimes you just deal with the situation you are given in terms of available free agents and the cash wherewithal to use. They needed an OF and that OF ideally plays CF because Bonds was in LF and Winn is more suited for RF, from what I’ve read about his defense. I’m sure Sabean would have loved to have gotten Rowand instead of Roberts that season, but that wasn’t the hand dealt him.
I also wonder if it was a poor job of defensive evaluation by the Giants — which would be odd, because they sometimes really place a lot of emphasis on defense, Omar, Matheny, JT Snow — and not necessarily putting them there because of need? I’m not sure many people thought Roberts could handle CF everyday anymore because of injuries and his arm. I’d rather have stuck Winn in CF. Then you could either look for a RF — I’m not going to go back and see who was available — or used Nate in RF. I’m really wondering whats going to happen with Roberts when he comes back. If I recall from the early part of this year, he didn’t like being platooned even though he’s never hit lefties in his career.
Thanks for commenting!
Great stuff, Chris, thanks for the analysis.
I’ve been extremely (pleasantly) surprised at Freddie’s performance this year. Kinda makes me wonder if he wasn’t languishing too long in the minors. (I haven’t looked up his minor league stats.) This is clearly a breakout year for him, and I can only assume he worked hard on his D, which seems to have improved dramatically over what we saw last year.
It’s also awesome to see FP’s best buddy dead last in offense among LFers. Warms those cockles, I tell ya!
If the Giants produce new players as talented as Chris, their future success is assured.
Bay City Ball’s translated line:
.350 / .423 / .647
18 HR / 68 RBI / 9 K / 28 BB
Could anchor the Giants BlogRoll for the next decade.
Fine, I’ll be that guy.
Lewis’ splits against lefties:
.156/.308/.219, ops+ 56. YIKES!
Granted the sample size is pretty small since he is routinely benched against southpaws, and he’s still young enough to figure it out, but if those numbers don’t improve, he’ll always be a platoon guy. Secondly, because he is so often benched against lefties his overall numbers are a little skewed.
That being said, I’m a big Freddie Lew fan and I hope to see him in a Giants uni for a long time to come.
El,
haha, thanks, I always imagined myself as a high OBP guy.
Mr Lomez,
Booo negativity! Booo, bad Mr Lomez, baaad.
You’re right though, Lewis has had trouble with lefties in the past. I can’t get my hands on his minor league splits right now but I’m sure they aren’t as bad as his current split. Like you said, the sample size is really small, 30-some AB’s, and as bad as the Giants are this year it doesn’t really hurt them to play Lewis against lefties. I would anyways.