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Post by widewordofsport on Jun 27, 2014 15:49:06 GMT -5
If nothing else, Coyle is only a few months away from making the 'Coyle vs. Cecchini' thread seem less ridiculous. Cecchini... Theres a different story. Who is the one I was mocking for saying he was a bat to build a lineup around?
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radiohix
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'At the end of the day, we bang. We bang. We're going to swing.' Alex Verdugo
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Post by radiohix on Jun 27, 2014 16:33:02 GMT -5
I think we tend to forget what Coyle was (because of his injuries) when he first came out to the system: The hitter we're seeing now is basically the same hitter we thought he was in Greenville but the AA version has an inflated BABIP, He'll take a walk, strikes out a bunch and hit the **** out of the ball when he connects...I remember a poster here calling him a Mini-Adam Dunn , which is very good for a middle infielder who happens to be an excellent base runner. Here's his core stats in Greenville compared to Portland: BB% 12.9 in A ball vs 9.4 in AA K% 23.6 in A ball vs 22.5 in AA ISO .216 vs .232 BABIP .303 vs .444 As I mentionned earlier, beside his BABIP he's been the same player: A very good prospect in a position of need to a lot of teams. On a personnal note, He got hurt in Greenville when trying to bunt a deflected ball hit him in the jaws and was sent to the DL, the sox called a middle infielder from XST to take his roster spot, his name is Xander Bogaerts.
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Post by Guidas on Jun 27, 2014 18:01:18 GMT -5
IAdmittedly, the average doesn't fit with his track record, but going from .250ish in high A to .360ish in AA can't all be flukish BABIP luck, and he's 22, so it's not like we can't/shouldn't expect development. Our old friend Chih-Hsien Chiang went from hitting .260/.312/.420 as a 22-year-old in Portland in 2010 to hitting .340/.402/.648 as a 23-year-old in Portland in 2011 (in 358 PAs!). Don't let Temple see this. He's still cursing Theo on "The Trade."
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jun 29, 2014 4:24:13 GMT -5
I think we tend to forget what Coyle was (because of his injuries) when he first came out to the system: The hitter we're seeing now is basically the same hitter we thought he was in Greenville but the AA version has an inflated BABIP, He'll take a walk, strikes out a bunch and hit the **** out of the ball when he connects...I remember a poster here calling him a Mini-Adam Dunn , which is very good for a middle infielder who happens to be an excellent base runner. Here's his core stats in Greenville compared to Portland: BB% 12.9 in A ball vs 9.4 in AA K% 23.6 in A ball vs 22.5 in AA ISO .216 vs .232 BABIP .303 vs .444 As I mentionned earlier, beside his BABIP he's been the same player: A very good prospect in a position of need to a lot of teams. On a personnal note, He got hurt in Greenville when trying to bunt a deflected ball hit him in the jaws and was sent to the DL, the sox called a middle infielder from XST to take his roster spot, his name is Xander Bogaerts. What impresses me is the age related IsoP. His minor league career IsoP is .199 (Dustin's was .145). age / Iso (excluding rehabs) 19 .217 Greenville 20 .142 Salem 21 .272 Salem 22 .228 Portland (so far) The power has always been there and explains a good deal of the BABIP, he rakes but the raking is moreso as he's matured. The Salem years are somewhat tainted because of the injuries, no telling how often he played somewhat hurt and the second year was a repeat level year. I know it's a weird way to look at it but generally, if IsoD is reasonable then I'm very happy with a K% (expressed as a decimal) at around IsoD because it says he's not being too aggressive.
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Post by suttree on Jun 29, 2014 6:47:11 GMT -5
How does the power explain his BABIP? Don't power hitters tend to have lower BABIPs? HRs don't count towards BABIP, if those 9 bombs were doubles his BABIP would be over .500.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 29, 2014 10:02:34 GMT -5
How does the power explain his BABIP? Don't power hitters tend to have lower BABIPs? HRs don't count towards BABIP, if those 9 bombs were doubles his BABIP would be over .500. There's a slight positive correlation between Iso and BABIP. If we took BABIP relative to speed, it would be stronger. Looking at 2010-14, minimum 1500 PA, the BABIP leaders: Mike TroutChris Johnson Joey VottoAustin Jackson Joe Mauer Carlos GonzalezMichael Bourn Dexter Fowler Miguel CabreraPaul Goldschmidt
Braun is 14th, Hamilton 16th, Stanton 20th. Now, you are correct that there is a breed of power hitter who tends to have low BABIP. Teixiera, Encarnacion, Bautista, Reynolds. And you know what drives this? (And this took me completely by surprise.) Popup rates. Hmm. Unlike the line drive / fly ball discrimination, an infield fly ball is objective, not subjective. So the data is sound. It is also as sure an out as a strikeout. Which means every study ever done about hardness of contact can be redone by putting popups in their own bucket, alongside strikeouts, and then calculating BA(NP)IP where NP is non-popup, etc. Crap. That means I have to do that, today!
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 29, 2014 12:39:15 GMT -5
Which means every study ever done about hardness of contact can be redone by putting popups in their own bucket, alongside strikeouts, and then calculating BA(NP)IP where NP is non-popup, etc. Crap. That means I have to do that, today! Wow. This really works. Data set is 2010-15, the 210 players with 1500 PA (excluding SH and IBB). The three signs of power hitting, K%, HR/Contact (HRC), and XBH/Hits in Play (XB%), correlate with each other profoundly. K%, HRC = .63 K%, XB% = .50 HRC, XB% = .56 To a lesser degree, unintentional walks correlate with all three: K%, BB% = .39 HRC, BB% = .44 XB%, BB% = .39 But BABIP does not appear to be a measure of power at all. It only has a .10 correlation to K%, and inverse correlations to the other three. However, if you remove popups from balls in play, to get Non-Popup Ball in Play Average (NPA), all the correlations get better. One of the ones that improves is the correlation to a measure of speed, SB / Proxy for SB Opportunities [singles plus unintentional walks plus HBP]. (I tried tossing in CS with the same denominator, and 3B / (2B + 3B), but nothing made it better). You can adjust NPA by adding (.328 - estimated NPA, which is .322 + .082 * SB/ SBO). Now you get a number, adjusted NPA or aNPA, and here's the comparison with BABIP in how it correlates to the known slugger's metrics: BABIP aNPA K% .10 .21 BB% -.02 .04 HRC -.07 .16 XB% -.08 .09 The .16 correlation of aNPA to HRC is statistically significant. I'm sure that with a larger sample (and a better speed adjustment than one cooked up in less than an hour) that XB% and maybe even BB% would be as well. So there's the answer. Raw BABIP is not any kind of measure of power because it is influenced by speed and especially by tendency to popup. If you adjust for the former and remove the latter -- that stat does correlate with other measures of power. Most sluggers do have a tendency to pop up; the correlation of PU / BIP to HRC is .30, and to XB% .32. A slugger who has the skill of not popping up that much (Chris Davis, Ryan Howard, Miguel Cabrera) can gain a BA advantage on one who pops up a lot (Bautista, Encarnacion, Reynolds, Josh Willingham). I'm guessing Coyle doesn't pop up much.
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Post by jmei on Jun 29, 2014 12:49:00 GMT -5
I'm guessing Coyle doesn't pop up much. 10.2% this year, 9.7% across his minor league career, both of which are roughly league-average. Lower than Encarnacion (14.2%) or Bautista (14.3%), but higher than Cabrera (7.3%) or Davis (4.3%). For what it's worth, I plugged Coyle's batted ball rates into an xBABIP calculator a few days ago and got something like a .303 expected BABIP. Now, that doesn't account for his hardness of contact or his speed, but he's still clearly BABIPing way above his head (he's got a .445 BABIP; it's a .500 BABIP if you remove IFFBs). His career minor-league BABIP is .325, which is higher than it'd be at the major-league level due to better MLB defenders and more shifting. Maybe he's a true-talent .320 BABIP guy in the majors, which is still quite good, but at his current strikeout rates, he'd still be something like a .260 hitter. ADD: not to imply that Coyle is a bad prospect; with his power, moderate patience, some speed, and solid-to-better defense, he could start for a dozen teams at 2B with a .260 batting average. But I just wanted to note that while BABIP is a skill for hitters, it's usually one with a pretty narrow spread. Even if he's an above-average BABIP guy (which I suspect he is), Coyle's not going to sustainably hit for a .300 or even a .280 average in the majors without substantial improvements in his strikeout rate.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Jun 29, 2014 14:14:22 GMT -5
Once his babip regresses, I think he's still capable of putting up some uggla numbers. With slightly better defense, that could make him a 3-4 win player for a few years.
Edit: In retrospect - Coyle's minor league career numbers are a bit too close - will likely drop off once he reaches the majors....but how much?
Coyle Minor Leage Career vs Uggla Major League Career: Average: .262 vs .244 OBP: .325 vs .337 SLG: .462 vs .452 BB%: 9.8% vs 11.3% K%: 24.46% vs 24.2% BB:K: .47:1 vs .40:1
Seems like his average and slugging 'may' hold to uggla levels if they only regress slightly when he moves up - but an improvement in plate discipline is certainly needed.
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Post by suttree on Jun 29, 2014 14:28:10 GMT -5
That's all rather interesting but my point was fairly simple. Home runs are hits that count towards BA but not BABIP. So a high home run total depresses your BABIP relative to BA.
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Post by wcsoxfan on Jun 29, 2014 14:45:31 GMT -5
That's all rather interesting but my point was fairly simple. Home runs are hits that count towards BA but not BABIP. So a high home run total depresses your BABIP relative to BA. If you consider HR as part of the BABIP equation, then his BABIP raises from .438 to .477. So you can expect his batting average to be ~.039 higher than that of a player with similar numbers but zero home tuns. As this is about double the average rate (estimating) then if we take the average BABIP of of .303 and add another 20 points (doubling) then we would be around .323, which is about where I think many of us are projecting. If we expect his batting average to regress by the same percentage as his BABIP (~75%) then a .267 batting average seems reasonable and quite on par with his career .262 batting average.
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Post by jimed14 on Jun 29, 2014 14:52:10 GMT -5
Unrelated, but Joe Mauer has 2 popups in last 4 seasons. That's just crazy.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 29, 2014 15:04:05 GMT -5
I'm guessing Coyle doesn't pop up much. 10.2% this year, 9.7% across his minor league career, both of which are roughly league-average. Lower than Encarnacion (14.2%) or Bautista (14.3%), but higher than Cabrera (7.3%) or Davis (4.3%). For what it's worth, I plugged Coyle's batted ball rates into an xBABIP calculator a few days ago and got something like a .303 expected BABIP. Now, that doesn't account for his hardness of contact or his speed, but he's still clearly BABIPing way above his head (he's got a .445 BABIP; it's a .500 BABIP if you remove IFFBs). His career minor-league BABIP is .325, which is higher than it'd be at the major-league level due to better MLB defenders and more shifting. Maybe he's a true-talent .320 BABIP guy in the majors, which is still quite good, but at his current strikeout rates, he'd still be something like a .260 hitter. ADD: not to imply that Coyle is a bad prospect; with his power, moderate patience, some speed, and solid-to-better defense, he could start for a dozen teams at 2B with a .260 batting average. But I just wanted to note that while BABIP is a skill for hitters, it's usually one with a pretty narrow spread. Even if he's an above-average BABIP guy (which I suspect he is), Coyle's not going to sustainably hit for a .300 or even a .280 average in the majors without substantial improvements in his strikeout rate. FanGraphs "IFFB," by the way, appear to be literally that: balls caught in the infield, according to BIS. They do not match at all the totals of balls caught by infielders. I used the latter for my study, grabbing it from BP. Coyle's career power metrics versus the norm for MLB players with 1500+ PA over the last five years, which is to say, largely regulars: K rate: .245 versus .180 BB rate: .097 versus .081 HR/Contact: .053 versus .041 XBH/Hits in Play: .345 versus .252 BABIP excluding popups: .360 versus .329 Popups / balls in play: .101 versus .074 Weighting all six metrics by their relative contribution to TAv / EqA (r = .95), most similar players (based on simple absolute difference of each): Juston Upton, .296 TAv (.231, .094, .058, .254, .366, .095) Carlos Gomez, .277 (.237, .057, .052, .271, .361, .102) Rickie Weeks, .276 (.241, .099, .053, .278, .333, .083) In terms of hitter profile, he's basically been Justin Upton with a lot more doubles (least important component, though). Or Carlos Gomez with almost twice as many walks. So, yeah, there are successful guys like this in MLB. If Coyle put up those metrics in MLB, that's a .295 TAv. Important note: this of course doesn't say that he can continue to hit like this as he moves up two rungs. The key point is that this style of hitting does happen.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 29, 2014 15:51:36 GMT -5
K rate: .245 versus .180 BB rate: .097 versus .081 HR/Contact: .053 versus .041 XBH/Hits in Play: .345 versus .252 BABIP excluding popups: .360 versus .329 Popups / balls in play: .101 versus .074 Important note: this of course doesn't say that he can continue to hit like this as he moves up two rungs. The key point is that this style of hitting does happen. I can put a weighted (by PA) trendline through his four seasons and extrapolate two years / levels. His K rate goes up to .262 and his walk rate down to .064. His HR, Non-Popup BABIP, and Popup rates are trending better, so let's ignore that and use his career numbers. His XBH is trending down steeply, so let's bring that down to average. It's a very small factor in any case. That's a .272 TAv, which is very good for a 2B. It would rank 11th in MLB this year. And he's essentially Carlos Gomez with 10% more strikeouts (and .005 less TAv thereby).
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Post by larrycook on Jun 29, 2014 23:10:28 GMT -5
Even with all the injuries and the high strike out rate, I think we put him on the 40 man roster and protect him from the rule 5 draft because Cherrington is a hoarder of middle infielders.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jun 29, 2014 23:26:09 GMT -5
The only thing that can said with certainty is that we're keeping eric awake a lot.
ADD: In that light, I'll give him something to think about that's a lot of work.
I also think BABIP is positively influenced by batters like Coyle, who utilizes his power to all fields. It seems logical that if somebody is hitting the ball hard, doing that into a spread outfield would yield better results than hitting into a bunched outfield.
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Post by moonstone2 on Jun 30, 2014 10:06:16 GMT -5
An analysis of BABIP doesn't work the same way in the minors as it does in the majors. There are some players who are so much better than their competition that they are able to sustain an extreme BABIP at the minor league level at which they are playing.
This moves the discussion on to if Coyle is such a player because if he is, he's a much better major league prospect than was thought at the beginning of the season.
The knock on Coyle for me has always been his seeming lack of ability to stay on the field. This is a double whammy for prospects because not only do injuries sap the prospects ability to move ahead, but they also rob the propsect of the ability to get better.
From scanning past scouting reports, he sounds a lot like Kelly Johnson currently of the Yankees. But perhaps his higher BABIP shows that he is developing a better hit tool than Johnson has.
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Post by nexus on Jun 30, 2014 10:15:27 GMT -5
Video highlight of Coyle's bases clearing 2B (advances to 3B on throw):
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on Jun 30, 2014 10:23:46 GMT -5
The only thing that can said with certainty is that we're keeping eric awake a lot. I do have one of the strangest sleep disorders known to man -- non-24-hour sleep/wake pattern. Furthermore, I have the irregular version of it. In the day I did that work, I napped twice, totaling 35 minutes, over a stretch of 26 1/2 hours. And not for any reason like insomnia -- the clock in my brain simply had me sleep from 11:30 AM to 4 PM one day, and 6:30 PM to 11:00 PM the next, while meanwhile apparently skipping the usual "siesta" lull at the equivalent of noon. (Yeah, never knowing when you'll sleep or for how long is an insane bitch.) Great point, and will become more and more important the more defensive shifts we see. A hitter who can hit hard GB from foul line to foul line is going to have a higher BABIP on them than a guy who always pulls into a shift. Dustin Pedroia has a career .276 BABIP on grounders; Papi, .200. That's even bigger than I expected. We have the data to break down GB, FB, LD by fields for all batters. If I had that data I know I could construct the expected BABIP metric to die for. Something to put on the wish list for the future (I have a couple of books I'm supposed to be writing instead of doing this!).
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jun 30, 2014 12:01:34 GMT -5
With a few more plate appearances, Coyle (who spent time on the DL earlier this year with a hamstring injury) will qualify for the minor league leaderboards. If he qualified for them today, he’d be the full-season minor league leader in average while ranking seventh in OBP and fifth in slugging, his numbers ranking among the elite offensive prospects in the minors at an age that wouldn’t disqualify him from such consideration. . . . . So there are caveats and qualifications to Coyle’s explosion. Nonetheless, the first three months of 2014 have offered an emphatic reminder of Coyle’s tremendous potential. The Sox took him in the third round of the 2010 draft but gave him first-round money ($1.3 million to pass on a scholarship to UNC) because they viewed him as a first-round talent, a potential up-the-middle player with the ability to move to other positions (he showed well at third, and there’s some thought that his baseball instincts would allow him to play the outfield as well), good baserunning speed and instincts and a chance for 25-30 homer power.
That profile suggests a player with a ceiling matched by few position players in the Red Sox system. Now that Xander Bogaerts and Betts are in the big leagues, a case can be made that Coyle has one of the highest ceilings of any position player in the Sox system, with only Blake Swihart and Rafael Devers clearly ahead of him.
Depending on preferred flavor of ice cream, debatable cases can be made for Garin Cecchini (given the potential for huge OBPs), Greenville outfielder Manuel Margot (a possible five-tool player), Deven Marrero and Christian Vazquez (the latter two based on Gold Glove-caliber defense at premium positions and adequate offense, with much higher probabilities of achieving that status than Coyle based on their track records) as having bigger ceilings than Coyle’s. A few other players, such as Double-A outfielder Henry Ramos, recently drafted Sam Travis (if he can move to third base and becomes more lean) and rookie level shortstop Javier Guerra represent deeper projection candidates for such a status. And it’s worth stating: Ceiling doesn’t define the better prospect, since prospect status must account for the probability that a player lands at his ceiling or floor, and the relative distance between those two positions.
But those caveats aside: There aren’t many in the Sox system who show the pure potential of Coyle. His track record makes him a wild card to ever scrape that projection ceiling, but the Sox will enjoy the opportunity to daydream about a player with the potential to emerge as the next of the Russian dolls fullcount.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/2014/06/30/red-sox-minor-league-roundup-of-sean-coyle-russian-dolls-and-the-red-sox-prospect-ceiling-question/He also addresses other things like the injuries but I didn't want to paste the entire article.
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Post by awall on Jun 30, 2014 13:33:30 GMT -5
wow, i didn't realize how far off the plate he sets up.
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Post by tonyc on Jun 30, 2014 16:29:30 GMT -5
Interestingly in his article, Alex Speir offered the tremendous start Coyle had in 2013 as evidence of the possiblity of a flash in the pan, wheras I view that as a possible precursor to the potential he is starting to exploit. A longtime GM premise quoted is that if you've been good before you can do so again.
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Post by Jonathan Singer on Jun 30, 2014 17:31:06 GMT -5
He will replace Betts in the futures game.
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Post by elguapo on Jul 2, 2014 23:32:55 GMT -5
10th HR tonight. I wanted him to spend the season at AA but it's tough when he's obliterating pitching at that level.
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Post by zil on Jul 2, 2014 23:43:35 GMT -5
I love the power, but the k rate scares me.
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