The Indians enter the off season in need of one or two impact offensive players that will (hopefully) propel them into the postseason. It is a pressing need on a ball club that ranked in the middle of the pack in most important offensive categories in 2015. There might be an “x-factor” already on the club; a player who quietly had a good ’15 season with the stick and his name is Ryan Raburn.
The Indians own a 2016 club option worth $3 million with no bonus incentives on the right-handed outfielder. On a club in need of offense, retaining Raburn on a $3 million/1 year commitment might be a good start to the hot stove season.
Here’s why.
In 201 plate appearances in 2015, Raburn hit .301/.393/.543 with a .397 wOBA. Although a part-time outfielder, Raburn’s wOBA led the team by a wide margin with Michael Brantley finishing second at .368.
wOBA is based on a simple concept: Not all hits are created equal. Batting average assumes that they are. On-base percentage does too, but does one better by including other ways of reaching base such as walking or being hit by a pitch. Slugging percentage weights hits, but not accurately (Is a double worth twice as much as a single?) and again ignores other ways of reaching base. On-base plus slugging (OPS) does attempt to combine the different aspects of hitting into one metric, but it assumes that one percentage point of SLG is the same as that of OBP. In reality, a handy estimate is that OBP is around twice as valuable than SLG. In short, OPS is asking the right question, but we can arrive at a more accurate number quite easily.
Raburn also lead the team in SLG and OBP while finishing fourth in AVG. His 155 Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) also led the team, beating out Brantley by 20 RC.
wRC+ is an improved version of Bill James’ Runs Created (RC) statistic, which attempted to quantify a player’s total offensive value and measure it by runs. In Runs Created, instead of looking at a player’s line and listing out all the details (e.g. 7 2B, 8 HR, 23 BB, 44 K, 0 SB, 0 CS), the information is synthesized into one metric in order to say, “Raburn was worth “x” amount of runs to his team last year.” While the idea was sound, James’ formula has since been superseded by Tom Tango’s wRC , which is based off wOBA.
wRC+ measures how a player’s wRC compares with league average after controlling for park effects. League average for position players is 100, and every point above 100 is a percentage point above league average. For example, a 125 wRC+ means a player created 25% more runs than a league average hitter would have in the same number of plate appearances. Similarly, every point below 100 is a percentage point below league average, so a 80 wRC+ means a player created 20% fewer runs than league average. wRC+ is park and league-adjusted, allowing one to to compare players who played in different years, parks, and leagues.
As we can see, Raburn created offensive value while be limited to “only” 201 PA’s. In fact, it can be further said that he was one of the better bench players in all of Major League Baseball. In a league where attrition rates can get quite high, having a player who can play multiple positions like Raburn and give the club an offensive surge when in the lineup can mean the difference between watching and playing in postseason baseball.
One number to be concerned of was his .361 wOBA , which was 22nd in MLB with a minimum of 200 PA’s. It was the highest of his career and obviously led to good luck in ’15.
BABIP is important because the frequency with which a player gets a hit on a ball in play or allows a hit on a ball in play is very telling. Three main factors influence BABIP and all three of those factors tell us something important about that player’s overall stat line. Those factors are defense, luck, and talent level.
However, changes in BABIP are to be met with caution. If a batter has consistently produced a .310 BABIP and all of a sudden starts a season with a .370 BABIP, you can likely identify this as an instance in which the batter has been lucky unless there has been a significant change in their style of play.
For hitters, we use BABIP as a sanity test of sorts that tells us if their overall batting line is sustainable or not. Virtually no hitter is capable of producing a BABIP of .380 or higher on a regular basis and anything in the .230 range is also very atypical for a major league hitter. In other words, BABIP allows us to see if a hitter seems to be getting a boost from poor defense or good luck or getting docked for facing good defenses and having bad luck.
A hitter has control over how often they put the ball in play and how hard they hit the ball, but due to the unpredictable nature of luck and defense, their BABIP may not be a perfect reflection of their performance to date and it is easier to observe this fluctuation when looking at BABIP compared to wOBA, OBP, or SLG for example.
At $3 million, a one-year commitment to Raburn would be a bargain if he can retain his part-time player production rate. It will be interesting to find out what the early pre-season projections will say about what his ’16 will look like. However, a low-risk, high-reward one-year commitment is what the Indians organization has thrived on in recent years.
Picking up Raburn’s option should be no different.
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