Liriano is one of my favorite players and I’ve written a bunch of pieces about his injury and subsequent come-back from Tommy John. In 2010, the fantasy world welcomed back Francisco Liriano, fantasy stud, and bid adieu to Francisco Liriano, soft-tosser.

With the way that Francisco Liriano threw that slider, injury was bound to happen and his come-back has shown that he’s not only regained most of his velocity, but also learned how to pitch.

Obviously, when you look at Francisco Liriano, the first thing you want to eye is his absolutely filthy slider. Unfortunately, the PFX graphs aren’t available for 2006, but we can view his return to dominance pfx-style:

Slider (red): What’s not pictured is how often he threw that deadly pitch. In his first season back, he only threw it 14% of the time, then in 2009 he upped it to 25% and then upped it again to almost 32% in 2010.

Prior to the injury, Liriano was tossing it about 38% of the time, so he’s regained the frequency, but he’s yet to regain the 87.7mph average velocity (and that’s probably a good thing).

More importantly, you can see the progression of nasty-ass movement on the pitch. What’s terrifying is that Fangraphs’ linear weights still viewed Liriano’s slider as an above average pitch when it was barely breaking 0 on the vertical axis. In 2010, Liriano added almost 3 inches of vertical movement while touching about 86mph.

It’s mind blowing, at least to me, that Liriano’s slider remained a positive pitch throughout his recovery and his success just depended on how often he threw it. If Liriano can put together another season of tossing the slider at least 30%, he’s in for another stellar season

Fastball (4seam/Green & 2seam/Blue): This is where Liriano really made leaps and bounds. His fastball’s never really been a killer pitch, but in 2010 the pitch was almost as effective as 2006. Unlike 2008 and 2009, Liriano rarely threw a straight fastball in 2010, but when he did it came close to the velocity of the golden years. Instead, Liriano opted for a two-seamer that you can see pictured in blue (underneath the yellow in many cases). Liriano’s two seamer had almost 4 additional inches on both the horizontal and vertical planes versus his straight fastball. Because of this, Liriano posted one of his best ground-ball percentages of his career with 54% being worm-burners. Liriano also allowed the fewest percentage of line-drives in his career; all and all, it was a great year for Liriano.

Change-Up (yellow): When you don’t have your favorite play-toy for a couple years, you gotta find a new one. Liriano’s always going to have an effective change because of his other stuff, but he’s really refined the pitch over the past couple of years. With the return of his velocity on the fastball, the change has followed suit and thus, the differential of about 10mph has been maintained. Additionally, Liriano’s change-up has added a couple more inches of drop and tail with the increased velocity which is the opposite of what you’d expect.

2010 to 2011: Room For Improvement?

This is where it starts to get scary because Liriano posted a BABIP of .319 against lefties and .335 against righties. Both numbers are considerably higher than his career averages, especially against righties. His HR/FB ratio should increase slightly, but I have a feeling that with his two-seamer in full effect, it won’t top 10%.  I doubt Liriano will ever return to the days of a 30% O-Contact Rate, 76% Z-Contact, 65.4% Contact and an incredible, 16.4% Swinging Strike rate but he’s currently still well above average in every regard.

Will he Stay Healthy?

I don’t know, I really don’t. Throwing that slider 30% of the time, even with decreased velocity, is a bit risky. It seems like the fans are predicting about 200IP out of Liriano which means about 200K. Liriano’s more than capable of busting into the top-10 in terms of strike-outs even if he tops out at 200IP. ESPN has Liriano’s ADP at 89th overall which seems like quite a few people believe he won’t get to 200 IP.

I’m not one of those people. I think Liriano has a very real shot of breaking into the top-ten or even winning the Cy Young.

But then you read something like this:  http://www.startribune.com/sports/twins/116575908.html and cringe.

Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson said he asked Liriano whether he did all of his shoulder exercises during the offseason, and Liriano said no.

“He’s been doing them here, and now his shoulder is strong,” Anderson said.

The hype-machine would like to welcome your reigning American League Rookie of the Year and member of the American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays, Sir Evan Longoria.

Longoria seems to have his head on right, and is definitely one of the nicer guys around the league.  Always taking time to chat with fans, sign autographs, and generally remain in high spirits.  There is however, a whole lot of weight on his shoulders this year.  There’s going to be a lot of pressure on Longoria and the Rays to repeat their unbelievable, unexpected, unpredicted, unprecedented success in 2008.

The question is: Will They Live Up To The Hype
As a Reference Point, here’s our Evan Longoria Fantasy Stat Index

Longoria has been on the fast track to the big leagues since he was drafted 3rd overall way back in the year 2006.  Longoria was generally considered the best hitter of the bunch and the scouts raved about how quick his hands were.

After last years’ rookie of the year campaign, it appears as though nothing has changed.  Longoria is still very quick through the zone, and has the ability to adjust quickly.

The question fantasy owners want answered is whether or not Evan Longoria will IMPROVE upon last years’ numbers. The odd thing about fantasy drafts is that young players are always projected to improve in the eyes of fantasy owners, while projection models almost always predict a slight regression in the non-counting stats.

The first thing required to guestimate the chance of improvement is Longoria’s ABs.  Longoria started out 2008 in AAA, and after posting mediocre numbers, he got the call.  Some wonder why the Rays even bothered to send him down for 25 AB, but to each his own.

Longoria logged 448 at-bats in 2008, and missed games due to his minor league stint and late season injuries. Longoria broke his left wrist during the dog-days of August, but made it back for the playoffs where everything seemed fine.

Bill James’ Projection Model comes the closest to predicting a full-season for Longoria, at 599AB.  As there appeared to be no lasting effects from the wrist injury, there’s no reason to assume that Longoria won’t play a full season. BJ’s robot also predicts a slight increase in batting average, which brings us to this stat line: 37HR/102R/116RBI/9SB/.280 average.

This is bringing us awful close to David Wright territory (32HR, 112R,119RBI,17SB, .309AVG) and it’s definitely putting Longoria somewhere between tier-1 and tier-2.  A-Rod’s injury currently leaves tier-1 with a single occupant, David Wright. Longoria’s projected line bests Aramis Ramirez’s, and with Chipper’s injury concerns – Is Longoria the second best 3rd Basemen out there?

What’s Keeping Longoria From Being Great

Of the ELITE third basemen (Rodriguez, Wright, Chipper, Ramirez and Longoria,) Longoria stood out in a couple categories, bad categories; strike-out and walk percentage, which we’ll combine into BB:K.

O-SW is O-Swing, or Swing Percentage Outside the zone.  Z-SW is swings within the zone, and SW is total Swing percentage.  CON is contact percentage, with the same sub-categories.

So here’s our problem: Longoria walks the least and strikes-out the most, giving him a tolerable but not preferable BB/K ratio. Normally we see these numbers with pure power hitters rather than someone who projects more in the David Wright mold.

Longoria also swings the most often at pitches outside the zone, and swings the least at pitches inside the zone.  His low Z-Swing percentage artificially lowers his actual Swing percentage.    When it comes to plate discipline, we’re talking more Aramis Ramirez than David Wright or Chipper Jones.

Considering Longoria has the “worst” eye of the bunch, you’d assume he’d make up for it with his quick wrists but his contact rate floats around Alex Rodriguez who’s far more of a pure power hitter.

I’m hesitant to overly criticize Longoria because different players make different approaches work, and a year from now maybe we’ll be comparing the freshest face with Longoria’s approach.  However, these numbers are troublesome until we actually know what Longoria is: a pure-power hitter, a doubles-machine that hits 35HR a year, or a patient hitter that capitalizes on mistakes.

The good news is that we should expect improvement in all of these fields as Longoria gains experience and matures as a hitter. The bad news is that if Longoria hasn’t made strides during the off-season to curb these bad habits, pitchers will adapt.  This is why so many talented rookies experience the dreaded sophomore slump.

Conclusion:

According to ESPN, Evan Longoria is coming off the board as the second third basemen drafted but he’s nearly 21 positions below David Wright who averages the 4th overall draft spot, or the third player chosen. Overall this puts Longoria somewhere in the neighborhood of Prince Fielder, Carlos Beltran and Matt Holliday.

It’s tough to price Longoria out at this spot, as both Holliday and Beltran run and Fielder plays first base. Alex Rodriguez is going off the board in around the same spot but with his recent injury woes, we can’t exactly judge Longoria against A-Rod either.

However, it’s fairly clear that Longoria’s draft spot reflects a common view that not only will Longoria will play a full season, he’ll also improve.  This is not a stance I’d be willing to take, so long as you can get Youkilis 10 picks later, Ramirez 16 Picks later, and Chipper Jones nearly 30 picks later.  After the elite players there’s a plethora of high-risk / high-reward players that run almost 25 deep.

Evan Longoria has a decent shot of meeting these lofty expectations, but I can’t recommend buying into the hype.  As with any young player, there are going to be some ups and downs and the Tampa Bay Rays will undoubtedly come back down to earth which’ll lower Longoria’s Rib-Eyes and Runs.

If Longoria stole 20 Bases, or hit .300, both of which he theoretically COULD do — it’d be a different ball-game.  But as a .280 hitter that doesn’t run that much, 25th overall or the end of the second round is just too high.

Instead, take a risk on Edwin Encarnacion or Chris Davis that could realistically put up very similar numbers at a much cheaper price. Davis does however suffer from all of the strike-out, contact, and plate discipline problems that may plague Longoria.

Photo's Courtesy Of Keith Allison - Flickr