Since being recalled to the majors, Matt den Dekker has played better than his detractors thought he was capable of and nearly as well as his proponents wildly wished. He’s shown the ability to hit, he’s cut down significantly on his strikeouts and his speed helps him on both sides of the game. The question remains if it’s enough to convince the team to commit to him going forward.
A quick glance at his stats won’t impress anybody. But that speaks more to how dreadful he was earlier in the year compared to where he’s at currently. It’s the same song that Travis d’Arnaud backers are singing. And it’s no coincidence that both players took big steps forward after spending time with the coaches in Triple-A.
den Dekker came back with a different approach and it was clear he needed one after posting a .424 OPS with a 26.5 K% in 49 sporadic at-bats. The most noticeable difference is the position of his hands, which are significantly lower than they were earlier in the season. Perhaps it’s not accurate to credit all of his improvement to this adjustment – surely some regression must be at play – but it’s hard not to notice the difference.
Playing every day against RHP, den Dekker has posted a .300/.400/.367 line in 70 PA since August 10. Additionally, he has an 18.6 K% since his return. The only downfall since his adjustment is that it seems to have sapped his power. He has only four extra-base hits, all of which have been doubles. Previously a threat to hit the ball out of the park, den Dekker seems unlikely now to crack double digits in homers over a full season.
While it would be nice to see some over-the-fence power, his gains in on-base percentage more than make up for his drop in ISO. den Dekker still hits the ball hard but now those are grounders and line drives rather than fly balls. Wednesday night he smoked a low line drive past the right fielder for a double.
We also saw a solid single up the middle, a bunt hit against a lefty reliever and a walk.
Since his recall, den Dekker has been typically batting sixth or lower in the order. But Wednesday night he was hitting second and he did an excellent job setting the table, getting on base four of his five trips to the plate. On a team that has no obvious leadoff hitter, the current version of den Dekker might be the best fit for the job.
When he was returned to the minors, den Dekker was utilized as a leadoff man and proceeded to notch a .402/.487/.665 mark over 192 PA before being recalled to the Mets. While his minor league numbers can be partially dismissed both because of his .463 BABIP and the friendly hitting environment of the PCL, what can’t be ignored is how den Dekker had just a 13.5 K% in this span.
One can accept a 25 or greater K% from a guy who hits 30 homers. But den Dekker was unlikely to go deep that often even before the swing makeover. Now we know what the best-case scenario for den Dekker is – a top of the order guy who can hit line drives, take a walk and run. And one who won’t kill you by constantly striking out.
Mets fans have dreamed of acquiring a power bat to play left field. But it’s looking more and more likely that Sandy Alderson won’t pay the price to make that happen, especially after adding a potential big bat in the draft with top pick Michael Conforto. And if an outside person won’t be brought in for the position, then it makes sense to give den Dekker a legitimate chance to make the job his.
Leadoff hitters for the Mets have a .309 OBP this year, a mark which ranks 12th in the 15-team NL. If den Dekker can continue to get on base at a good clip, he could help solve one of the team’s biggest weaknesses.
Of course he’s put up these numbers primarily facing RHP. It will be interesting to see if he gets more chances against southpaws as the season winds down. The current manager prefers to use the same lineup whenever possible, so it’s certainly up for debate if he would permanently move a guy to the leadoff spot who sat against lefties.
But den Dekker did a fine job of leading off in Las Vegas and he should be given a shot at the job in Queens. This year Curtis Granderson leads the club with 235 PA batting first in the order. How nice it would be to swap Granderson’ .289 OBP in the role for a guy with the potential to record a .350 or better mark.
It’s apparently the wet dream of some to turn Juan Lagares into a leadoff hitter. Perhaps that’s where he ultimately winds up once he’s done developing as a hitter. Yet it seems like Lagares has some power and he’ll never be a threat to get 100 walks in a season. Maybe he’ll fit best hitting sixth after d’Arnaud. Regardless of where Lagares fits in the order, it seems den Dekker is a top-of-the-order hitter.
The Mets have enough pieces to be mediocre. For them to be better than that, Duda needs to repeat and Wright and Granderson need to earn their pay. While I have faith in Wright being productive, I have less faith in Grandy and would bat him seventh or eighth until he can wake up. Signing him to four years was a huge mistake, but Murphy, Wright, Duda, d’Arnaud, Flores as a #2 – #6 isn’t exactly Big Red Machine, but it’s a starting point.
However, den Dekker leading off is a bit premature to start expecting. A sample size of less than a month is too soon.
I’m all for DD in the lead off spot. His game translates better there then Lagares. Lagares is best used in the six or seven hole in the order, especially if he can get to hitting 10 to 15 homeruns. They should give DD a run in the lead off spot these last games and see how he performs.
First off, OBP is overrated. Second, if you need OBP to justify a leadoff hitter, Juan Lagares has over 100 ABs and nearly .350.
Second, the three best hitters should bat at the top third. At this point, I don’t see MDD in that group of players although he’s improved.
We have played just about an entire year to see David Wright hit .680. There is this entire line of absolute, complete horseshit the organization touts about “accountability” … and then fails to come through on.
Given the choice between MDD and Kirk, they brought up Kirk. Last year we played Davis and Tejada forever. This year we’ve endured 200 ABs of .177 hitting from Granderson (nearly always, at the top of the order) and a .380 slugging percentage out of the 3 spot. You guys can come up with more, I’m sure.
The thought of the team, first, doing something logical with its order, and second, rewarding someone for being held accountable, is so contrary to what we’ve seen … I’m just out of breath.
Offensively the goal is to score runs and OBP has a very, very high correlation to runs scored. The r-squared for OBP is .835, compared to .804 for SLG, .642 for AVG and .001 for SB.
I strongly, strongly disagree with the statement that OBP is overrated.
Wow, that low for SB’s? I know the Saber folks don’t like SB’s but I would have never guessed it was that low…. But those correlation stats speak volumes about Duda… a guy who can hit for power and walk a lot (higher OBP) . Wonder what it would be like to have a lineup of Duda’s 1-8… would look entirely funny but according the Sabermetrics it would do fairly well in scoring runs.. Of course it would be dreadful in the field outside of 1B.
Baseball Musings has a calculator where they estimated runs scored for a lineup based on OBP and SLG. I put in Duda 8X and Bartolo Colon once and it estimated that lineup (Colon hitting 8th) would produce 4.741 runs per game. You can see the results here:
http://www.baseballmusings.com/cgi-bin/LineupAnalysis.py?Player0=Lucas+Duda&OBA0=.343&Slug0=.478&Player1=Lucas+Duda&OBA1=.343&Slug1=.478&Player2=Lucas+Duda&OBA2=.343&Slug2=.478&Player3=Lucas+Duda&OBA3=.343&Slug3=.478&Player4=Lucas+Duda&OBA4=.343&Slug4=.478&Player5=Lucas+Duda&OBA5=.343&Slug5=.478&Player6=Lucas+Duda&OBA6=.343&Slug6=.478&Player7=Lucas+Duda&OBA7=.343&Slug7=.478&Player8=Bartolo+Colon&OBA8=.038&Slug8=.058&Model=0
as said elsewhere, OBP when viewed in a vacuum (which is precisely what an r-squared will get you) is overrated.
Just running this through a quick spread sheet (no hbp, sac flies), take 100 AB. 14% BB, 21% K rate (not that I think he can keep that up, but whatever). Producing a league average BABIP (.320) and his current ISO of .40, I come up with a LFer that only hits RHP and a .720ish OPS.
Its not worth it. And OBP is overrated when you fail to take into consideration context.
[edit: and to suggest he can maintain even a league average BABIP, not to mention no regression to his lifetime norms in K rates, BB rates, is being generous.]
Just because you say it multiple times doesn’t make it true.
JG raises an important matter however. Strong correlations do not require the identification of some special relationship. This is especially the case when the variables in consideration have some dependence (if this occurs then that will happen) and so results can be (must be) correlated with each other, and this has little to with real meaning except to define the dependence. For example, hitting a HR will be required to have a connection with a run scored. Because a HR contributes to OBP that value is partly required to effect the outcome. Hitting a HR cannot end up without scoring a run. I also think there is a lot buried within OBP as well as changing conditions from example to example making the direct comparison open to discussion.
I understand what you’re saying.
The idea is to score runs and hitting a HR moves that from theoretical to actual. I don’t know why we would view that as a bad thing.
However, even if it is a “bad” thing, the affect of a HR on SLG is much greater than it is on OBP. If it were somehow desirable to remove HR output from the calculation of the the r-squared — it would only serve to widen the gap between OBP and SLG.
Earlier, I posted the Baseball Musings calculator with the results of the lineup with eight Lucas Dudas in it. Just for laughs, I removed one of the Dudas and inserted a hypothetical player who walked in half of his at-bats and made outs in the other half. In other words, a guy with a .500 OBP and a .000 SLG.
Even though we substituted a guy with an OPS 321 points lower, and one that never hit a homer, we see that the run scoring went up to 4.884 runs per game.
OBP is definitely not overrated, and if Lagares was truly at .350 i would have absolutely zero problem with him batting leadoff. However, his OBP is closer to .320, and that’s because he gets a lot of hits. He doesn’t take many walks, so his OBP is very much tied to his batting average. His average is inflated a bit because of his .348 BABIP (league average is closer to .300) so I would expect that to come down a bit. He needs to learn how to take a walk.
OBP is overrated, when you judge it in a vacuum as Brian seems to do above.
Brian points out MDD’s 767 OPS since 8/10/2014, but forgets to mention the ridiculous .389 BABIP. Combine a normalized BABIP, with no power, and I don’t care what his damned OBP is.
You wind up with Eric Young Jr. Obviously, OBP is important in conjunction with league average-ish other skills.
Again, the best three hitters at the top of the order. Everyone else gets behind the cleanup guy.
So, the Mets have anointed Conforto, and they’re making ML roster decisions based upon what they’ve seen from a 21 yr. old with a professional resume of 40 Games at “A” Ball?
The Mets haven’t done anything; that’s just me speculating.
I am one of the dreamers who believe that in order for the Mets to compete for a playoff spot in 2015 they have to aquire an established quality impact bat at either SS or LF. I feel stronger about this with the uncertainty of Wright and Granderson’s future production. Therefore I see MDD or Kirk as the future LHB reserve outfielder. Similar to the Duda/Davis debate, I see two similar players for one roster spot.
I am all in for MDD leading off vs RHP and Campbell also getting his AB’s for the remainder of 2014. I am also all in for Lagares leading off vs LHP.
TC does not believe in platoons, does believe ad nauseum in a set line up everyday (even when it is unproductive)and continued the Granderson lead off idea well past expiration. Those are some of the reason’s why I prefer another manager in 2015.
If the Mets obtain a #3 or #5 hitting SS then maybe MDD as a LHB platoon LF is plausible if he can beat out Kirk who has also improved this year with his 363/526/889 vs RHP. If MDD or Kirk is necessary to “sweeten” a trade then that could solve the situation, otherwise let them compete next spring.
If Wright and Grandy rebound to anything close to their historical numbers, the Mets should make a push at 85+ Wins. An additional bat would get them over 90, I believe.
Wright getting close to his normal numbers is possible because he has been successful just last year and this year has been hurt; Granderson hasn’t done it in a few years so the odds I believe are long.
I think a fair comparison for Matt’s best case scenario would be Nori Aoki pre 2014 which is around .280/.350/.400 with 20-30 sbs and good defense in which case he should be batting leadoff.
A less than average scenario… David Lough or Jarrod Dyson?
so we’ve seen 45 days of .60 ISO, and you’re jumping him to .120 without taking away a bit of OBP.
Yeah, I’d say that is “best case scenario”. LOL.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. den Dekker was recalled on August 10th, which puts his current stint at 25 days. Overall, he’s played in 36 games and started just 28 of them so i have no idea what “45 days of 0.60 ISO” is referring to.
Not sure why that jump is so incredible for you to believe. He has few enough ABs that a double will increase his ISO by about .010 and a HR will increase it by .030, so a 2 HR game will put him over .100
So yea, overall, best case, i expect some of his singles to become XBH. Once again have no idea where the “without taking a away a bit of OBP” is coming from either as his current OBP is .328, but his BA is .238, so the increase in BA would be offset by a lower amount of walks.
Excuse me for the time period error; I just quickly looked at August, thought of it in terms of August to September.
At any rate, in the first place MDD has a lifetime ISO of 61 points. Within the author’s time frame, it was 67. A leap of nearly double his lifetime ISO up to this point – other than fulfilling your dreams – seems improbable.
In a world where MDD has presumably given up power in order to get on base more (which is exactly what has happened), it seems even more like a stretch.
And using his year long numbers, where the entire context has been what has happened since August 1 … what are you thinking here? Are you following the article, or even marginally trying to respond to me? I mean, why not just go ahead and use his lifetime OBP, or the lifetime OBP of Eric Young Jr. It would be as relevant to the argument at hand.
“best case scenario”
Perhaps you missed this in my first post.
If you want me to be realistic, i don’t think he’s more than a .250/.320/.350 hitter next year.
And ISO can appear and disappear pretty easily.
Just some examples just on the Mets last year to this year
TDA: .061 to .162
Kirk: .147 to .247
Wright: .207 to .101
I guess I did (miss your first post), and its apparent we agree to the greater extent.
The numbers do not suggest that is a good option, he did not have the record of good obp and sb to make anyone comfortable leading off. Juan Lagares is a better option between these two.