The biggest move of the Cardinals offseason was acquiring right-fielder Jason Heyward and relief pitcher Jordan Walden from the Braves in exchange for pitchers Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins. Miller has made 31 starts in his first two MLB seasons, accumulating 2.4 fWAR and a career 3.33 ERA. He finished third in the 2013 NL Rookie of the Year award and turned his 2014 season around in the second half. Still, significant questions remain about his ultimate ceiling. He has four seasons of control remaining. Jenkins is the ultimate lottery ticket and has battled numerous arm problems since being drafted out of high school in 2010. He was healthy in the Arizona Fall League, showed his best stuff in years, and vaulted into Keith Law's top 100 prospects. Heyward is a free agent at the end of the season and will only be 26 when he hits the market. The Cardinals are all but guaranteed to make a qualifying offer to him and receive a first round pick if he signs elsewhere, which seems likely since he'll likely command $180-200 million over a ten year contract. Since debuting with a Grand Slam for his hometown team, Heyward has faced exceedingly high expectations. He's a very smart ballplayer and constantly looks for ways to add value and help his team win. He has consistently rated as one of the best defensive rightfielders in the game and has two Gold Gloves to show for it.
The questions about Heyward center around his offensive game, particularly his power. After debuting with a .456 slugging percentage and 52 extra base hits, he struggled to a .384 SLG in his second season. In that second season, he surged out of the gates and hit .263/.354/.525 in April. He struggled to a .098/.229/.122 May before hitting the DL with a strained shoulder. He returned in the middle of June and only hit .234/.321/.379 the rest of season as the Braves collapsed and ultimately missed the playoffs. He bounced back from the down 2011 to hit 27 home runs and slug .479 in 2012 and slugged .427 in another injury shortened 2013.
He had the lowest slugging percentage of his career in 2014 at .384 and his isolated power of .113 was in between Jose Reyes and Denard Span. What happened? According to Heyward he was asked to bat leadoff 94 times in 2014, something he had only done 31 times in the proceeding four seasons, and he drastically changed his approach to emphasize getting on base. Is there something to this? In 2014, Heyward swung at the first pitch in 67, 10.3%, of his 649 PAs. In the first four years of his career, he swung at the first pitch in 184, 8.5%, of his 2,170 PAs. Prior to 2014 he had also done a lot more damage on first pitches, hitting .373/.386/.638. In 2014, he only hit .299/.299/.358 on first pitches. One would expect a leadoff hitter to be more patient and Heyward did see 3.93 pitches per plate appearance in 2014. That was good for 51st among all qualified hitters, but was tied for the lowest of his career. He has been over four pitches per plate appearance in each year of his career with the exception of 2011 and 2014.
Like Matt Adams, Heyward also saw his a large drop in his average fly ball distance. Heyward's fell almost 20 feet from 2013 to 2014 - even more than Adams'. Due to this drop Heyward had terrible performance on his fly balls last year, hitting .180 with a .119 BABIP. Removing his 11 HRs, he hit 159 fly balls and only 19 of them fell in for hits. Regardless of how far a fly ball is being hit, that's incredibly bad luck and should change in 2015.
Heyward also uncharacteristically struggled hitting to the opposite field. In 2014 he hit .274 and slugged .347 with just five extra base hits on batted balls to left field. For the rest of his career he has hit .344 and slugged .515 when he hits the ball to left field. His batted ball profile for balls hit to the opposite field was not substantially different than the rest of his career:
LD
|
GB
|
FB
|
IFFB
|
|
2014
|
20.8%
|
20%
|
59.2%
|
13.5%
|
Career#
|
20.2%
|
19.6%
|
59.9%
|
22.5%
|
Again, it's clear that Heyward got extremely unlucky on his performance to balls hit to the opposite field in 2014. This was compounded by the fact that he was hitting more of them:
LF
|
CF
|
RF
|
|
2014
|
26.2%
|
33.7%
|
40.2%
|
Career
|
19%
|
30.4%
|
50.5%
|
This is the NUMBER ONE area Heyward must improve on in 2014. It's nice to hit the ball to the opposite field, especially when it's pitched away, but hitters do their damage hitting the ball to their pull side. He must resume pulling the ball more frequently and stop trying to go to the opposite field. This is the one area it makes sense that he altered his approach as a leadoff hitter. Leadoff hitters would try to make contact and get on base, even if it means sacrificing pull side power to dink hits the opposite field. Heyward, however, must pull the baseball because he has more power potential than most players in the game. He's a career .309 hitter with a .508 slugging to RF and 20.2% of his fly balls to RF have left the yard.
The other question about Heyward's offensive ability is his performance against left-handed pitching. It was downright atrocious in 2014 and some fans and media are wondering if the Cards would be better off platooning him in RF with a right-handed hitter like Randal Grichuk, who thrives against left-handed pitching. Heyward was hit in the face by Jon Niese on August 21st, 2013. He returned to play nine games in late September and started each of the Braves' division series games against the Dodgers. Coming into 2014, he had hit .232/.312/.377 in his career vs left-handed pitching and in 2014 he cratered to .169/.252/.225 in 159 PAs.
There is some thought that the HBP in August, 2013 affected his approach, but the numbers suggest his production against lefties in 2014 was merely a product of bad luck. His K/BB ratio against left-handed pitchers was 0.38 for 2010-2013 and 0.34 for 2014, nearly equivalent. The biggest difference was his BABIP which was 0.287 in 2010-2013 and 0.208 in 2014. He did hit slightly more groundballs, at the expense of line drives, against left-handed pitchers in 2014 than his career average, but not enough to impact his BABIP by 79 points. I'd expect for his performance against left-handed pitching to bounce back in 2015.
I'm excited to see what Heyward can do this year. The team stated that he will not be asked to lead off and he's indicated that he could tap into more power by utilizing a different approach by hitting further down in the lineup. While I do not completely buy into that, I do think he'll show much better power than he did in 2014. Turner Field and Busch Stadium are about equally average places for left-handed batters to hit, so there will not be a large adjustment to his numbers from that perspective. Any question of platooning him should be forgotton: Heyward is an everyday player. According to Baseball Prospectus, he's been on the DL four times in his career and missed a total of 82 games. Two of those stints were for appendicitis and the previously mentioned HBP - fluke injuries. He has not been on the DL with another, less random injury since May 2011 when he hurt his shoulder. Removing the flukish DL stints, Heyward has played in 93.5% of his team's games. His defensive value alone makes it imperative for Matheny to get him in the lineup everyday, and if he hits the way he's capable off, he's a surefire MVP candidate. Hopefully Heyward is able to answer the questions surrounding his offensive ability and change the conversation to questions about his pending free agency.
No comments:
Post a Comment