How predictive are these numbers?
A baseball season isn’t necessarily one full marathon. It can be many seasons within one. Player performance goes up and down like the stock market. A large part of being an effective manager and general manager is managing the peaks and values. Obviously, you want to steer into the peaks and mitigate the valleys. It’s a harder job than it looks.
A part of that difficulty comes not in deciding to heed information, but which information to heed. We have access to fan centered data. It certainly has revolutionized the way fans view the sport, but how much utility it has for teams is unknown. It is all based on historical norms and as we know historical norms don’t always hold.
I hate to boil down everything to one number because that goes against everything I normally do. However, sometimes one number can describe quite a bit. In this case we will be looking at the regular lineup looking at wOBA and xwOBA. The first number represents what a player has actually done and the second represents their predicted production based on their batted ball statistics.
We can do two things with this data. First, we can identify the players that are likely to produce more in the second half and the players likely to do less. It helps us as fans, but Joe Espada can use it to maximize some players’ opportunities and minimize others. Dana Brown can look at the numbers for those around baseball and look at who might help give the lineup a boost. However, as we will see with one player, those numbers may not mean what we think they mean.
C Yainer Diaz……. . . . 298 wOBA……..338 xwOBA
1B Christian Walker…..296 wOBA…….318 xwOBA
2B Mauricio Dubon…..298 wOBA…….278 xwOBA
2B Isaac Paredes. . . . .360 wOBA. . . .332 xwOBA
SS Jeremy Pena. . . . …377 wOBA. . . .350 xwOBA
LF Cooper Hummell. .344 wOBA. . . .346 xwOBA
CF Jake Meyers. . . . ..343 wOBA. . . .334 xwOBA
RF Cam Smith. . . . . ..346 wOBA. . . .348 xwOBA
DH Jose Altuve. . . . . .339 wOBA. . . .302 xwOBA
Util Victor Caratini. . ..314 wOBA. . . ..319 xwOBA
Aggregate. . . . . . . . .332 wOBA. . . .327 xwOBA
of course, we could add other guys in here like Zach Dezenzo and even Yordan Alvarez, but the result will likely be the same in terms of the aggregate. Overall, the Astros are likely to be right around where they have been overall. Obviously, the trick is manipulating opportunities around the edges to get as much out of the group as possible. However, there is reason to doubt these numbers in some cases. Let’s look at Jose Altuve since 2015 excluding 2020 for obvious reasons.
2015. . . . . . . . . . .347. . . . . . . .300
2016. . . . . . . . . . ..391. . . . . . . ..385
2017. . . . . . . . . . . .400. . . . . . . .360
2018. . . . . . . . . . .363. . . . . . . ..352
2019. . . . . . . . . . .374. . . . . . . ..344
2021. . . . . . . . . .357. . . . . . . . .332
2022. . . . . . . . . ..397. . . . . . . . .354
2023. . . . . . . . . . .393. . . . . . . ..331
2024. . . . . . . . . .344. . . . . . . . .316
2025. . . . . . . . . .339. . . . . . . . .302
Aggregate. . . . .371. . . . . . . . . .338
The aggregate is important, but what is more important is that there was not one season where the xwOBA was higher than the wOBA. The closest was 2016. So, if Altuve has always overachieved then we really shouldn’t pay too much attention to where xwOBA says he should be. It seems xwOBA lags about 30 points behind his wOBA. When you look his current numbers they lag by about 30 points.
So, predictive stats are not always predictive. So anything I say is tempered by the fact that the Astros likely have their own internal data. We can’t know that from where we sit here. What we can do is take a look at some names we have mentioned before and see what this comparison has for us. Are any of them good bets to add something to this lineup?
Cedric Mullins. . . . . . 314. . . . . .300
Jesus Sanchez. . . . . . 322. . . . . .360
Bryan Reynolds. . . . .295. . . . . .360
Reynolds is a new addition. Major League Baseball Trade Rumors (MLBTR) has not connected any specific team to the Pirates outfielder, but they have mentioned him as a deadline trade candidate. He does have a limited no trade clause, but the Astros are not on the list of teams he could block a trade to.
Of course, I have no idea of what such a trade would even entail or whether the Astros are interested. We could go fishing for more players, but we have no idea which teams will be sellers. Yet, it is the profile you are looking for. You are looking for two things. First, you are looking for someone better than you already have and you are looking for someone that is likely to be better in the future than they are now. Sanchez and Reynolds obviously fit that profile. I’m sure there are others.