The Case Against Asdrubal

The Case For Against Asdrubal

I’ve never made it a secret that my least favorite full-time player on the Indians roster right now is Asdrubal Cabrera.  Having said that, I’m going to try and make an unbiased attempt at explaining why this off-season is the best time to trade him.

2009 was a lucky season for Cabrera

On the surface, it would appear that Cabrera had himself a very good year at the plate.  A .308/.361/.438 line with 42 doubles, 4 triples and 6 HRs to accompany a 17/21 stolen base success rate is nothing to sneeze at by any means.  The fact that he did that in only 523 at bats because he missed all but 4 games in June with a shoulder injury makes it even more impressive.

The problem is that he’s set up for a huge letdown in 2010.  While his BA was relatively steady month-to-month during the season, his season-long elevated batting average is more likely a product of luck rather than skill.  To prove this, I’m going to refer you to a stat called BABIP or Batting Average on Balls in Play.  This statistic weeds out home runs, strikeouts and sacrifice flies to show the percentage of contacted balls that fell for hits. While its a little more common to use this statistic to examine a pitcher’s season, it can be fairly useful to analyze a hitter’s luck vs. skill as well.

BABIP

With pitchers, you can look at it to show the potential for improvement from one season to the next or the potential for regression if a pitcher was very lucky.  For a pitcher, a .290 BABIP is typical.  So if a pitcher had a BABIP of .260 in 2009, chances are they’ll be hard-pressed to repeat it in 2010.  Since part of the function in BABIP is hits allowed, we can conclude that a pitcher is likely to allow more hits in the coming season.  Since more data always allows for better analysis, this is typically only used to analyze starting pitchers.

For hitters, the application is a little different.  BABIP is calculated the same for hitters, but because hitters get to see most if not all the pitchers in the game (not just the starter), their average BABIP is higher and can vary from player to player.  Major League hitters average a BABIP of around .290-310.  Again, this can vary from player to player.  Some of the best players have career BABIPs under .300.  Dave Winfield, who finished his distinguished career with the Indians, had a career batting average of .283 and a career BABIP of .299.  Notice that there isn’t a huge gap between BA and BABIP.  While Winfield struck out an average amount, he hit at least 20 HRs in 15 seasons during his career.  Tony Gwynn had a career BA of .338 and a career BABIP of only .345 because he almost never struck out and he homered even less.

Players that have huge gaps between BA and BABIP are ones that show a significant ability to hit for power and/or strikeout.  The poster boy for strikeouts, Rob Deer, hit .220 for his career (and hit 230 HRs!) but had a BABIP of .278, a difference of nearly 60 points.

Don’t worry, I’m going somewhere with this.  Asdrubal Cabrera his .308 in 2009.  We all know this.  What you may not know is that his BABIP was .362!  The 54 point gap between BA and BABIP isn’t nearly as noteworthy as the fact that he had put up BABIPs of .331 and .316 in 2007 and 2008 respectively.  If his BABIP in 2009 was more in line with his previous two seasons – heck, even if he posted a repeat of 2007 – he would have hit somewhere around .280, not somewhere just south of .310.

In fairness, we don’t have a lot of data on Cabrera, so generalizing and saying that he shouldn’t have a BABIP that high is a rush to judgment.  However, in the league/seasons that we do have data for, Cabrera has the following BABIPs in those league/seasons where he has had at least 200 plate appearances: .302, .327, .333, .316, .362.  Based on this data, my conclusion is that his average annual BABIP should be somewhere around .330.

The Long Season Wears On and On

Based on the BABIP analysis, you might conclude that Asdrubal is likely to hit around .280 next year.  Indians fan or no, you’d take that from your starting shortstop every day of the week and twice on Sundays.  The problem is that Cabrera wore down after his first full year in the bigs.  It was his second season in a row with more than 550 plate appearances of professional ball.  Add in the WBC, spring training, winter ball and everything else that goes into a baseball player’s preparation for 162 games and its understandable.

The tell here is in the data again, this time in walks and strikeouts.  No fancy formulae here, just plain old raw data.  In Cabrera’s first two stints with the Indians, he maintained walk rates of about 10 percent.  He actually was up over 11 in 2008.  In 2009, that percentage of walks dropped under 8.  While he did a decent job of cutting down on some strikeouts, the overall effect was a .10 drop in BB:K.  While he posted nearly identical BB:K rates in 2007 and 2008 with the Indians (.59 and .60 respectively), he dropped to .49 in 2009.  If this trend continues, his BA is more likely to be .270 than .280.

Why Now?

The best reason to trade Asdrubal now is because his value is likely to never be higher.  The Indians need starting pitching and that need will be more dire if Jake Westbrook doesn’t pass his on-field test next week in Puerto Rico.  On the open market, it would be less expensive to sign a shortstop for 1-2 seasons then try to sign a useful free agent starting pitcher for the same length of time.  Someone like Adam Everett or Bobby Crosby could keep the position warm for Carlos Rivero or let Rivero learn the finer points of hitting with the big club since his glove is nearly ready anyway.

And before you raise the objection that he’s still under club control, he’s one season away from arbitration.  That means after he hits .270 with 5 HRs and 15 steals in 2010, he can point to his 2009 season and argue that he’s worth more.  By trading him now, you cash in on the most value that Cabrera is ever likely to be worth as a player.  Because in an economy when teams are crying the blues (even though their lining their pockets with money), teams focus in on players that cost them less in the near-term.  That means more profit for them and more money in their pockets now.

Let me toss just one last mortar onto my walls here.  I’m not saying Cabrera is not worth having on the Indians anymore.  It just seems that when you’re in a desperate hole for pitching like the Tribe are and you want to make the best decision, shouldn’t you use the chips that have the most perceived value?  True, Cabrera’s .362 BABIP wasn’t the highest on the Indians last year, but I’m not going to make the argument to trade Shin-Soo Choo.

Or should I…

Tags: Asdrubal, BABIP, Cabrera, trade