2015 Player Projection: C.J. Cron

C.J. Cron had a rookie season that was at times impressive but also often left a lot to be desired. Will 2015 be a year in which Cron blossoms or proves that his flaws are too big to fix.

What happened in 2014?
C.J. Cron wasn’t supposed to get promoted to the big leagues in 2014, but the Angels didn’t really have any other choices. They put all their eggs in Raul Ibanez‘s basket at DH. When that plan predictably didn’t work out, they were left with no real alternatives to fill the role, especially with Hamilton and Calhoun on the disabled list at the time, which was already straining their depth.

So Cron got the call-up and was fairly impressive in his initial taste of the majors. He showed off that light tower power and managed to sustain a decent average in May and June, but he wasn’t walking at all. That wasn’t entirely unexpected, but taking a 3% walk rate over two months is pretty rough.

What also wasn’t entirely unexpected was that the league figured out that Cron wasn’t exactly selective, so they stopped throwing him pitches he could do a lot with. That led to a ton of strikeouts starting in June and carrying on for the rest of the season. It also sapped his power, as he had a .070 ISO in July before the Angels decided he needed to head back to the minors for a bit.

Upon his return, he showed some power again, but it wasn’t at the prolific .250+ ISO he had before his slump began. That led to Cron being used a bit more selectively down the stretch, predominantly against lefties, but mostly he was being conscripted into the starting lineup again because of injury to Josh Hamilton.

[table id=74 /] *The MWAH projections are simply my best guess based off my own personal opinion and research (my wOBA calculation is approximate because my math skills are only “meh”)

What do the projections think he will do in 2015?
Woof. You might want to sit down for this part. This isn’t going to be fun. The projections don’t like Cron at all. None of them think that Cron can sniff an OBP that makes him worth being in the lineup, but it was surprising to see that ZiPS was the only system to project him to have above average power.

Does the Monkey agree or disagree?
While I do believe in his power more, I mostly just believe that because I expect him to get sheltered from right-handed pitching more this year. Granted, I’m working off of a projection where Josh Hamilton only misses about six weeks of action, so that could very much change. Besides that, I don’t like Cron at all. There have been no signs of him ever making adjustments in the minors to address his plate discipline problem. He just swings and swings and swings. He ain’t changing, people.

THREE OPEN QUESTIONS FOR C.J. CRON IN 2015
1) Why does Cron swing at everything?
Because he thinks he can hit it. If you look at his swing profile, he swings at 61.8% of balls in the zone and a staggering 41.0% of balls out of the zone. Even Mark Trumbo thinks that’s ridiculous. The problem is that C.J. made contact on 67.0% of those balls out of the zone, which pretty much makes him a pitcher’s best friend.

He never learned that just because he can make contact on a pitch doesn’t mean that he should try to make contact on every pitch. This actually gives hope that he can bring his whiff rate down to a more palatable level because it is more about him being more selective than it is about him having a big hole in his swing.

2) Do we need to hide Cron’s glove?
Cron never had much of a defensive reputation, but he really turned out to be quite defensive clank. He only played 251 innings in the field in 2014, but he somehow managed to post a -5 Defensive Runs Saved and -21.6 UZR/150. That’s no good, especially on a team that will be worse defensively this year. I know Pujols needs his days off at DH, but those days are always going to come with a price since it means Cron actually plays the field.

3) Should Cron get a shot at the everyday DH job?
There is a little bit of evidence that Cron may not be able to handle righties all that well, or that he is a special lefty masher. It really depends on how you want to frame it. With Joyce likely to spend a lot of time in the outfield with Hamilton out, the Halos no longer have a logical platoonmate at DH for Cron so he might just get the gig all to himself whether he can handle it or not.

Personally, I’m not sure that Cron is even a big league platoon bat at this point, but given his power potential and the dearth of options to split PAs with him, it may be worth it just to run C.J. out there everyday to se what happens. I mean, how much worse can he be offensively than Dan Robertson or Efren Navarro?

The Final Word (and video)
“Murder”
[mlbvideo id=”32758329″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /] There’s no GIF of this one I could easily find and I was too lazy to make one of my own, so you’ll have to settle for the full video. What you see above is the titanic 468-foot blast that Cron launched for his first career homer. That video is all you really need to see for why Cron has so much backing from segments of the Angels fanbase and Angels organization. There are few human beings on the planet with that kind of raw power. He might be an OBP sinkhole, but because he can murder baseballs like few others, he’s going to get a long look in the lineup until everyone is certain that the power doesn’t outweigh all the outs he creates.