Unlucky Beltre
Continuing our series on how luck effected a player’s season, today I will look at Adrian Beltre. I will once again refer you to Chris Dutton and Peter Bendix’s great work on xBABIP which I will make reference to. Additionally, BABIP in these posts is defined (H-HR)/(PA-HR-K-BB-HBP).
Adrian Beltre is one of the best 3B in the game today. Over the past 5 years, Beltre has been worth an average of 4.9 wins per season. Unfortunately for fantasy players, though, nearly half his value is in his glove. Additionally most of his offensive value lies in his monster 2004 season. Last year, however, Beltre was a decent fantasy 3B. His average was sub-par, but he made up for it with 25 HR, 81 R, 87 RBI, and a handful of steals. Beltre achieved these numbers despite battling some pretty poor luck. Adrian logged his worst BABIP since 2002 (.276). This killed his average, as well as hurting his ability to score and drive in runs. Beltre ’s xBABIP on the year was .319 which would have made his numbers a lot better.
If we control his statistics for the new BABIP of .319 (essentially strip the luck out of his balls-in-play), then Beltre gains 19 hits. This bumps his batting average considerably since he is not that prone to the strike out. Adding in the 5 doubles he would have likely gained, Beltre ’s slash line goes up to .300/.358/.500/.858 form the previous line of .266/..327/.457/.784. His increase in times on base and hits also helps him generate 7 more runs and ten more RBIs (bringing his totals to 81 and 87 respectively). It is safe to say that Beltre ’s poor luck had quite the effect on his fantasy season.
Going forward, I would not expect Beltre to have the same poor offensive season he had last year. Since 2002 Beltre has topped 20 HR all but one season, and he has also had 25 or more the last three years. If we pencil him in at 25 HR again and a reasonable .290 average, then his numbers should come close to matching what he missed out on last year. It would not be unreasonable to expect him to be a top 5-10 fantasy 3B. The one issue I see with Beltre is the team he plays for. The M’s have done little to improve upon an offense that was second-to-last in the AL in runs-scored, therefore it might be a struggle for him to break 85 runs or 85 runs-batted-in. If he steals 10 bases, though, you may take a little less scoring and power.
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Out of curiosity, have you seen this article on Beltre’s “true power”?
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/fantasy/article/consistency-meter-adrian-beltre/
I’d be curious to hear your response to it as the two of you have pretty opposing takes on Beltre’s outlook for 2009.
No I had not seen that. It is interesting, and since I have no familiarity with their tHR statistics (I looked into methodology) I am unable to say I think it is bunk or great. I do not see where this loss of power would have come from. Looking at his HR/FB%, LD%, FB% it looks like Beltre “earned” his homers–i.e. his HR/FB% isn’t otherworldly– and didn’t lose bat-speed as evidenced by his increase in LDs from GBs. The only explanation I could come up with is that he had LD-HRs that don’t seem as long. It also seems strange that his tHR would be so much lower considering his homepark tends to suppress HR. Thanks for pointing that out, and I will definitely keep that in mind when looking at Beltre in the future.
As far as Beltre’s power goes, he did have less doubles (which I think was in part due to being unlucky) which could be a symptom of his decreasing power. Maybe some of his HRs should have been 2Bs, and he just got lucky. It’s definitely interesting to look at.
Beltre was playing through injuries all year. On September 18 he had arthroscopic surgery on his left shoulder to remove bone spurs and reconstructive surgery of the ulnar collateral ligament in his left thumb. I’d guess one or both of those injuries (not to mention the wrist that was bothering him at the start of the season) could easily explain his loss of power. Given that the M’s medical staff have already cleared him to participate in the WBC, he may very well have a resurgence in ’09.
There is no evidence to suggest he was or was not involved, but it is odd that Beltre’s power numbers dropped so dramatically as the “steroid era” came to a close. It’s not fair to be throwing accusations around without something to base them on, but tell me that you haven’t wondered…
Throw out the obvious outlier 2004 season, and show me how his power numbers dropped “dramatically”? He’s actually been remarkably consistent with the exception of that one crazy year.
Well, obviously I’m suggesting that year might not have been organically created.
,,,because nobody in the pre-steroid history of baseball ever had a fluke season.
True. It’s just these days you wonder more than you used to.
…the timing of his “fluke” season ended up being very convenient for his bank account. Prior to ’04 he had an OPS over .730 twice and over .800 once. In 2004 his OPS was 1.017. He’s hovered at or just below an .800 OPS in Seattle, but still. He’s never even come close to that ’04 OPS prior to or since; that is to say he’s never had an OPS over .850 aside from that one year. Seems pretty suspect to me…
I don’t think it should be ignored that he’s played every season since in a home park that is death to right handed pull hitters, especially those that don’t tend to hit the ball 450 feet very often. Looking at the MLB hit chart, it would appear that he lost 2-3 Homeruns as flyball outs to center and right last year (For whatever reason, the Hit Chart will not allow me to choose alternate seasons or years). Still, I don’t think that it’s that much of an outlier season when you take into account the injuries from this year that have already been mentioned (.300/.358/.500 looks good with a bad thumb and shoulder), and last year when he received the thumb injury (He lost ~50 PA in June, and the line he put up after the injury was .190/.239/.302), if you remove his June from that year he batted .286/.330/.504. If you replace it with a statline like what he had in May or July (.919 and .996 OPS) of that year, then that year would have looked pretty close to his 2004, though with homeruns and non-HR XBH flipped.
Also, a popular theory about the success of that 2004 season involved a change in his batting stance due to bone spurs in his ankle that limited his lunging at balls outside of the strike zone.
The temptation certainly would have been there…
2 words for beltre in 09: Free Agent
Oh, I traded for him.