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?

Basically, every single fantasy baseball website has put together a piece of David Ortiz and his incredible homerless streak.  With so many articles delving into Ortiz’s advanced statistics, I’m going to play this a bit differently and merely brush on the indicator statistics.  Mainly, I’m going to go on my gut and my gut says, “Mmm, that was delicious Brie. Feed me more. Trade for Big Papi if you can…”

The unfortunate thing is that there are a handful of players that are almost impossible to trade for at a reasonable price.  If a player plays in one of the major Northeastern markets, they’re going to be overvalued coming into the draft and a slump merely corrects their perceived value down to their actual value. In expert leagues it’s a bit different, but for the most part if you’re trying to acquire Ortiz or Teixeira you’re still going to have to give their owner 90-95 cents on the dollar.  When you’re paying that kind of a premium, the players have to turn it around within a week of you trading for them –  I think Teixeira will do it, but Ortiz? Well, that’s what this articles all about.

Watching Ortiz hit, you can tell that something’s wrong.  His bat just appears slow through the zone and while it’s been speculated that his wrists are at fault, it’s equally as likely a result of his lower body. Conversely, looking at his advanced statistics, nothing particularly stands out.

BB:K

Ortiz is walking (’09-14%, AVG-15%)  and striking out (’09-22%, AVG-21%) well within recent career norms.

Batted Ball

BABIP: Ortiz’s batting average on balls in play is a little bit low (.281), but a 20pt difference really doesn’t account for a 50 pt batting average dip.

GB/FB: Ortiz is actually hitting more Line Drives and Fly-Balls when he does make contact.  Ortiz normally floats around a 0.80 GB / FB rate, but has decreased that to .40 GB/FB.

HR/FB: This obviously sits at 0%, and while you should assume Ortiz should return to his 15-20% range; this might be an indicator of aging, injury, or just bad-luck.

Plate Discipline

Zone: Ortiz is seeing a career-low amount of pitches inside the strike-zone this year.  Maybe it’s Youkilis’ lack of smash-kill power that’s causing pitchers to avoid Big Papi.  Basically, a pitcher needs to make two mistakes after walking Ortiz to allow the run.  Even if Youkilis hits one of his patented doubles, odds are Ortiz is only getting to third. This stands in stark contrast to previous years, where walking Ortiz was normally followed by a 2-run homer.

Swing: Ortiz is swinging at about 4% more pitches in general, which is more than likely a result of pressing due to frustration and a small sample size.

Contact: Ortiz’s contact within the zone has dipped, but 2 percent is nothing.  We’re basically looking at the same over-all plate discipline for Ortiz.

So Why Does Ortiz Suck Again?

First off, the season’s still very early and historically Ortiz’s best months have been May, June, and July.  It’s pretty clear that Ortiz starts off slow, so I wouldn’t worry too much at this point.

Secondly, Ortiz has noticeable lefty/righty splits. Historically, Ortiz hits about 150 points less in OPS against lefties than righties.  This normally works out just dandy as only a quarter of his PA in 2008 were against lefties. In his killer 2007 season, he faced lefties a third of the time.

In 2009, Ortiz has faced lefties about 35% of the time and this has lead to a concerning statistic.  Ortiz has taken 1 BB in 45 Plate Appearances against lefties.  For his career, we’re looking at taking a BB every 8 to 10 Plate Appearances — so, this is concerning.  I’m not sure if Ortiz is judging pitches anywhere near as well as he has done throughout his career.

The interesting part, at least for me, is the microcosm that is Ortiz  vs. Tampa. Against Rays’ starters (Kazmir, Garza, Shields, Sonnanstine, and Niemann,) Ortiz is a combined 2-for-21 or 0.095 AVG. Ortiz does have 8 walks against the starters, which puts him at a respectable .344 OBP.  Against all Rays’ pitchers, Ortiz is 4-for-31 which is good for a .129 BA and a .380 OBP.

It’s fairly clear that pitchers aren’t giving Ortiz anything to hit, and at this point, especially with Youkilis on the DL, there’s no reason for this to change.

Ortiz has faced some tough pitching match-ups thus far, but the rest of the Red Sox line-up seems to be performing quite well.

While Ortiz hasn’t hit a single homer yet, he’s still hitting around the same amount of doubles. There’s quite a few reasons to believe that once Ortiz gets that first home-run out of the way, they should start coming in bunches.  Age has effected Ortiz and he’s no longer a 40-HR threat, but at this point in his career he’s still got 30-HR power.

Unfortunately, Ortiz also tends to sit out due to injury or interleague-play quite often.  If you assume Ortiz gets to around 500 AB, expecting 23-25 HR seems reasonable.

Ortiz does have a hole in his swing, but it’s not a big one.  Once it starts getting warmer, I’d expect Ortiz to start loosening up and return to his smash-killing ways.

Who knows what they did in the Dominican Republic Hotel at the WBC, but everyone seems to be starting off slower than expected.