In yesterday’s Game Chatter we talked some about the relative merits of DJ Stewart and Tyrone Taylor. Clearly, Taylor is the better defensive player. But the question is if Stewart’s big advantage on offense makes up for his deficit in defense.
If this was a Presidential debate, people would accuse me of being a flip-flopper on Stewart. Guilty as charged. His lack of XBH both to close last season and then again in Spring Training was worrisome. But once the season started, Stewart began to deliver the power. He has two doubles and three homers in 47 PA. That’s, um, really good. Can he keep it up? That’s a legitimate question and the answer is probably no. But at what point does he stabilize? He can still drop off some and be a good offensive player. We can’t ignore what’s actually happened.
Meanwhile, Taylor has been good offensively. Not nearly as good as Stewart yet really good. And somehow very few people ask if Taylor can keep it up. And the answer seems clearer here – no he cannot.
Taylor has a 124 OPS+, which is really good, especially for someone who’s not a starter. But Stewart has a 180 OPS+. And the two players have similar playing time totals, with Taylor having 49 PA and Stewart having 47. One other thing to consider is that Taylor has a .394 BABIP while Stewart has a .250 mark. The hits are falling in for Taylor at an unsustainable rate.
One advanced hitting stat that we don’t use here much is wOBA, which falls somewhere between OPS and wRC+ in its usefulness. For me, it’s not a stat referenced often because it’s not park adjusted, like wRC+ is. But it correlates better to run scoring than OPS, even if not by a particularly large margin.
The reason it’s relevant now is that there is an xwOBA available. The “x” stands for expected and this expected value is calculated using exit velocity and launch angle of batted balls, in an attempt to minimize the luck of batted balls and instead give a measure of skill.
Taylor has a wOBA of .348, which is above average. But his xwOBA of .316, falls four point beneath the .320 mark that is considered average in the category. Stewart has a wOBA of .427, which is terrific, and an xwOBA of .397, which is still very, very good.
We see by both his BABIP and his xwOBA that Taylor has been quite fortunate so far this season. We should be pretty skeptical of the numbers he’s put up to date and his ability to maintain those moving forward. He’s still a very good guy to have on the team. It’s just that when J.D. Martinez returns to the club that it might be a good idea to get Stewart some playing time in the outfield if you’re looking to maximize the club’s offensive output in a given game.
Since the 2023 All Star game, Taylor has logged 205 ABs, has hit .283 with a slugging percentage of .537. In those 205 AB’s he’s hit 11 HR and driven in 44 runs. He was a big reason the Brewers pulled away from the rest of the NL Central last year as his playing time increased the last 6 weeks of the season. He’s never gotten the chance to play every day. Brewers always brought in some guy every year that kept Tyrone on the bench that wasn’t as skilled as he is.
I’m a Brewer fan by the way. They made a huge mistake trading him away and I said so on Brewer sites at the time. Chourio is not ready and Yelich and Mitchell are hurt. They really miss Taylor.
Forget Stewart, the guy you should be comparing him to is Bader. Taylor is a very competent CF and a better hitter than Bader.