The Sophomore Curse
Every year the dreaded sophomore curse rears its ugly head. Not even star shorstop Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado Rockies was immune from its influence. His sophomore season was the only time in his five-year career that he dipped below 5.6 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) – and it was a big dip to 0.9 WAR.
With the 2012 Major League Baseball season about to begin there is understandably a lot of excitement over some of the 2011 rookies who appear poised for a true breakout year. Let’s try and sift through some of the names and see who might be in for a big year and who might be in for a big… disappointment.
Henderson Alvarez, RHP, Toronto: I have to admit that I thought Toronto was crazy for calling up Alvarez when they did in 2011 but he did not implode as expected. The 21-year-old hurler made a successful jump to the Majors with just 88.0 innings of experience above A-ball thanks to a fastball that can tickle the upper 90s while inducing a plethora of ground balls. Alvarez survived his first tour of duty in The Show with basically a two-pitch mix (fastball/changeup) and he’s working hard to improve his slider. If he can get the third pitch working, while also improve upon his command within the strike zone, Alvarez could see a big jump in his strikeout rate.
Greg Holland, RHP, Kansas City: Holland’s name was on this list even before the severity of Joakim Soria‘s injury came to light. With the Royals’ incumbent closer out for the season due to his second Tommy John surgery the stopper gig could very likely fall into Holland’s lap, although he will receive competition from Aaron Crow and Jonathan Broxton. Holland deserves to be the top high leverage reliever in the Royals ‘pen after an outstanding rookie season in 2011 that saw him hold opposing hitters to a .174 batting average while also posting a strikeout rate of 11.10 K/9. His repertoire is absolutely nasty.
Kenley Jansen, RHP, Los Angeles NL: Jansen features some of the nastiest stuff in the Majors so it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t been handed the mantle of closer for the Dodgers. For now, though, the club will go with Javy Guerra as the ninth inning guy but beyond that there is not much standing in Jansen’s way to eventually claim the closer title. The hitter-turned-pitcher dominated opponents in 2011 by posting an eye-popping strikeout rate of 16.10 K/9 thanks to a mid-to-high-90s fastball and cutter. His walk rate of 4.16 BB/9 shows that he still has some work to do but he could be down right scary if he develops even average control.
Juan Nicasio, RHP, Colorado: The mere fact that Nicasio is back on the mound is reason enough to celebrate. The right-hander suffered a fracture in his neck after being struck by a line drive last season and there was some doubt at the time over whether or not he would be able to resume his career. Nicasio has been throwing very well this spring and could be a key contributor in the Rockies’ new-look rotation in 2012. The right-hander has an intriguing mix of mid-90s velocity and above-average control.
Mark Trumbo, 3B/1B, Los Angeles AL: You’d think the acquisition of the National League’s most consistently dangerous hitter – who just happens to play Trumbo’s position – would put a crimp in the sophomore’s value. However, Trumbo has made huge strides in his defensive work at third base and could see significant time at the hot corner in 2012, while also backing up first base and spending time as the designated hitter. Trumbo slugged 29 home runs (.223 ISO) in his rookie season with Los Angeles and could produce even more power if he learns how be more selective (4.4 BB%).
Jose Altuve, 2B, Houston: The diminutive Altuve was another good story in 2011 as he hit like a mad man in the low minors and even showed unexpected pop given his 5’5” (approximate) stature. His numbers, though, were aided by high BABIPs, as well as the potent hitter’s leagues that he played in. Altuve could continue to hit for a decent average at the big league level but he probably won’t show nearly as much power. As well, he’s displayed average-at-best patience throughout much of his career. Add all those things together and it’s the recipe for a hollow-batting-average hitter – which is exactly what he was during his rookie campaign.
Brandon Beachy, RHP, Atlanta: Beachy was an amazing story in 2011 as a former non-drafted pitcher signed out of an independent baseball league. But he may have also set overly high expectations that he won’t be able to reach again. The right-hander has good stuff, but his success comes more from a deceptive delivery and superb command. His fastball averages 92 mph and he’s mostly a two-pitch pitcher with his changeup coming in as a distant third pitch in terms of quality. As the scouting reports circulate through the league and hitters become more comfortable facing Beachy, the right-hander will likely settle in as a solid No. 3 starter. Don’t expect him to keep pitching like an ace.
Paul Goldschmidt, 1B, Arizona: Goldschmidt was one of those minor league slugging first basemen that every scout knew about as he chewed up minor league pitchers and spit them out – but few felt he’d develop into an impact bat at the big league level. After his rookie season many Arizona fans seem to disagree with the early assessments, but I have to issue a word of caution. Goldschmidt had a decent big league debut but his strikeout rate just shy of 30% is a huge red flag. The scouting reports suggest a decent, but not great, prospect. The minor league numbers, although, impressive, come from leagues that favor the hitter, and the prospect has limited experience above A-ball.
Vance Worley, RHP, Philadelphia: Worley flew under the radar for quite a while in a system that boasted hard-throwing prospects such as Jarred Cosart, Brody Colvin, and Trevor May. The right-handed Worley isn’t nearly as flashy – his fastball sits around 90 mph – but he has had success in the Majors quicker than any of those other three hurlers. However, Worley succeeds thanks to above-average command and control of a four-pitch mix. His control hasn’t been quite as good as it was in the minors and he’s also a fly-ball pitcher. A good number of Worley’s strikeouts at the big league level came from hitters taking a called third strike so I have a feeling that he’s due for some regression once teams start to get a good read on him.
Pitchfx data says Beachy threw a slider more than a changeup!
That’s cuz he’s actually a 3 pitch pitcher. Surprisingly few pieces of actual evidence in this article.
“His fastball averages 92 mph and he’s mostly a two-pitch pitcher with his changeup coming in as a distant third pitch in terms of quality. ”
He’s SAYING that Beachy’s a three pitch pitcher, and that his changeup is third.
Yeesh…
At the same time, calling a guy who was able to effectively utilize two other pitches each ~10% of the time is a bit of a head scratcher. Especially when he blew through the minors and held his own in the majors in 2010 without even throwing a single slider all season(the Braves didn’t let him add it back into the repetoire until this year). Heck, he even got whiffs on 18.3% of the changeups he threw. But hey, it had a negative pitch value, so I guess it shouldn’t count or something. Scouting reports apparently don’t mean much of anything to the Fangraphs prospect “guru.”
Should say “At the same time, calling a guy who was able to effectively utilize two other pitches each ~10% of the time a two pitch pitcher is a bit of a head scratcher
Even if he is saying Beachy is a three pitch pitcher that is wrong. He throws four pitches, fb, slider, curve and change up.
I don’t think you can easily brush off Aluve’s high BABIP. Scouting reports that talk about his quick hands and good hand-eye coordination show he could be the type of player who hits for a high BABIP throughout his career. That, mixed with good speed and his seemingly lock on the starting job, make him a pretty undervalued fantasy pick. Agreed on the lack of power though.
There’s a difference between being able to sustain a somewhat high BABIP and the .438 BABIP in 52 games in high-A and the .373 in 35 games in AA that Altuve put up last year. That’s what Hulet seems to be referencing in the post.
michael pineda should be on “value heading down”
Why? His peripherals didn’t go down at all the second half. Value is team adjusted, so even though his era will go up, his war won’t be affected by the tougher division.
“Why?”
because reports of him in spring training are very negative, to include max effort delivery generating ~90mph fastballs and being about 20 pounds overweight
What a good call this was.
Saying that Trumbo’s value is headed up while Goldschmidt’s is headed down is silly. The Angels would be foolish to play him consistently with his sub-.300 OBP. He also swung at a ridiculous percentage of pitches outside the zone as the season wore on indicating that he is nothing more than a dead-red fastball mistake hitter.
Goldschmidt on the other hand proved to be a better prospect than most thought, if anything. His SO rate is rather high but he can be at least decent at drawing walks. His raw power is well above average and he is also very agile for his frame/size and could steal just under 10 bags in a full year if not more. Goldschmidt homered off of Lincecum twice and Lee once and hit very well in the playoffs as well.
In my opinion these two are headed in different directions and not the ones you indicated.
I agree Trumbo is similar, but your defense of Goldy is anecdotal at best. With those strikeout rates, they are both going down.
Trumbo is not similar. The only similarity Trumbo and Goldschmidt has is their raw power.
As far as being anecdotal, Goldschmidt drew 82 walks compared to 92 SO’s in AA last year. Then in the majors he had 20 walks and a 11.3% walk rate. Like I said, even though is SO rate approaches 30% I think that can come down to about 25% and if he can do that he’ll post solid averages and on base average.
Trumbo is a different story. He never drew walks at a good clip in the minors and while his SO% was only 21% last year he swung at a ridiculous number of pitches outside the zone last year. I’ll try and find the article that pointed this out as I can’t remember right now.
But the point stands that Goldschmidt is a better ball player and is 2 years younger than Trumbo.
Here I found the article that mentions Trumbo swinging away. It’s at the bottom. http://sports.espn.go.com/fantasy/baseball/flb/story?page=mlbdk2k12_bleagh
This list seems to be based around the opinions of scouts, who are more knowledgeable about these players than any fan ever could be. There are some stats thrown in to prove a point, but don’t just attack the writer because he poo-poo’s your favorite player.
The pick of Trumbo instead of Goldschmidt does seem odd but keep in mind that Trumbo is by most accounts a good athlete and if he can play 3B or the outfield with any level of competence, it gives him more value. Goldschmidt’s raw numbers appear better but Trumbo had success over a longer period of time in the bigs and also may play a more valuable position.
Not to dispute the individual player assessments, but is there some kind of study backing up the sophomore curse/jinx/slump that suggests we should treat it with some validity, or is it just anecdotal evidence? Seems like regression and selection bias would explain most of what is considered a “curse,” absent any other evidence. I mean, aren’t the examples we remember generally memorable only because the rookie seasons were so great?
Great point jfwiii. I bet there are more instance of a players performance increasing in their 2nd year than decreasing in their 2nd year.
Ok so I headed over and did a quick check on b-Ref. Using hitters that debuted in 2009 and had at least 192 PAs both the 2010 and 2011 seasons I found the following distribution of performance:
OPS+ Performance increased by 10 or more in 2011: 8 players
OPS+ decreased by 10 or more: 5 players
Less than 10 point change: 3 players
Sure this is a less than exhaustive test to disprove the Sophmore Slump but it is a jumping off point for anyone interested in following up the idea.
You are absolutely correct.
In Marc’s defense, however, I think he was just using “sophomore jinx” as a catchy title, since he listed rookies he thinks will improve as well as deprove.
Agreed. That question was intended as just a question and not criticism.
Although, calling Beachy a two-pitch pitcher when he throws two more at least 9% of the time seems dubious. I guess maybe he projects as having just two effective pitches? The others do have negative run values…
That’s not how run values of pitches should be used. Ever. I always cringe when I see them used in that fashion. If someone doesn’t think Beachy’s changeup is effective because of it’s negative run value, I’d suggest taking a look at the run value of his fastball while considering the fact that it averages just 92 MPH and gets little movement.
here’s the thing: any time a player has an unexpectedly awesome year, it’s more likely that he will be worse the next year than better. Rookie or otherwise. That’s the origin of the “sophomore jinx”, because anecdotally we focus on stud rookie performers, and everyone gets all starry eyed thinking, “he’s young, he’s still improving!”.
so when a rookie — or anyone really — busts out and has an amazing year, it’s just more likely that he will be worse the next year than that he will improve. Those are the guys we remember, the dudes who have the big ROY contender seasons who then (as an aggregate) perform a bit worse the next year. We don’t remember the guys who struggle out of the gates, bounce up and down to AAA, and then settle in and are much better as they establish themselves their sophomore year.
“Trumbo never got on base at a decent clip in the minors.”
This is false. In fact his last year in AAA he got on base at a clip above 9.% It doesn’t appear that he’s going to do that, but he certainly isn’t going to be at 4.5% his whole career. Somewhere in the range of 6-7% seems very doable for him.
Marc, great article, always enjoy your work, which you clearly put a lot of time into.
However, as a Jays fan, it kind of pains me to disagree with your placement of Henderson Alvarez in the “heading up” category. This is a guy that walked on a minefield in his first season.
He has consistently posted below average strike-out rates in the minors. Yes, his value comes from his ability to get ground balls and not walk batters, but his walk rate actually dropped a significant amount from AA (1.74BB/9) to the majors (1.13BB/9).
I think one would be hard pressed to find a guy who could continue that trend in his second year. Even if his K rates increase with the addition of a third pitch (perhaps by about 1 strike-out per 9 innings) to the mid 6K/9 range to counter-act what will assuredly be an increase in his BB rate, he still comes in with about a 3:1 K/BB ratio. Really, the only guy who struck out batters at such a low rate last season, coupled with a very low walk rate, and was able to find success as a top 2 guy was Doug Fister, who most people expect to be unable to duplicate his success this season.
Furthermore, 6 out of Alvarez’s 10 starts were against Oakland, Seattle, Baltimore, and the White Sox. Seven out of 10 starts were made in September against some weaker line-ups, inclduing the better teams he faced.
Do I want Alvarez to succeed this year and in the future? Absolutely. But I do not think his value is “heading up”. Rather, I believe he will take his lumps this year, produce about the same, or perhaps take a small step back, as he is still a young pitcher who has lots of developing to go, as well as one that many scouts, including yourself, did not have ranked very highly in your pre-season lists for many of the reasons I just mentioned.
Overall, I believe Alvarez was a young pitcher who many teams did not have the book on yet, who was put in a position to succeed and did, but will face a stiff test in his first full season in the majors
So you think his GB rate is going to decrease further? And the whole “not having the book on a guy” is really silly imo. You really think these other teams didn’t know Alvarez was sinker/change? How hard would that be to find out?
Regardless of is GB rate, finding success as number 2 or even 3 guy is very difficult if you cannot strike out more than 7 batters per 9 innings.
And I think you are shortchanging “having the book” on a guy. For example, with Alvarez, he’s a guys who is constantly going to throw to the bottom of the zone and out of the zone. After scouting reports start to get back to big league hitters, they are going to know to take more pitches or try and stop pulling sinkers.
Alvarez was out of most people’s top-5s entering the season, and many journalists and baseball-type people did not expect to see Alvarez at all at the big-league level. So its very conceivable that they did not have much scouting data on the guy. Of course, I say this anecdotally.
All I am saying is that after getting a chance to see him once or twice, hitters are going to have a better idea of what he is going to throw at them, which is a low to mid nineties fastball, a change-up, and a developing slider.
With this knowledge of his repertoire, which is very good but won’t blow any one away yet, I think its going to be very difficult for Alvarez to keep is BB/9 under 2 this season. That fact, coupled with the reality that he isn’t going to miss a tonne of bats with 2.5 good pitches, and no real “out” pitch yet, means that a lot of balls are going to be put in play. Now some guys can definitely do that–Mark Buerhle and Fister come to mind.But at 21, I just don’t see him taking a big step forward this season to that level just yet.
Hey Trevor,
Enjoyed your comment. Thanks for sharing. I don’t know how much this will contribute to the discussion but as a fellow jays fan, one thing I remember precipitating the Alvarez call up up was that he was that Alvarez was exceptional in his final 4 or 5 starts and really limited his BB. I know this sample size is incredibly small but to what extent do you think his walk rate in the majors maybe have just been a progression of his last 4 or 5 starts in New Hampshire e.g. the walk rate in the majors is new normal… As an example I think of Ricky Romero who could not throw his change up for strikes during his minor league career, then one year he showed up to spring camp and suddenly he could command.
One concern I had for Alvarez, and it relates to your point about “Major League hitters figuring him out” is a point raised by Buck Martinez, he noted that delivery for Alvarez fastball and change wasn’t identical, I think angle/arm slot looked different. If this is true it won’t take long for hitters to catch on.
There seems to be some disagreement with the Fangraphs family: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/brandon-beachys-secret-weapon/
According to Mr. Cwik, Beachy is not a 2 pitch pitcher. And it seems to be that very fact that totally contradicts the above assessment.
I skimmed but I found very little in the article about sophomore slumps, contrary to what the title suggests.
How does Trumbo not satisfy the sophomore curse in his upcoming season?
I think the “sophomore curse” reference was more tongue in cheek. And the article is just opinions players coming off good rookie years and what thiwr future may hold.
Beachy has a deceptive delivery? You guys know more than I do, but his delivery seems very straight-forward.
Man, I have an offer that gives me Beachy for my Duda in a NL only 15 keeper league. Power is scarce in the NL and Duda has 1B eligibilty which is even more scarce with Pujos and Fielder gone. Both salaries are exactly the same, so anyone ahve an opinion?
Yes, go to Rotographs.
If salary and contract status are the same, I’d keep Beachy. At least he has a full year of success at the major league level. I would expect some regression from Beachy, but he’s still in my top 20 NL SPs. Even if Duda continues his success, he’s in a lousy lineup — seems basically like Garrett Jones with a few more HRs expected.
Curious who your source is for saying Trumbo has made “huge strides” at third base. He’s looked pretty awful there in the work I’ve seen and it seems like a desperation move to get him at bats. He’s never played the position professionally but is going to be less than awful after 1 month of practice? Not buying it.
Can’t get past the title since it’s “Sophomore Jinx” and not “Sophomore Curse.” You may be getting it confused with the “Madden Curse.” Come to think of it, it’s actually the “Sophomore Slump” as I got this confused with the “SI Cover Jinx.” Sorry about that.
Trumbo is walking at 9% so far this year, perhaps he improved his approach? I know, small sample size, but if he can keep it up he turns into an extremely valuable hitter in my opinion.