Nasty Nate McLouth
In a mock fantasy draft a few weeks prior to the season I drafted Nate McLouth of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 23rd round. Numerous competitors laughed at the selection and, honestly, it was made with little conviction from my end. I needed to fill my outfielder quota and his numbers from a year ago made him look better than, say, Dave Roberts. Judging by the reactions upon making my selection it is safe to say that next to nobody thought McLouth would be the answer to the question: Who is the only player in the major leagues to have a hit in all of his team’s games?
Some might answer Hanley Ramirez, a statistical wunderkind quickly developing into a super-duper-star. Or, perhaps, Chipper Jones, who currently boasts a .453 batting average. Maybe even Chase Utley, who has an impressive home run streak, let alone a hitting streak. But Nate McLouth? Really? A guy who admitted in an FSN interview prior to the season opener that he was told he had very little job security coming into spring training?
Coming into tonight’s game against the Marlins, McLouth is riding the waves of a 19-game hitting streak. His slash line currently rests at .375/.444/.639, resulting in an OPS of 1.082 and an OPS+ of 184. After creating 91 runs in 243 games (0.37/gm), over the last two seasons, he has already created 23 (1.21/gm). His streak is the longest to open a season since 2006, when Edgar Renteria opened with a 23-gamer. Renteria’s streak came to an end against a Marlins combination of Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Randy Messenger.
As chance would have it, not only does McLouth face the pesky fish tonight, but he faces Ricky Nolasco! Ah, baseball.
How has McLouth, a guy with a pre-2008 slash line of .249/.319/.429, been so stellar? A quick look at a few graphs will help illustrate this answer:
McLouth has drastically cut down on his strikeouts, from 23.4% in 2007 to just 12.5% this year. His BABIP has gone from .274, .275, and .301 in prior seasons all the way up to .403 at this juncture. The final graph, detailing his groundball, flyball, and line drive rates, shows that McLouth has increased his frequency of putting the ball on the ground while decreasing his percentage of balls in the air.
It is not very likely that he, even with his speed, will maintain anything in the vicinity of a .403 BABIP all season but his performance thus far has been nothing short of remarkable.
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The combination of Nate McLouth, Xavier Nady, and Jason Bay (the 2nd, 11th, and 20th most productive hitters in the National League based on WPA), is reminiscent of the outfield trio of Mattie Alou, Roberto Clemente, and Willie Stargell of the late 1960s (with Nyjer Morgan as a Mannie Mota-like fourth outfielder). but then, as now, the stellar outfield did no more than make up for a weak-hitting infield, leaving Pirates batting no better than average.
The difference was the staring rotation; with the possible exception of Ian Snell, the other pitchers–Zach Duke, Paul Maholm and Tom Gorzelanny are in no way reminiscent of Steve Blass, Doc Ellis, Bob Moose and Bob Veale of the earlier era. The earlier group won division titles, pennants and even a World Series. The later one will do well to better a .500 average.
Tom, do you really expect Nate McLouth and Xavier Nady to be the 2nd and 11th most productive hitters in the NL at the end of the season? Nady is notoriously a quick starter as it is when he has his highest SLG, OPS, HR and total hits. Granted, he has played 26 more games in April then other months, but his OPS decreases from .833 to .729 in his career monthly splits from April to July. In August he hops to .803 before swooning to .721.
I just cannot realistically see McLouth and Nady being in the top 15 in terms of productivity come the end of the season, which is why I wrote this now. His production thus far has been remarkable but is not very likely to keep up down the stretch.
The only reason I bring it up is I think it’s a bit premature to compare these guys to Alou, Clemente, and Stargell.
Ironically, based on similarity scores through their respective ages, McLouth is very comparable to Felipe Alou. Nady is very comparable to Craig Monroe and Jeffrey Hammonds. Jason Bay is in pretty solid company with Geoff Jenkins, David Justice, and Kevin Mitchell.
These scores are not perfect but we’ll need to revisit where these guys are in a few months to see where their production levels go.
You’re certainly right about one thing; that regression to the mean will inevitably bring down the statistics of the Pirates’ outfielders over the course of the season.
That said, I have a few observations to make. The first is that it’s obvious (to me at least), that Nate McLouth is having a breakout season that basically renders his last three years almost meaningless. His current stats are (Mattie) Alou-like. Whether they’ll stay that way or settle down at some lower level is open to question. But given the “discontinuity” between this year and last, I wouldn’t conclude that he was not Mattie Alou by “blending” this year’s statistics with previous years’. Instead, I’d overweight this year’s results in the calculation.
Nady does typically get off to a strong start, but this year’s April is good even compared to his own previous starts. Again, I wouldn’t extrapolate April over a whole season except to say that I expect at least part of the “2008″ premium to carry over to most succeeding months on a like-for-like basis, so that each month this year will be stronger than their equivalents in 2006 or 2007. And if he can avoid his usual September slump, I expect his batting average to rise by twenty or more points over the previous years’. I believe Nady to be the other “sleeper” in terms of star power for the Pirates, and like him personally and professionally far better than Adam LaRoche. He’s also a better fit with the Pittsburgh culture. Management should try harder to sign Nady long-term and less hard to sign LaRoche.
As for Bay, Brian O’Neill of the Post-Gazette last year found a pretty strong comparison between Giles-Bay and Stargell over the preceding eight years (before Bay’s weak 2007). O’Neill did point out that the comparison might not continue much longer because Stargell exhibited strength well into his 30s that is uncharacteristic of ballplayers (he was a factor in the 1979 pennant race and the World Series itself at the age of 39). But it’s something to hope for with regard to Bay, at least through his 2009 contract extension.
Maybe it is a bit early in the game to be making these comparisons (analogies is more the way I think about them). But I’m not sure they’re premature even if they’re arguably a stretch. And it is the early bird that gets the worm, so if we collectively “catch on” on this site faster than the rest of the baseball world, it could be a feather in our caps.
Tom,
I definitely agree that this has the makings of a breakout season for McLouth if for no other reason than he will be gaining confidence. I’m trained to avoid small sample sizes, though, and so I can’t look at his April stats thus far and make any type of comparison to Pirate greats. In a couple of months if he is still posting these numbers, or numbers similar but a bit regressed, then we will have more to work with. For now, though, I think it’s premature to even say that this is a breakout season for McLouth. If he hits a severe cold spell his numbers will take significant hits, which comes with the instability of these small sample sizes.
I also don’t think we can render his previous seasons meaningless YET, if for no other reason than the small sample size issue. It’s only been 19 games. If he goes 20 for his next 100, his batting average will drop by just about 100 points, from .375 to .278.
You know the Pirates better than I do but I’m not going to put Xavier Nady or Nate McLouth in the same sentence as Pirates greats until I see a full season of great production. It’s safer to say that if they can keep their current production levels up for the entire season then they will be reminiscent of that Alou-Clemente-Stargell outfield; 19 games into April, with a notorious quick starter that has historically declined as the months progress and a hot hitter right now with a ridiculously high BABIP and increase in GB%, won’t convince me though. That’s all I’m saying.
It could happen, and I’ll be the first to buy you a Diet Dr. Pepper if it does, but I’ve watched a lot of Pirates games over the last few years (Penn State gives me Phillies and Pirates games) and I’m just very skeptical things will be vastly different for Nady and that this production level/potential for a breakout year will keep up for Nate.
Eric,
Sorry for getting a little off track here but one of your last lines in the post regarding speed and BABIP sparked a question in my mind. What do you make of someone who posts much higher BABIP against RHP as opposed to LHP? I’ve noticed a couple of players (Ichiro for one) who has a pretty drastic career split and don’t know what to make of it.
Drew,
By all means get off track! This is for any discussion regarding anything in the article. With regards to the Ichiro example, it appears that his career numbers break down like this:
vs RHP: .324/.371/.426, BABIP of .348
vs LHP: .353/.395/.438, BABIP of .376
One factor to keep in mind when looking at that is the amount of PA vs each type. Ichiro has exactly 3800 PA, as of right now, against RHP while just 1472 against LHP. His BABIP may be higher against lefties due to the vast differential in opportunities.
Another factor could be the way each type of pitcher throws to him. Ichiro is a 55.2% groundball hitter and has a swing that allows him somewhat of a head start to first base as soon as the ball comes off of the bat. Due to this he theoretically has an advantage in recording infield singles. Inside pitches are much more easily pulled, so if RHP are trying to jam him he would hit the ball on the ground towards first base or the 1B-side of second base. These grounders are much harder to beat out.
On the same note, if LHP are pitching him away and he is able to go with the ball it would be much tougher for a SS/3B to throw him out on balls either in between the positions or up the middle. David Appelman may have the RHP/LHP splits in terms of GB% and FB% which may or may not help shed light.
Again these are not concrete answers but rather some factors to keep in mind. I’m currently building my Pitch FX database from 2007 and so far in 2008 so this is something I can definitely explore in the near future.
Dave C, you’re a Mariners guy, is there anything you’ve seen that could help answer this query?
Since 2002 for R/L batted ball splits for Ichiro.
vs L : LD – 22%, GB – 58%, FB – 20%
vs R: LD – 21%, GB 54%, FB 25%
David,
So LHP’s in general do a better job of keeping the ball on the ground. Would it be to forward to assume that is the case because of the reputation lefties have being soft tossers. (Somewhere I think Bill James said that it is true that lefties don’t throw as hard as righties) Therefore, with few hard throwing lefties as a group they know they need to keep the ball on the ground to succeed?
Sorry, I wasn’t being clear, that’s just for Ichiro.
Drew, yeah, that’s Ichiro’s LHP/RHP breakdown. Ichiro has a higher GB% and lower FB% against lefties which COULD lead to his .376 BABIP against them vs .348 against righties. It isn’t necessarily the end-all answer but you would figure that a guy with his speed and propensity for hitting ground balls would leg out more hits with more balls on the ground.
I would tend to think a combination of his vast differential in sample size vs RHP than LHP, his higher GB% vs LHP than RHP, as well as something we would have to investigate in terms of where he is pitched by both pitcher-types and where he hits his grounders.
You have to wonder if Ichiro would be better off trying to put the ball on the ground more against RHP.
Last year, and his rookie year, he had higher BABIP vs RHP and every year in between higher vs LHP.