Geovany Soto followed up his  1.100 OPS cup-of-coffee (60 PA) in 2007 with a Rookie Of The Year performance in 2008.  Big things were expected from Soto entering the 2009 season; fantasy experts generally had him in their top-60 overall and the third or fourth best catcher available.

North Side Chicago Gang Sign For Expressing One's Home Run Total

The 2009 season hasn’t been nearly as kind to Soto: Injuries and ineffectiveness have left him ranked as the 922nd best player in a standard Yahoo Fantasy Baseball League. After a recent hot-streak in which Soto went 21-for-73 in the month of May, Soto raised his Batting Average and On-Base-Percentage to .218 and .333, respectively.

Unfortunately, Soto still only slugged .370 in May; barely raising his season SLG to .277. Soto’s lack of power is inexplicable and he hasn’t hit a home-run since May 13th — his first and only.

Soto’s entire year has been inexplicable and his advanced statistics fail to shed any light on the situation.  Starting with batted-ball statistics, it’s pretty clear that Soto’s been unlucky but not to the point where you’d expect such disappointing roto-stats.

Batted Ball

BABIP: Soto had a .337 BABIP in 2008, and was expected to post somewhere in the region of .320 this year.  Unfortunately, Soto’s currently batting .278 on balls-in-play which is roughly 50pts below expectations.  While it’s obvious that Soto got a little lucky in 2008, a .278 BABIP is by no means a poor number and fails to fully explain Soto’s slump.

HR/FB: After posting a fairly average 14.7% HR/FB in 2008, Soto’s 2.9% HR/FB in 2009 isn’t exactly what was expected.  Wrigley Field in the Spring generally suppresses HR numbers as the wind blows in off Lake Michigan, but bad luck also players a factor.  Wrigley’s currently the 12th best hitting park, but the 12th worst HR park in the bigs, FYI. Courtesy of ESPN Park Factors.

Whether or not these two factors account for such a discrepency isn’t clear cut, but should give you a little confidence in Soto going forward as the rest of his indicator statistics are in line with last year.

Line Drive: Soto’s line-drive percentage is actually 0.7% higher than his 2008 number of 21.0%.

GB/FB: Soto’s hitting a few more ground balls, but his 1.06 GB/FB is well within career norms.

Pitches Seen:

Classification: Soto’s seeing a similiar pitch selection with the only difference being about 3% more cut-fastballs.  Much like 2008, Soto’s amongst the lead-leaders in off-speed pitches seen.  In 2009, of qualifying players with 140 PA only Soriano, Howard, Francoeur, Duncan, Blalock, Blum, Hart, I-Rod, and the Cuban Missile, see fewer fastballs than Geovany Soto.

Ball/Strikes: There is a small difference in the number of strikes that Soto is seeing.  After throwing Soto a league-average 51% of pitches in the zone in 2008, opposing pitchers have resorted to throwing Soto 47.1% of pitches in the zone in 2009.

Plate Discipline: Soto’s adapted to opposing pitchers quite well, actually better than I ever would have expected. Pitchers are throwing less strikes, but Soto’s swinging at less Balls — He’s seen his O-Swing drop from 20.1% to 18.6%.   Soto’s making almost identical contact as last year, both inside and outside of the zone and has actually seen his contact percentage jump a couple points to 76%.

BB%, K%, BB/K : Soto’s actually walking almost 3% more than last year, striking out a full percent less, and posting a 0.68 BB/K in 2009 after posting a 0.51 BB/K in 2008.

Conclusion:

Almost everything’s the same as last year except the statistics that matter in fantasy baseball.  The BABIP and HR/FB don’t account for the entire drop-off, but they do factor into it.  Quite frankly, there’s no empirical data that explains Soto’s slump and this could well just be a nagging injury that’s robbed Geovany of his power.

Whenever there’s no damn good reason for a player to suck, you’ve gotta assume they’ll bust out of the slump or end up on the DL for the entire year.  The fact that Soto’s plate discipline and walk rate haven’t suffered during his slump is indicative of a break-out looming.

Buy low, if you can -- It’ll be another week or two before he gets his SLG and AVG up to respectable levels, but a multi-HR series will definitely raise his price in a hurry.  This definitely isn’t your typical sophomore slump, but rather a combination of bad luck and nagging injuries — I think?