Chris Johnson - NL Batting Leader

thethe said:
Keeping Mac is a matter of money. If you can't trade Uggla how are you going to free up money?
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Not only is it a matter of money, it's a matter of do you want to pay a catcher into his 30s, what do you do with Gattis, etc. If you're bent on keeping Mac, which I certainly understand but am not sure I agree with, I would suggest to you that as much as it pains me, Hudson's $9m is the first chunk, then Downs, O'Flaherty. You might be able to deal Uggla if you take back about half the salary for the last two years, if LaStella is an answer. But CJ only buys you a couple million of room anyway, so why jettison him? LH relievers and starters and (especially) overpaid .200 hitters first. Also, we kept some powder dry this year and the TV money kicks in next year, right? So if you want to keep Mac, you can do it, but CJ really isn't part of that equation.

To me, CJ is one of those middle class guys midmarket teams need to cultivate in order to compete. You get some nice value out of a guy before he hits the market.

If he hits .340 for a few more years then we'll have to figure something else out. I think he may be a lifetime .310ish hitter. He's that good.

Edit: Maholm. Of course. There's $6m.
 
thethe said:
Keeping Mac is a matter of money. If you can't trade Uggla how are you going to free up money?
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Well, every team gets more money with the TV contracts.

How much is a different story.

Anywhere from 10-15 would be ideal.
 
We will have enough payroll for Mac next year, AND give Johnson and other arb guys their raises.

First payroll will go up about 15M due to the new national TV contract. This is assuming about half the new revenues goes to payroll. That's the way it has been in baseball over the years with the exception of the Ueberroth collusion era. About half of new revenues go to payroll.

Second, we have four significant expiring contracts (Hudson, McCann, Maholm and EOF) totaling almost 32M.

The money is there.

I do think we'll have to pay Mac a little more than the Yadier Molina contract (15M/yr), reflecting inflation caused by new TV revenues and the fact Mac is a free agent. There will be other teams bidding aggressively for his services, but I think he wants to remain a Brave.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
I see those numbers and all; I just don't believe it. I've been watching the guy all year and he does not give back half the value he has with his defense. If that's what the metric says, then it's a poor metric. Chris Johnson is a real good ballplayer and a hell of a hitter.
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Agree. Maybe it's b/c most of the baseball I have seen recently is with an older Chipper. Maybe if I saw Machado everyday I'd know the difference.

But CJ looks like an avg 3B to me with below avg range. Not awful range. And overall not an awful defender.

And the numbers don't factor in how he fits in our line up. He moves the order along. We have plenty of power, we don't need it from him. He is exactly what we need (at least right now). IMO we really need another high avg hitter to really get the offense to sing.

I've seen JUp look stupid on a handful of plays this year. Uggla too. I don't see CJ looking like a moron out there.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
Fat Juan should be available after he's DFAed by MKE. Maybe you and Zito and Bremen and the all the other CJ haters can clambor for us to sign him after we trade a batting champ with an extraordinary stroke for a mid level prospect because of his low UZR and his $4m salary.
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I love being called a hater because I don't think a player alive can sustain a .430 BABIP. LOL. You keep believing that buddy. Are you one of the guys that really loved Jeff Francoeur and called people that were skeptical of him haters?
 
GovClintonTyree said:
If he hits .340 for a few more years then we'll have to figure something else out. I think he may be a lifetime .310ish hitter. He's that good.
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Do you honestly think he's going to hit .340 for a few more years? I don't think most of the people that support CJ for the future think he'll come anywhere close to this again.
 
BremanFan88 said:
It's hard to look like a moron when you have no range.
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Made a really nice play diving to his right the other night, not bad considering how "awful" he is out there. Seriously you guys make it sound like he doesn't get to any balls hit his way and Simmons has to field balls behind the 3rd base bag. Everyone knows his range is limited but this notion that he's hurting us over there is silly.
 
BremanFan88 said:
Do you honestly think he's going to hit .340 for a few more years? I don't think most of the people that support CJ for the future think he'll come anywhere close to this again.
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I think he can hit 300, he has a good approach at the plate and uses the whole field.

I love how people have been telling us all year that he's going to come crashing back down to earth and now that it's obvious that isn't going to happen, they've moved their argument to future years.

You can post BABIP stats all day but those of us that support him noticed a good career batting average and a player who hits the ball to all fields. That's more important to us than what one stat says he'll do in the future.
 
BremanFan88 said:
I love being called a hater because I don't think a player alive can sustain a .430 BABIP. LOL. You keep believing that buddy. Are you one of the guys that really loved Jeff Francoeur and called people that were skeptical of him haters?
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Nah, I thought Francoeur's early success was unsustainable because he couldn't recognize a strike and so pretty soon he never saw one.

Calm down. In the same post I suggested I thought CJ might be a .310 hitter. The .340 thing was tongue in cheek, if you read it. He might be a .310 hitter. His swing plane is flat and stays that way through the zone for a long, long time, pretty much the complete opposite of BJ Upton. He doesn't walk much, but he doesn't chase much. He just doesn't have many holes and squares up a lot of balls.

Since I determined that from watching him instead of studying statistics, I guess that makes me a bit of a piranha around here (that's a joke, too).

I thought your big problem was the defense, anyway. You don't like his hitting, either?
 
ChapelHillMatt said:
I think he can hit 300, he has a good approach at the plate and uses the whole field.

I love how people have been telling us all year that he's going to come crashing back down to earth and now that it's obvious that isn't going to happen, they've moved their argument to future years.

You can post BABIP stats all day but those of us that support him noticed a good career batting average and a player who hits the ball to all fields. That's more important to us than what one stat says he'll do in the future.
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I'm not sure I buy the BABIP story, anyway. Check me here. A pitcher can control walks, strikeouts and whether the ball leaves the park. If it's in play, every hitter should have....about the same average? Do I understand that?

If that's right, I'm not buying. Jason had a low BABIP last year because he was rolling over everything, trying to pull it. This year he had a low BABIP early but was hitting a lot of stuff right on the screws right at people.

Johnson has a high batting average because most everything he hits, he squares up. Every year, but especially this year. Not because he's lucky, but because he is a consistent and fundamentally sound hitter. He'll always have a high BABIP - not as high as this year, but high.

So what predictive value does BABIP have? It's high this year, so it'll be lower next? It's low this year, so it'll be higher next? I can do the exact same thing with batting average.

Help me out here. I really don't understand.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
I'm not sure I buy the BABIP story, anyway. Check me here. A pitcher can control walks, strikeouts and whether the ball leaves the park. If it's in play, every hitter should have....about the same average? Do I understand that?

If that's right, I'm not buying. Jason had a low BABIP last year because he was rolling over everything, trying to pull it. This year he had a low BABIP early but was hitting a lot of stuff right on the screws right at people.

Johnson has a high batting average because most everything he hits, he squares up. Every year, but especially this year. Not because he's lucky, but because he is a consistent and fundamentally sound hitter. He'll always have a high BABIP - not as high as this year, but high.

So what predictive value does BABIP have? It's high this year, so it'll be lower next? It's low this year, so it'll be higher next? I can do the exact same thing with batting average.

Help me out here. I really don't understand.
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You're right that not all balls in play are equal. There is a correlation between BABIP and line drives. Johnson hits a lot of line drives. So he should have a high BABIP. The real point though is that his BABIP is off the charts even when you control for things like line drive percentage.
 
It would be cool if the fans would chant BABIP BABIP BABIP every time he got a hit, especially if it is a little flare that drops in.
 
BremanFan88 said:
It's hard to look like a moron when you have no range.
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Bulll****. He's not Brooks, but he's serviceable over there. Makes a lot of plays. Made one last night. Pretty sure Frank Wren agrees with me, not with UZR.

I'm not suggesting he has great range. He doesn't. But he doesn't give back half his hitting value with his glove. "Range" at 3B is a misnomer, anyway. It's all about reaction.

Serviceable. And with that bat, for a team without an unlimited budget, he's a nice piece and a good value.
 
nsacpi said:
You're right that not all balls in play are equal. There is a correlation between BABIP and line drives. Johnson hits a lot of line drives. So he should have a high BABIP. The real point though is that his BABIP is off the charts even when you control for things like line drive percentage.
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I see. Thanks for that.

OK, well, I can agree that he's had an unusual amount of hits fall, even for someone hitting a lot of line drives. I guess I'm more of the mind that luck is the residue of hard work, so he'll always be above some theoretical average level. I have no illusions that he will hit .340 every year.

Honest question, though. How did Rod Carew, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn do it? Did they have ridiculously high BABIPs most years? Have they reconstructed BABIP from earlier times? I guess they have, since they were showing Ty Cobb's and Shoeless Joe's the other night.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
Honest question, though. How did Rod Carew, Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn do it? Did they have ridiculously high BABIPs most years? Have they reconstructed BABIP from earlier times? I guess they have, since they were showing Ty Cobb's and Shoeless Joe's the other night.
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Yes. Those guys had high career BABIPs. No surprise there. They were masters when it came to controlling the bat and could actually direct where the ball was going. And in their best seasons, they had very high BABIPs.

Here is a pretty good article listing the top BABIP seasons ever. It gives some good context to judge what Johnson is doing so far this year.

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/the-ten-highest-babips-since-1945/
 
I thought that last fangraphs article showed that CJ puts up a high BABIP every year. Wouldn't that calm some of the fears about how unsustainable his current season is?
 
chipchildress said:
I thought that last fangraphs article showed that CJ puts up a high BABIP every year. Wouldn't that calm some of the fears about how unsustainable his current season is?
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He does, but this year is off da charts.

2010 .387 BABIP
2011 .317
2012 .354
2013 .427

The highest season BABIP is .408 by Rod Carew in 1977. Note that Carew hit from the left side and was fast back then (23 stolen bases that year), two factors that help to produce a high BABIP, but qualities that Johnson does not have. There is no doubt that there will be some regression. The question is how much.
 
ChapelHillMatt said:
I think he can hit 300, he has a good approach at the plate and uses the whole field.

I love how people have been telling us all year that he's going to come crashing back down to earth and now that it's obvious that isn't going to happen, they've moved their argument to future years.

You can post BABIP stats all day but those of us that support him noticed a good career batting average and a player who hits the ball to all fields. That's more important to us than what one stat says he'll do in the future.
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Hitting .300 wouldn't be easy.

Let's create an ideal season for Johnson with somewhat expected results

Let's presume a very elevated BABIP which he should have given ho he hits but that BABIP will be .360. Let's also presume he hits 15 homers, he strikes out 21% of the time and walks 6% of the time. So using those rates over 600 PA you winds up with 36BB 126K 15 homers and 152 non homer hits. Which would give him an average of .296. Pretty close to .300 I know, but that's a pretty optimistic projection as I'm going below his career average in Ks (actually 24%, which if I used that would take away 6 hits from him dropping his average down 11 points) and giving him his career average homers, even though he used to play in very hitter friendly parks before and is only pacing 13 this year) a pessimistic average approach would have him with les walks and homers, more Ks so even worse average.

It's not common for guys to strike out 20+% of the time and his .300 regularly. Since the strike there have been 25 guys that have 5000 PA and hit .300. The highest K% is 18.5. That belongs to Manny. Infact only 5 guys on that list K over 15% of the time, Manny, Miggy, Holliday, A-Roid, and Wright. All of those guys have going for them though 20+ homer seasons

Consider that Chipper Jones had a career average of .303, struck out 13.3% of the time and averaged 26 homers per 600 PA (aka pretty much auto built in 10 more hits per year)

Johnson has a lot of value but he doesn't K low enough to lock himself in as a super high average hitter. Even if he hits for a .360 BABIP which would be impressively high, he would not be a .300 hitter most seasons. If god forbid he has a .320 BABIP season he'll be worthless.
 
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