Fukudome Lives
2008 was a roller coaster ride of a rookie season for Kosuke Fukudome. He started off strong, hitting a game tying home run in the bottom of the 9th in his major league debut that endeared him to Cubs fans from the start. He hit .327/.436/.480 in April and rode that hot start to an All-Star game appearance.
The second half was not as kind, however. He hit just .217/.314/.326 after the All-Star game, pounding the ball into the ground and showing little power. He lost playing time after the team acquired Jim Edmonds, and was basically a reserve in September. His ability to hit for enough power to play regularly became a regular topic of discussion, and the team went out and signed Milton Bradley over the winter, pushing Fukodome into a center field platoon with Reed Johnson.
He didn’t exactly inspire hope and confidence that a rebound was coming with a poor performance in the World Baseball Classic, either. For a lot of Cubs fans, his second half collapse and struggles in the WBC were part of a trend that showed Fukodome simply wasn’t a very good hitter.
So much for that. Fukodome is hitting .357/.491/.714 in his first 55 plate appearances of the season. He has nine extra base hits in 12 games. To put that in perspective, he had 11 extra base hits after the all-star break last year. He’s almost matched that in two weeks of the 2009 season. Fukodome has excellent plate discipline, so when he’s hitting for power as well, he’s a very good player.
Sometimes, a slump is just a slump. Pitchers didn’t figure out Fukodome last year – he just had a bad couple of months. It happens. The Cubs still look like the best team in teh National League to me, and their center fielder is one of the reasons why.
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But the question that gets raised is : How do you know that last year’s first half — and really, it was only a great April — wasn’t the fluke?
Obviously, fukudome’s not a .215 hitter, but there’s no real evidence to suggest he will pit up anything more than an 800 OPS or so in the majors — at best.
An .800 OPS from a good defensive outfielder is a hell of a player.
I think he’ll be good for a better-than-800 OPS this year, but Dave, I think the results this year will prove that defensively he’s subpar. His reaction off the bat is the worst on the team, including Soriano, and he looks to have regressed in the defensive department this season. Given his age, that can’t be much of a surprise, but I have a feeling he’ll be -5 to -10 defensively this season.
Which still, needless to say, in CF with an .800-.850 OPS is “a hell of a player.”
Isn’t his value entirely dependent on a successful transition to CF? He was a stellar defensive RF last year but thus far he has not shown the same ability to field capably in center. The sample is quite small (~130 in) but his UZR in CF is weak.
As long he continues to pound everything into the ground, a .340 wOBA is probably what we should expect going forward, correct? That level of offense with passable CF defense makes for a useful player but I think you’re overrating him a bit in this article.
Fuk[U]dome.
Fukudome is successful when he lays off the slider down and in and the changeup low and away. Last year when he struggled he just couldn’t find a balance between being aggressive and being too patient. He just didn’t look comfortable at the plate and I’m sure some of the transition to America didn’t help when things started to get rough at the plate. If Fukudome can OPS .800 the Cubs will be in very good shape.
To echo what Sam said, why do you think that the 2nd half struggles last year were the fluke and not the first 2 weeks of this season? (A serious question, and one I’m struggling with too).
I’m not arguing that his April performances (either last year or this year) are his real talent level. I’m simply pointing out the flaw of trend analysis that has become too popular, where people find patterns in what is actually randomness.
Fukudome had a bad few months in the second half. That turned into “he’s been figured out”. If those bad few months had been spaced out differently, they would have come to different conclusions.
We now have ~650 plate appearances in the majors to judge Fukudome on, as well as his Japanese performances. The sum of that data points us in the direction of him being an above average hitter.
Trying to reach a different conclusion based on a smaller subsection of the data is generally a bad idea. In this case, it led a lot of people to write a lot of wrong things about Fukudome’s performance going forward.
This seems like a lot of double speak:
“We now have ~650 plate appearances in the majors to judge Fukudome on, as well as his Japanese performances. The sum of that data points us in the direction of him being an above average hitter.
Trying to reach a different conclusion based on a smaller subsection of the data is generally a bad idea”
But that isn’t the data you are using to reach the conclusion in your article. You don’t cite his stats in Japan or his career MLB line (.265/.370/.405). Instead, after telling others how they were wrong for saying he was broken based on just the second half, you quote 55 ABs to say “It’s all good!”.
Maybe you were writing this with the intention that everyone should go research his career but that isn’t what you presented in the post above. At best you were sensationalizing your point using those 55 ABs; at worst your subject to the same criticism for citing 55 ABs as proof that “Pitchers didn’t figure out Fukodome last year”.
I don’t think this is double speak. The point is straight forward: he’s been a .775 OPS hitter in the majors and his talent level in Japanese ball suggests that he might be a little better than that. Conclusion: his true talent level is about .775-.800 OPS.
The point of the article is that looking for explanations of what may be essentially random data is a pernicious practice in baseball analysis. Did pitchers figure Fukodome out? That was the popular explanation of the change in his performance. And most people accepted it because it explained their observations. However, few people bothered to do an independent test of the hypothesis–for example, were there indications that this was more than just random variation? Were there indicators that this was just random variation? The answer to the second question is “yes”: Fukodome had a crap BABIP in August and September. If you’re reading this, I don’t need to tell you about BABIP.
@philosofool
Dave says: “I’m simply pointing out the flaw of trend analysis that has become too popular, where people find patterns in what is actually randomness.”
My problem is that his main post contains nothing but quotes about short term analysis to counter what he terms short term analysis of Fukudome’s second half. I sure this isn’t what Dave based his opinion on but it’s in poor taste to argue faulty logic citing the same type of faulty logic. No where in the main post does he say we should look toward the recent 3 year history or career averages for a better idea of Fukudome’s talent level. He simply cites 55 ABs.
It was poorly written and he shouldn’t be surprised that people are questioning it.
You know exactly what he’s getting at, yet you’re criticizing him for not holding your hand and walking you through it? I don’t understand this. All the authors here make it a point to write short and sweet. There are some general ideas that they just have to assume people grasp. There’s no need to go through the boilerplate on every article.
So Dave should only write for people who already understand the principles? That seems ridiculous on the face of it.
Based on what Dave actually wrote, I could just as easily revise his conclusion: “Sometimes, a peak is just a peak. Pitchers did figure out Fukodome last year – he just had a good couple of months. It happens.” It’s still entirely inline with the actually stats he cites sans his personal scouting report on Fukudome. His points out that too many people rely on short term stats to determine patterns — so obviously he isn’t inferring that his whole audience approaches it from the opposite perspective.
Dave calls out a flaw in his article and then uses the exact same kind of analysis to support his conclusion.
Fukud[O]me. Sorry. I don’t need to be nit-picky but this is a fantastic site that should get the spelling right.
Azruavatar pretty much got what I was questioning. My beef, or really, my question, was with the following graf Dave wrote:
>>>>
So much for that. Fukodome is hitting .357/.491/.714 in his first 55 plate appearances of the season. He has nine extra base hits in 12 games. To put that in perspective, he had 11 extra base hits after the all-star break last year. He’s almost matched that in two weeks of the 2009 season.
>>>>
It just seemed silly to me to use his 50 some-odd at-bats this April and 100 or so last April to dismiss all of his second-half struggles last season.
If the point was to say that we shouldn’t make judgments on small sample sizes, well, yeah, that’s fine. Obviously. But the flip side is we can’t sit here and say with certainty, “So much for that,” using the small sample of this April. It’s just a hot month.
And now my second beef is this:
>>>>
Fukodome has excellent plate discipline, so when he’s hitting for power as well, he’s a very good player.
>>>>
How do we know that Fukudome will hit for any power? He’s been in the majors for seven months and in five of them, he hasn’t been able to top a .400 SLG. (I’m considering his .404 and .402 in last May and June essentially .400 for the sake of argument.)
Isn’t this like saying in June of 2007 that Joey Gathright will be an All-Star if he maintains that walk rate?
“How do we know that Fukudome will hit for any power? He’s been in the majors for seven months and in five of them, he hasn’t been able to top a .400 SLG. (I’m considering his .404 and .402 in last May and June essentially .400 for the sake of argument.)”
Ignore all the ways that you can chop up streaks of performance from him. Those are pointless, which is point of this article. Here’s how we know he won’t hit for a lot of power and won’t be Willie Bloomquist either: He has a career .140 ISO and a 10% HR/FB. That’s slightly below average power, but that’s not powerlessness either.
In the Cardinals series, Fukudome looked the same as last year right up until Adam Wainwright set one up on a tee for him middle of the plate in, which he barely got over the RF fence. For some reason they were trying to pound him inside all series and whenever they missed with their location he had a very hittable pitch. Not quite sure why anyone would prefer to work inside rather than outside to a hitter who’s bailing out of the box on his swing.
To be fair, barely over the fence does not mean he didn’t hit it well. The average home run distance last year was 391.4 ft in the MLB. It’s not common for people to wallop the ball 14 rows up. Also, in the smallest of sample sizes you pick one series to judge whether he’s changed or not?
I’m not convinced Fukudome will do well this year, but this April is certainly encouraging. He’s hitting the ball with authority, pulling it, and handling the outside pitch decently (at least from what I can see). Now his defense, that remains to be seen how good or bad he actually is in center.
I’m not trying to claim you can tell anything from a series’ worth of stats, and if I was his stats from that series were .385/.438/.846. What I’m saying is that the big difference I saw in him was that pitchers were attacking him with what seems to me to be a really poor gameplan, and they weren’t executing it anyway. It’s perfectly possible that other teams have pitched him well and that he’s driven some quality pitches, but in at least one of the series that supposedly proves he’s going to bust out, he was the beneficiary of some really awful pitching.
Pitchers didn’t figure out Fukudome last year? It was just a 3 1/2 month slump? A slump in which he couldn’t make contract, couldn’t hit for power and couldn’t get on base. But just a slump. Really? What do you base that on? The fact that he’s hit well for two weeks in 2009? Sometimes hot streaks are just hot streaks. Why are the last 3 1/2 months in 2008 just a slump while the first two weeks of good hitting are the real deal?
Oliver’s unregressed MLEs
year age ba ob sa woba
2002 25 304 353 444 349
2003 26 258 331 461 341
2004 27 225 299 424 313*
2005 28 277 360 458 357
2006 29 296 365 502 374
2007 30 243 363 383 338*
2008 31 252 344 367 321 Cubs
In his two down years in Japan he had fewer ABs than normal. I know he missed a lot of 2007 with an elbow injury, I would guess he was hurt in 2004 also.
If Fukudome can put up a 350-360 wOBA in cf, that would be very good, above average but not much in rf. His Japanese stats show a guy who can hit 45-50 do+tr, 11-15 hr. He did not show that kind of power last year, but he might rebound, but at age 32 he’s past the general peak.
Fair enough Cpebbles. I probably overreacted to your comment for some reason or another. Your point is well taken that pitching Fukudome low and over the inside portion of plate (i.e. not the the corners) is not a great idea. And that Wainwright pitch was pretty fat.
Doesn’t this same analysis basically apply to Melky Cabrera? Hot April ‘08, terrible the rest of the year. Presently rockin’ a great line (that represents a grand total of 7 hits – 4HRs). Hey, look at that! Melky’s actually a good player!
No, he’s not. He’s just hot right now. And it’s entirely possible the same is true of Fukudome (who, regardless, is the superior player).
If by same analysis you mean “look at his past performance, as a whole, without ad hoc conjectures to explain random patterns in the data” then the answer is “yes” we can use the same analysis. Let’s do that: Melky Cabrera has 1600 PA sample of MLB performance with a .711 OPS. Therefore, he’s a terrible hitter.
That’s not what you’e done in the above silly comment and you either ignored or failed to understand the argument of the original post.
How silly of me to suggest that, at the end of this season, perhaps a review of Fukudome’s overall performance, as a whole, without ad hoc conjectures to explain random patterns in the data, might well tell a different story.
Gosh, philosofool, thanks for setting me straight!
Much of Fukudome’s value lies in his ability to put up a big OBP and play defense. He had 3 consecutive seasons over .430 OBP in Japan, which is stellar. To just be able to put up something between .380 and .410 makes him very valuable. His defensive numbers this year aren’t great, but they are a small sample size. Even in RF, a .800 OPS driven by a .400 OBP with the 13.1 UZR Fukudome put up last year would make him a valuable piece. If he can put up a UZR between 0 and 5 in CF with taht same .800 OPS and .400 OBP, he is worth significantly more than he is paid.
As the season draws to a close, Fukudome has a .347 wOBA and has been good for 2.4 WAR. It now does appear that Fukudome’s brutal 2nd half of 2008 was a nasty slump (or, if you prefer, an adjustment/counter-adjustment period).
He’s got the on-base skills Dave was talking about, though he’s not hitting for much power. I remain a bit puzzled by Dave’s use of ~55PAs as indicative of… much of anything, but in the end he appears to have been correct.
Looks like it is what it is with Fukudome given his steady BABIP in his first 2 years, a .260/.370/.420 type guy. Obviously a good CF, but not exactly what the Cubs thought they would get.