Andrelton’s June
July 3, 2012 at 11:26 am by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves
Over at the Sweet Spot blog, a former colleague of mine (I guess still current colleague, in some sorts), Mark Simon, posted about Andrelton Simmons’s defense.
Simmons won the June award for top defender of the month, to the surprise of nobody who follows the Braves with any type of regularity. If Simmons isn’t the best defensive shortstop in baseball, he is at least the best defensive shortstop in the NL (Brendan Ryan still may have the crown for the MLB). But we all knew he would defend this well. The unexpected results have come at the plate, where he’s hitting .326/.369/.505.
The numbers will come down — he isn’t a 138 wRC+ hitter (that’s no slight against him!) but he does look like the type of hitter that can have success as a contact guy. The power is most certainly a mirage, as the home runs have been of the “just enough” variety, but it is nice to see him occasionally poke one out.
If he can manage to hit at a .280/.330/.370 clip going forward — ZiPS has him at .280/.317/.364 (I typed those previous numbers before I checked the ZiPS rest-of-season projections) then he could be a 4-5 win player. That’s pretty tremendous given he missed two months of the season.
The great thing about Simmons is that he doesn’t have to hit to be incredibly valuable. The defense has its value in itself, like it did last year with Alex Gonzalez. But it’s great to see how he’s handled the bat the first month of his major league career. It isn’t so much the results that impress me, they obviously do, but more the way he has gotten to those numbers. He has consistent contact, he puts together good plate appearances at times — last night was one of those times, 14 pitch walk — and he has a very level swing.
I think the Braves handled the entirely situation perfectly. It is easy to look at how Andrelton has produced and how Pastornicky produced and say that Andrelton should have gotten the job right out of the gate, but making sure Andrelton’s bat was real in the upper minors — even for two short months — seemed necessary to me. Could he have made the jump and been this good? Certainly. Could he have also made the jump, struggled, and been overmatched and hurt his development? Also a distinct possibility.
In projecting the team for next year, it isn’t outlandish to expect Simmons to be the most valuable player on the entire roster. That’s pretty astounding for a kid of his age with his limited experience as a full-time position player.
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You just have to tip your cap to….Ben for writing another excellent post. I’m glad your boss let’s you write during the workday.
I truly enjoyed the article Simon wrote as well as this one. I found a couple stats quite amazing. One, that Simmons has single-handedly lowered the Braves percentage of batter reaching on ground balls from 28% to 21%. And, that Pastornicky was worth -15 defensive runs saved while Simmons has already been worth 10.
I’m no math major but that’s a difference of 25 runs saved. Think of what our record would be without Simmons since he’s come up…….
Well, I would take minor issue with saying Simmons has “single-handedly” lowered the Braves’ GB hit allowed percentage. I’m sure he’s been a big part of it, but it’s also quite possible that Uggla, Freeman, and/or Chipper have been on a bit of a defensive hot streak in June, or simply that they’ve been getting a somewhat easier mix of ground balls.
It’s clear he’s a massive improvement, though, and a joy to watch.
Why not? He replaced the worst fielding SS in baseball.
It is possible that he was solely responsible for the Braves converting 7% more of the total number of groundballs into outs, but given the large number of confounding factors, we cannot say with any certainty that that’s the case. That’s my only point; I’m not at all disputing that his impact has been huge.
If he “single handedly” lowered that percent then that would mean that 7 percent of all ground balls put in play anywhere are balls to short that Simmons makes the play on that Pastornicky would not. I guess thats possible but that seems a little high to me. There could be some luck/ small sample size involved.
C’mon now… re-read what you just said and think about it. Only 7% percent he makes a play on that Pastornicky could not. Seems fairly reasonable to me LOL.
As Anon pointed out… “single-handedly” may be a stretch. But, the fact that we are even discussing it as a possibility instead of completely brushing that off as being ludicrous (that one man could have that much effect on an entire defensive category) means that he is, in fact, having a huge effect on the defense.
If that makes sense?
To build on what you said, Pastornicky’s DRS was -15 while Simmons’ was 10 (in ONE MONTH). 7% actually seems low IMO.
If you say 25% of all GB are in the SS area, a 7% difference would mean Pastornicky only made 72% of the plays Simmons would make, sounds about right.
Yeah the point is that it is 7% of all the balls in play on the ground not just to shortstop. That means that what Loron said was correct and that was the number that seems a little high to me. I was in no way knocking his defense or sating that he was getting lucky. The luck is more just that maybe more ground balls have been hit at infielders this month than in the hole. I know Rev was really bad and Simmons is really good but to think that Pastornicky can’t make 30% of the plays Simmons makes seems like a stretch. Its not that Simmons isn’t 30% better than Pastornicky or anything like that its just that its possible that in any given game there could be not even be a ball to short that is a tough play. There could be 5 balls hit to short that are routine and that both Simmons and Pastornicky would handle.
Dude’s a stud. ‘Nuff said.
Respect your all’s work tremendously. Curious to know how in last year’s prospect list Pastornicky rated #8 to Simmons #9. Is it to hard to quantify defense in the minors? Obviously, the whole world appeared to miss on Simmons. A regraded top 100 list would surely have him top 5 or 10.
I think most of it was due to his offense trailing far behind his defense. We have to keep in mind that the kid is a converted pitcher. Namely, from what I’ve heard, because of his athleticism and his batting skills. Pastornicky was said to have a higher skill level than Simmons in that regard.
I’m not sure that any of us were “wrong” on Simmons. Everyone has stated for quite awhile that he was the Braves’ SS of the future. We all knew his defense of plus-plus. It’s just his bat that is surprising people.
I imagine it had to do with Simmons and Pastornicky being the same age yet Pastornicky being a level higher. And while Pastornicky wasn’t a stud offensively, he wasn’t an embarrassment in the minors. I also think his defense was supposed to be closer to average than the worst in the majors. Simmons’ defense was already considered Gold Glove-caliber; it was his bat that was more of an unknown.
John Sickels regraded his Top 120 and he has Simmons at 14.
1. We don’t get them all right, nobody does.
2. Pastornicky showing with his bat that he was ready to play in the majors — he did that last year at double and triple-A, made him more of a sure thing. Also, his defense was not supposed to be as bad as it was. It was supposed to be right at or a bit below league average. If he did that and hit as expected, he’d be about a league average shortstop — which is what a lot of people expected of Andrelton as an all glove and little bat guy.
Simmons BABIP will come down when pitchers start to throw him less strikes and he stops making strong contact. His walk rate is still really low. He his such a free swinger I hope that when prichers learn they don’t have to throw him strikes hw does not struggle to bad and learns to make his own corrections quickly.
Let’s also remember that it’s unlikely that Simmons’ current offensive performance will sustain. Although his BABIP isn’t just crazy high right now, it’s still likely to come down from the .341 where it sits now.
Still, though, as mentioned, his defense alone will continue to make him a big contributor.
Ugh, I’m bad at commenting lately. That was supposed to be a direct reply to Ty, seeing as how Ben clearly mentioned the likely offensive regression in his post.
SImmons is the next Jeter. He reminds me so much of Jeter when he first played. Give him the right trainer and we will see homers to opposite field in no time. This kid is amazing!
far better fielder then Jeter, but not quite the hitter
That would be nice….Jeter is a walking legend. We will have to wait another 3-4 years to see if it will pan out or not.
I would say the chances of Simmons’ bat slowing down are much worse than the chances of Venters pitching effectively again… Simmons looks so solid at the plate. His average and multi-hit games are almost as impressive as his defense. “His power is a mirage?” It doesn’t matter if the ball just barely leaves the yard, it is still a home run. Plus, Simmons will get stronger with age. I think he will be a .300 hitter, and 10-15 bombs is not a stretch.
I would rein in some of that enthusiasm. We all want to see the kid succeed, but building up unrealistic expectations doesn’t help him. Try to remember that this is his first trip through the league. The book on him is still being written. Many promising young hitters (e.g., Jeff Francoeur) really just torched opposing pitchers for the first few months of their Major League careers, and then crashed and burned.
So the moral of the story is to expect and appreciate the great defense, while being happy with an empty .260 batting average if that’s where he settles in.
First, I don’t think the Simmons-Frenchy comparison is apropos, as they are different types of hitters. Unlike most Braves, Simmons has showed a desire to go opposite field. Hitting there will help sustain his average as he makes adjustments to pitchers making adjustments to him. Note: there are also many hitters who have came up hitting, and haven’t stopped.
Second, I don’t think .300 is unrealistic, nor do I think such aspirations will harm him, as I am sure Simmons has better things to do than read what we have to say here.
re: Expectations management. You’re probably right in the short-term, I worry more about dumb pressure from DOB and the other dumbs to send him down when his hitting inevitably falls off.
And yes, Simmons is not Francoeur; although the walk rates are comparable, Francoeur always struck out a ton more. But the point is more just not to overextrapolate from a rookie’s first 300 or so PA, and to go back to the prior expectation. Our prior was good contact, almost no power. Now he’s come up and flashed a surprising amount of power in his first ~30 games. Given his minor league track record, we should not expect that power to stay, especially as the book gets out on him.
Now with Simmons CLEARLY in the mix and hopefully the starting SS for years to come, what sohuld happen w/ Pastornicky?….Trade him? Make him a Brooks conrad of sorts? Keep him at the AAA level only as a replacement to Simmons if he goes down to injury in the future?