Aaron Harang is not a professional hitter.
Aaron Harang is not a professional hitter.
bigredmechanism (04-16-2013)
Blitz has never watched mythbusters on the flag in a vacuum.
Hanigan back to catching Bailey tonight. I guess Homer missing his spots WAS Mesoraco's fault /sarcasm.
What was the point of keeping Mes with the big league club again? Oh right he's learning how to do things better by never doing them. Carry on.
I mean, at some point the objective evaluation has to be that Hanigan isn't very effective, doesn't it? And I'm not saying that time is now- Hanigan has a BABIP of .071, but he hasn't looked very effective at the plate and at some point you have to kind of think of him in a Juan Castro or Paul Janish light where their glove can't carry their stick in modern-day major league baseball.
Hanigan's ZIPS season projection is looking grim; he's slated for a wRC+ of 65 and wOBA of .275 for the season at this point. For comparison, Mesoraco is looking at a wRC+ of 98 and wOBA of .322 from the same projection system.
Is Hanigan's intangible quality behind the dish worth .047 wOBA?
Hanigan has as many infield flies in 2013 as he had in all of 2012. He has 2 hits this year. One was an infield hit.
It's a lot more likely that Hanigan reverts back to his career .318 wOBA going forward than the .274 projected for the entire season (which includes what he's done so far, obviously).
Now add the defensive context back into the equation, and yes I'd say his intangible quality is worth it.
"No matter how good you are, you're going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you're going to win one-third of your games. It's the other third that makes the difference." ~Tommy Lasorda
In Hanigan's defense, he hit the ball hard twice last night and even displayed that famous "warning track" power.
But isn't it symptomatic of small-power guys that once the bat speed starts to go, they fall off the cliff quickly? Hanigan (up to 2012) never had power, but had enough of a hit tool to be able to drive singles on balls in the zone if pitchers threw him strikes, and had a good enough eye to walk at a good rate.
Maybe his bat speed is finally slowing down, and the strikes that he was driving 2010-2012 are now resulting in poor or no contact. I don't have any evidence, and I don't think that any statistical conclusions can be made from 38 PAs or whatever, but I think and have thought that Hanigan would be a poor bet to equal or better his wOBA; he has been trending downward in the last few seasons offensively, and never had enough power to truly punish pitchers.
A lot of this is speculative, but I can pretty readily envision an objectively poor season from Hanigan given his profile as a player.
Aside- this doesn't mean I don't like Hanigan, because I really do. But at some point a player just runs out of gas. I hope 2013 isn't that time for Hanigan, but I think that it's worth discussing and analyzing if it could be.
thatcoolguy_22 (04-17-2013)
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