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Player Prediction: Geovany Soto

Published: 15th Oct 09 2:28 pm
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by mattmilner
mattmilner
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Geovany Soto

Geovany Soto

In most leagues, unless you had Joe Mauer or Victor Martinez your catching core was probably thin at best. Some big names from 2008, like Ryan Doumit, Geovany Soto, Brian McCann, and Russell Martin fell due to injury or had down years.

Soto showed up to camp in the spring looking for a good sophomore season. He came slightly out of shape and then shipped off to the WBC to see his playing time and workout regiment get reduced. He battled a shoulder injury in the early going of the season and his results were less than remarkable. He later suffered an oblique strain which combined with the shoulder troubles limited him to 102 games in 2009.

Soto is one of my personal top rebound candidates for 2010. Here’s why. In the stretch of games from May 1st up until his injury on July 7, Soto put up a .263/.355/.468 (for those that don’t know this is called a “slash line” and it consists of Batting Average/On Base Percentage/Slugging Percentage) with 16 runs, 8 HR, and 25 RBI. While not great numbers overall, they are much better than what his final numbers show and they are good for a catcher.

Another reason I think Soto is due for a rebound is because of his bad luck on balls in play, specifically his line drives. The league average BABIP (batting average on balls in play which excludes strikeouts and home runs) on line drives was .718. Soto’s was .505. Many of you probably know that line drives are the most likely type of batted ball to fall in for hits. Soto’s were falling in about 20% less than league average, which is very unlucky. Another way of looking at this is to look at his overall line drive percentage. Soto ended the season with an 18.1% line drive percentage. Not terrible, but certainly not as good as his 21% from 2008. Soto’s overall BABIP on all types of batted balls was .251. Now, before I go on I want to explain the correlation between BABIP and LD%. Some really smart baseball statisticians have gone back and looked at tons and tons of baseball game data to see what drives BABIP and what the most common factor in it being higher or lower is. They found out that LD% is that factor. The league average difference between LD% and BABIP is 12 or 13%. So, take Soto’s 18.1% (.181) and add 12.5% (.125) and you get an expected BABIP of .306.

The LD% BABIP trick is a good way to see if a guy is having a fluke season offensively or if it’s legitimate. Raul Ibanez and Orlando Hudson are both good examples of guys in 2009 that should have been huge trade candidates after their hot Aprils. It was very apparent after looking at their LD% and BABIPs that they couldn’t sustain that production level.

As we get closer to draft day I’ll start making a list of all my boom and bust guys for 2010.

Feel free to email any questions you may have.

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