Reese Kaplan -- Digging Deeper into Minor League Numbers

One of the problem with glancing quickly at stats is they can give you a very wrong impression about the value of the player in question.  Sometimes a player is doing far better than his numbers would indicate and other times the gaudy numbers are painting a false positive narrative.

Take, for example, the exploits of Ruben Tejada, the once and (he hopes anyway) future Met.  A perusal of the box scores or stat sheets would have you think he’s having a late renaissance that warrants another look at the big league level.  After all, he’s batting .328 and owns a highly impressive .916 OPS.  What’s not to love?

Well, for one thing he’s not been very adept at producing runs.  In 128 Abs he has 4 HRs and 15 RBIs.  Those are nice numbers and if they could be extrapolated over the course of a full season, 16+ home runs and 60+ RBIs would be personal bests for the man whose previous best talent was drawing a walk. 

However, to give you a comparison to others in the same environment, Adeiny Hechavarria was up only 92 times and drove in 17 runs.  Arismendy Alcantara hit more HRs (6) and drove in more runs (22) while providing 5 SBs and hitting .314 in just 102 ABs, yet you never even hear his name mentioned.  They’re not alone.  Carlos Gomez and David Thompson (since demoted!) have provided more run production in fewer ABs.   Even the much maligned Tim Tebow and 38 year old Rajai Davis have driven in more runs.    Also you have Dilson Herrera, Danny Espinosa, Travis Taijeron, Rene Rivera and Luis Guillorme outproducing the career .251 hitter.  That’s not exactly heady company. 

On the flip side you have a guy like Chris Mazza who doesn’t post huge strikeout numbers and whose 3.3 record and a 3.67 ERA was OK but not enough to make you demand he get bumped up the ladder to the big leagues.  For his career he also pitched to a 3.67 ERA, so he was providing pretty much what was expected.  His career mark of 7.1 Ks per 9 IP is nothing that would get scouts excited, though his mark of 2.4 BBs per 9 IP showed some decent control. 

What made him stand out this year was his improvement to confounding the batters.  His strikeouts ticked upwards and his walks ticked downward.  However, the number that jumps out at you is he only gave up 38 hits in 49 IP.  The end result is a HIGHLY impressive WHIP of 1.02.  While it was more likely desperation due to the Firestarter bullpen that resulted in his major league promotion for the first time at age 29, the fact is that his first time out after giving up a quick run he demonstrated how he’s able to keep folks off-stride and off base. 

So you can see that numbers can form a good basis for judging how well a player is doing, but sometimes it takes a little more than a cursory glance to reveal what Paul (not Matt) Harvey called “the rest of the story.”