OPS is not a good statistic. If you were to explain its formula to a statistician unfamiliar with baseball, he’d probably have a conniption. Summing two numbers yielded from equations that share many of the same variables is typically a no-no, and I’m pretty sure doing so when different denominators are involved is a cardinal sin, mathematically speaking. It’s not quite as nonsensical as Jim Bowden’s go-to metric, but it’s in the same genus.
All that being said, OPS still more or less accomplishes what it was designed to do. There’s no way to tell if an .800 OPS is of the high-OBP/low-SLG variety, its opposite, or something in the middle, but we know it comes out to “he’s a good hitter” in some regard, no matter the environment. On the flip side, it’s understood that outside of the Deadball Era anything below .600 in a large enough sample is a DFA-able offense. (Lookin’ at you, Matt Joyce.) There seem to be three or four players every year—mostly middle infielders—who manage to qualify for the batting title while posting a sub-.600 OPS. This year there are currently five players who hold that dubious honor: Starlin Castro (benched), Angel Pagan (“hurt”), Omar Infante (replaced1), Billy Hamilton (really fast), and Chris Owings (who knows, it’s the Diamondbacks).
While they occupy a rather impressive realm of suck, they’re not quite the nadir of offense performance at the MLB level, non-pitching category. Believe it or not, there is a more exclusive cohort of ineptitude even further down the OPS ladder, and a current Angel is on the precipice of joining that group.
That’s right, I’m talking about Taylor Featherston’s pursuit of the sub-.400 OPS club.
Since 1947, only 23 American League hitters2 have posted an OPS of .400 or worse in a single season while accruing 100 PA or more. It happened about once a year in the ‘60s and ‘70s, not at all in the ‘50s, once in the ‘90s, and since the turn of the century it now seems to happen about once every other year. 2014 was the first time in 70 years that two AL players managed to do it in one season, and so of course they both played for the same team (CHW).
This year Taylor Featherston is a man on an island in his chase for the record books. Among AL batters with at least 90 plate appearances, his .398 OPS (in 100 PA) is 40 points lower than the next guy (Sandy Leon), who, as you might expect, hasn’t had an MLB at-bat in over a month. I’m sure the Angels would love to be able to say the same about Featherston, but they don’t have that luxury. His Rule 5 status forces them to keep him on the roster, and injuries to David Freese and now Erick Aybar will force them to keep putting him in the lineup. And so, history beckons.
If Featherston continues to ride the struggle bus at the plate, he’ll become the fourth player in franchise history to… uh… “accomplish” the feat, which would put them in a tie with the Royals for the most sub.-400 club members over the last half century. A brief look at the Halo company he seems bound to keep doesn’t allow for much optimism about his future:
Tom Egan, 1971 — .311 OPS in 109 PA
The original Jeff Mathis. Egan played in parts of 10 big-league seasons, eight of which came with the Angels, and only one wasn’t sub-replacement-level. That season, naturally, didn’t come in Anaheim. His 1971 season was his penultimate in the bigs, and remains the third-lowest full season OPS of all time in the American League, minimum 100 PA. He didn’t tally a single extra-base hit that year.
Brandon Wood, 2010 — .382 OPS in 243 PA (!!!)
I still find it difficult to wrap my head around just how terrible Brandon Wood’s brief MLB career was. Top prospects bust all the time, but very few do so quite as spectacularly as Wood did. For all the talk of what a disappointment Dallas McPherson was, he still managed a .755 OPS (96 OPS+) in his three false starts with the Halos. Wood’s was .455. FOUR FIFTY-FIVE. At the time, there was a lot of “well, we should have known he’d struggle given that high minor-league strikeout rate,” which comes across as completely wrong-headed now. Guys like Kris Bryant, George Springer, and Joc Pederson strike out far more often than Wood ever did and have still managed to find success. There was obviously something more going on there, and it’s a shame no one ever figured it out.
But I digress. Wood’s jaw-droppingly bad 2010 season is probably most remarkable for the sheer volume of it. At 100 plate appearances, it’s possible to write a sub-.400 OPS off as small-sample madness. At 243 though? Not so much. Only one other player in the club—Ray Oyler, 1968—can claim as many trips to the plate in his relevant season, and he at least has the Year of the Pitcher excuse going for him.
J.B. Shuck, 2014 — .377 OPS in 114 PA
Here lies that smidge of optimism I mentioned above. There’s no denying J.B. Shuck’s 2014 was terribad, but his average performance at the plate in the years that bookend that season make it look like nothing more than an extreme outlier. Everyone goes through tough stretches, and his happened to make up the whole of his MLB playing time.
Had the Cleveland Indians left him in Triple-A when they purchased him from the Angels last September, he wouldn’t be in this conversation. (He had a .445 OPS over 88 PA in Anaheim.) Instead, the Tribe decided they wanted him as a defensive replacement (LOL) down the stretch, and he proceeded to hit .077/.077/.077 in 26 PA. So here we are.
Also, it should be noted that Shuck is Garrett’s all-time favorite Angel. If you ever see J.B. do something clutch or gritty for the White Sox, be sure to let him know. He eats that stuff up.
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While looking back at the Halos in the lowly club is a macabre sort of entertainment, it probably does a disservice to Featherston’s future prospects. He is a rookie after all—one who had never played above Double-A before this year—so perhaps his outlook will appear brighter if we compare him to his peers?
*looks at peers*
…aaaand nope. It does not.
With the help of the Play Index over at Baseball-Reference, I found six AL players since 1947 who had the misfortune of having their sub-.400 OPS seasons as rookies: Andy Anderson (1949), Tony Martinez (1963), Gus Gil (1967), Vic Harris (1972), Otis Nixon (1984), and Kevin Cash (2003). None of the players in that group ever had even an average season at the plate (by OPS+), and only Nixon managed to finish his career as an above-replacement player. Less Nixon, the group accrued -14.1 WAR in 3,492 plate appearances. Pretty awful.
There are certainly worse things than having Otis Nixon’s career (16.7 WAR in 17 seasons) be your potential best-case scenario as an MLB player, but banking on a career arc like his—i.e. not becoming a full-time player until age 29 after several bad seasons; also known as “The Raul Ibanez”—seems like some very wishful thinking.
If there is some good news for Featherston to be gleaned from this group, I suppose it’s that all but Anderson got another opportunity at the big-league level after failing so completely at the plate in their rookie campaigns. As much as Taylor has labored at the plate this year, he’s more than likely to get another shot in Anaheim after this season, especially given the dearth of other up-the-middle talent in the farm system.
Before conceding that Featherston is all but destined to a career of replacement-level play, thus rendering this whole stashing him on the roster endeavor pointless and self-defeating, let’s expand our scope to include the rest of the AL sub-.400 club alongside the rookies and the former Angels. Surely there’s someone in there whose career doesn’t portend doom and gloom.
As it turns out, there are three someones: 1) Otis Nixon (16.7 WAR), who we knew already about; 2) Ray Fosse (12.9), who legend has it was never the same after Pete Rose steamrolled him in the All-Star Game; and finally 3) Ben Zobrist (37.8), whose baffling inclusion in this group is definitely not the driving force behind this entire post. Definitely not.
Zobrist posted a .391 OPS in 105 PA in 2007. Combined with his 52 games in St. Petersburg the season prior, the future All-Star was a .200/.234/.275 hitter through his 303 plate appearances, good for -1.7 WAR. Two years later, he was an 8-win player, and is now widely seen as one of the better all-around players in the league.
In no way do I think Taylor Featherston has a chance to become “the next Ben Zobrist.” Only Ben Zobrist is Ben Zobrist. (Please don’t think I’m comparing Featherston to Zobrist.) However, the one thing Featherston has going for him at the MLB level so far is the same thing that kept Zobrist on everyone’s “most underrated” lists for so long: defensive versatility.
As helpless as Featherston has been in the batter’s box, he’s more than made up for it on the field. Despite playing roughly 700 fewer innings on defense than the average starter, his 10 Defensive Runs Saved on the year is still 11th best in the AL. If UZR is more your style—it really shouldn’t be—he’s been six runs better than the average middle infielder, again with significantly fewer innings than most. If he had the innings to qualify his UZR/150 would rank first, first, and second at SS, 2B, and 3B, respectively. On the strength of those numbers, Featherston has managed to stay on the positive side of the ledger by both FanGraphs WAR (0.1) and B-Ref WAR (0.9) despite historically bad numbers on offense. If he indeed has a sub-.400 OPS at season’s end and continues to impress the advanced defensive metrics, he’ll become the only guy ever, at any point in either league, to join the club as an above-replacement-level player.
And if some extra seasoning in the minors is all he really needs to get up to speed against MLB pitching, who knows what his future holds. Maybe a .550 OPS? .600 even? Really any sign of life on offense in future seasons should make Featherston a valuable asset off the bench for years to come. Whether that uncertain potential was worth punting a roster spot this year remains to be seen.
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1 Well, he will be replaced once Alex Gordon returns from the DL and Ben Zobrist is no longer needed in left field, anyway.
2 I’m not entirely sure why I limited my queries to AL hitters only. It made sense to me at the time, but now I can’t remember what about it was important.
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