Framing Freddie Freeman
December 21, 2010 at 12:15 am by Kevin Orris under Atlanta Braves, Farm System, Interview, Player Analysis, Prospects
The day that I agreed to start writing for CAC, I knew that I’d be writing about Freddie Freeman within a week. It wasn’t because I have a man crush, obsession, or anything of the sort. Rather, it’s simply because he’s the one that everyone wants to know about.
Does he have power? Is he the next Jason Heyward or Andy Marte? Is he smart? What will his batting average be? Can he hold his own in the field? How’s his makeup?
These are all questions that I’ve been asked this off-season regarding Freeman from a variety of baseball fans through e-mail and Twitter (@kevinorris). While don’t I claim to have all of the answers, or any of them for that matter, the least that I can do is offer my opinion and insight.
Interview
For starters, I interviewed Freeman in August of 2009, shortly after his promotion to Double-A Mississippi. You can listen to 12 minute interview by clicking here (I highly recommend that you do so, especially the 22 seconds).
In my opinion, the interview went well. Freeman opened up more than most prospects do, and it’s important to remember that he was still just 19-years-old.
I’d like to preface my thoughts with the following: fans have a tendency to get their hopes up regarding prospects, but often times the numbers don’t translate right away. Just look at Jason Heyward. My goal isn’t to raise or lower expectations, rather provide a realistic opinion of what the future holds.
Freeman has continued to improve throughout his minor league career, and will likely fall in Baseball America’s Top 15 prospects next season. He hit for a career high .319 average in Triple-A Gwinnett last year, and we can assume that the Atlanta Front Office will give him the opportunity to start at first base next season.
Build
From a physical stand point, he still has plenty of room to grow. He currently stands 6’5”, weighing 225 lbs. He’s clearly not the fastest player (13 career SB on 26 attempts), but he’s been doing his best to build muscle.
Hitting
In our interview, Freeman calls himself a power hitter, so I’ve got no reason to believe that it’s the area of his game that he feels is his strong suit. All scouting reports indicate that he has the potential to his 30 home runs/season in his career, but I wouldn’t count on many more than that.
His batting average has improved throughout his career, and shouldn’t be much of an issue translating to the big leagues. Although he admits that he has a tendency to be aggressive at the plate, many young hitters struggle with walk rates in their first few seasons, simply because the quality of pitching is that much better.
Defense
Defensively, Freeman is sound at first base, and although he has a great arm, it’s often an unnecessary tool for a first baseman.
Overall
Overall, I think expectations are pretty high right now. Many fans expect him to hit over .300 with 20 HR and 80 RBI. To be honest, I think a more realistic line would be .280, 15 HR and an unpredictable amount of RBI (as with every player).
I think the closest comparison that could be made between Freeman and a current player is Billy Butler, a first baseman with the Kansas City Royals. Last year, Butler his .318 with 15 HR and 78 RBI, almost identical to what Freeman did in Gwinnett. In Butler’s rookie season he hit .292 with 8 HR and 52 RBI in 360 PA at the age of 21… the same age that Freddie will be entering next season.
Final Thoughts
I think that we’ve got something special on our hands, but let’s be sure to give it time. Leave your thoughts on Freeman in the comments below, or send me an e-mail at KevinOrris@CapitolAvenueClub.com. I’m excited to see your predictions for Freeman for next season and the years to come.
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Here’s what I’m going to do.
1) I’m going to try to see if anyone has home/away Dewan splits available.
2) I’m going to ask MGL about it.
I sent this email to the Book people:
A couple of people asked me about Dan Uggla’s UZR home/road split (career -26 at Sun Life, career +3.4 everywhere else).
I told them to ignore splits unless there’s a good reason not to. Then they brought up several other Florida Marlin infielders, they all seem to have fairly drastic UZR home/road splits. Hanley Ramirez, Jorge Cantu, Luis Castillo, Emilio Bonifacio, et cetera.
Do you think we’re just dealing with random variation or a systematic bias, here?
I’ll let you know when/if they get back to me.
How about McLouth? I heard Pittsburgh was harsh on centerfielders and I’m curious what his home/away splits look like as a Pirate, especially considering he was average when he first got to Atlanta
MGL’s response:
“Peter,
Thanks for the observation and question regarding UZR and Uggla and other Florida players. I have not looked at the data, but off the top of my head I would think that this is random fluctuation, for two reasons: One, it is unlikely that infield UZR’s would have any severe park biases or effects (as opposed to outfield UZR’s). Two, all of the UZR’s you see on Fangraphs are already park adjusted so that any large differences in home/road splits due to quirks in a player’s home park would be mostly “neutralized” by the park factor adjustments, such that any residual large splits would likely be random, by definition. IOW, if you look at all infielder (or outfielder) H/R splits for KC (or any other team) players, the average H/R split should be around league average, although that is not necessarily the case for any one (or other small samples) year.
There is always a possibility of a coding or other error of course, but I wouldn’t put too much (or any, for that matter) stock in home/road splits for any one player or team. Keep in mind that if you look at all players (or all teams) in any one year, you are likely to find some random, large H/R splits by chance alone.
We actually hesitated to post the H/R splits on Fangraphs for precisely this reason – that some people might make more of the splits than was appropriate. As I said, the appropriate amount of importance to attach to these splits is near zero, in my opinion.
Mitchel (MGL)”
The short version: 1) nothing to see here, 2) ignore home/road UZR splits.
I spoke with Derek Carty of The Hardball Times and he couldn’t come up with much besides surface for MI either, so I don’t see it as much of an issue.
Merry Christmas, club members! May your holiday be as fun and exciting as Heyward’s first AB.
The UZR home/away data may be random fluctuation, but I think there could also be something else in play here. The Marlins grounds crew is by far the worst I’ve seen in MLB. I remember last season the Braves had a rain delay in Florida, and it took the grounds crew almost 15 minutes to get the tarp on. Then, after the rain stopped and they took the tarp off, they just left huge lakes of water in shallow left. I remember Brooks was playing 3rd, and you could just see a pond of water literally right behind him. I also remember Jurrjens wanted the mound worked on (I think he was pitching against that sasquatch Volstad) and the crew literally couldn’t figure out what to do. It took them almost 10 minutes to adjust the mound.
I realize it may be a stretch to link this back to the grounds crew, but if they don’t prepare the field in a consistent manner for every game then the balls in play will behave differently depending on the day. Since most of what infielders do is based on anticipating where the ball will be, you can see why this would be a problem. I dont think the grounds crew alone is responsible for the difference in the road/home splits, but they could be contributing to them. When you compound the bad grounds crew with the heat and humidity of Miami, plus the fact that their baseball field is actually a football field, the difference between the home/road splits might not be so random after all.
dan,
No, because of this:
all of the UZR’s you see on Fangraphs are already park adjusted so that any large differences in home/road splits due to quirks in a player’s home park would be mostly “neutralized” by the park factor adjustments
When I hear “gap hitter” I think about casey kotchman. This worries me, please tell me won’t be another casey kotchman.
He won’t be another Casey Kotchman.
I understand why the organization is so high on Freeman. What I don’t understand is why they’ve completely ignored Barbaro Canizares. I mean, it seems to me that the guy doesn’t have much left to prove at AAA and at the very least would provide Freeman with some competition (which would, in theory motivate Freeman even more). I don’t doubt that Freeman is the better overall player, but you could argue Barbaro had just as good, maybe even better of an offensive year than Freeman this past season. Even if they’re just planning on using him as trade bait, wouldn’t it at the very least boost his value to pretend they are considering giving him playing time? What do you think their plans are for the guy?
I think Barbaro Canizares would provide similar, if not equivalent, offensive production to what Freddie Freeman would in 2011 given the job every day. But Freeman is 21 years old next year, Canizares is 30. Freeman is an above-average defensive first baseman, Canizares is a well below-average defensive first baseman.
Canizares really isn’t good enough to play every day. I guess theoretically he could be the small part of a DH platoon, but I don’t even think he’d hit enough to justify the AB’s at DH exclusively facing left-handed pitching. He’s good enough to be a right-handed bench bat. The Braves claimed Joe Mather to do that because he’s younger and a once top prospect so there are morsels of upside remaining. Also because he’s a lot more athletic and versatile in the field, as well as probably a much better defender at 1B.
The advertise him as a candidate to play first in hopes of building trade value thing doesn’t work for two reasons. One, clubs are smarter than that. Regardless of how coy the Braves are about Freeman having the job already, everyone would know it. They’d also know that even if the Braves really were conducting a tryout Barbaro Canizares is what he is. No front office is going to say ‘they’re considering him for the 1B job so he must be useful’. They’re too smart to fall for that. Reason two is even if they were dumb enough to fall for it the Braves wouldn’t try it. They’re a team that values their reputation and wouldn’t try to deceive a team by using the media to stage a fake position battle.
Really the only thing the media is good for is communicating to the fans, it’s different inside the industry. The Braves are hardcore selling this ‘youth movement’ thing right now, presumably because if the fans are sold on a youth movement they’ll be more inclined to approve of (not necessarily bad business or baseball) cost-cutting moves and generally the kind of stuff they hate (like trading Javier Vazquez for Arodys Vizcaino and Michael Dunn and some outfielder). So they might as well push Freddie Freeman and Jason Heyward and Craig Kimbrel and Mike Minor and soon Julio Teheran and Randall Delgado all over us. That’s what they’re doing here, basically.
Freddie’s numbers depends on where he hits in the lineup. If you bat eighth it’s hard to put up big numbers. Managers (like Cox) tend to protect rookies by putting them in an unpressured slot (7th/8th). In fact, batting seventh or eighth puts more pressure on the rookie because they have fewer opportunities to be productive.