What To Do With Alex Liddi
Eric Wedge has been talking about trying to get Alex Liddi into the line-up more often, even experimenting with him in the outfield – a position he had never played before this season. Today, Liddi was inserted into left field even with a right-hander on the mound, and he rewarded the team with a grand slam, essentially ensuring that he’ll be in the line-up again tomorrow.
But the question is where? Once again, the Mariners are going to be facing a right-handed pitcher, so giving Seager or Ackley a day off (which opens up third base and is the simplest way to get Liddi at-bats) is probably off the table. With Jason Vargas on the mound, playing left field should be a non-starter, as Vargas needs all the outfield defense he can get – especially in Safeco – and as Liddi showed today, he’s an adventure out there right now.
So, in reality, there are three options:
1. DH him. This is the easy answer, as it doesn’t require any kind of defensive gymnastics in order to get him in the line-up, and with John Jaso taking a foul ball off his shoulder on Monday, the team has a built-in excuse to give him another day off and keep Montero behind the plate. Of course, they may not want Montero to have to catch a third straight game, and Jaso has been the team’s best hitter against right-handed pitchers this year. If Jaso is physically able to play, the team would have a better chance of winning with him in the line-up. Benching Montero is an option, but he’s supposed to be a franchise building block, and he just got a couple of days off last week. So, while this is the easy option, it doesn’t come without its own set of problems.
2. Play him at first base. While Justin Smoak got a few hits in New York last week, he hasn’t done a whole lot since, and he’s still looking pretty lost at the plate on most nights. Liddi has experience at first and another night off wouldn’t kill Smoak, especially against a guy who throws a lot of bendy pitches that Smoak has so many problems with. I don’t think the club is near giving up on Smoak yet, but he’s played poorly enough that taking him out of the line-up for a night isn’t a big deal.
3. Play him at shortstop. Wedge has talked about getting Liddi some time at short, but this isn’t the night to do it. With a left-handed starter facing a predominantly right-handed line-up, there are going to be a lot of ground balls to the left side, and replacing Brendan Ryan with Alex Liddi is just not fair to Jason Vargas. If you’re going to start Liddi at shortstop, you need to do it when a righty takes the mound. I know there’s still a few of you out there who think Ryan’s offensive struggles mean he should be on the bench, but in reality, his defense at shortstop is valuable enough to support even a weak bat, and his ability to draw walks means that he’s not the offensive liability that his batting average suggests. If the team ends up trading Ryan, then maybe you experiment with Liddi there in the second half, but right now, the team is best served with Ryan playing shortstop – especially when there’s a lefty on the mound.
So, it’s 1B or DH, with either Smoak or Jaso being the most likely to be displaced in order to give Liddi another shot. However, that’s just one game, and doesn’t really answer the question about what the team should do with Liddi over the rest of the season.
I’m sure there’s going to be some sentiment that he’s done enough to earn regular playing time, regardless of who has to sit in order to make it happen. After all, he’s hitting .273/.333/.455, good for a 120 wRC+, which would make him the team’s best hitter if he could sustain that kind of performance over the whole season. However, despite his strong overall line, Liddi’s performing pretty much dead on preseason expectations in the core metrics that project future performance.
Here’s what the ZIPS projections forecasted for Liddi before the season began:
7.6% BB%, 29.5% K%, .158 ISO
Now, here’s what Liddi is actually doing in those three categories:
8.3% BB%, 29.8% K%, .182 ISO
Liddi’s walking and striking out at almost exactly the rates that ZIPS suggested we should have expected, and if that fly ball to left today would have hit the top of the wall instead of going over it, his ISO would be almost exactly the same as well. ZIPS has basically nailed Liddi’s skillset to a tee. So, why is he posting a .341 wOBA instead of the .298 mark that ZIPS projected? His BABIP is .367, the highest mark on the team by over 50 points.
Hitters have more control over their hit rates on balls in play than pitchers do, but there’s still no real predictive ability in a hitter’s BABIP over smaller samples. We saw this exact same thing from Mike Carp last year, actually, as he posted a 117 wRC+ on the strength of a .343 BABIP that masked a poor BB/K rate. While people tried to justify the mark as evidence that Carp just hit the ball hard a lot (the standard explanation for any BABIP variance), there wasn’t much evidence to suggest that Carp would be able to keep hitting balls to fall in that often, and sure enough, he’s been bitten by the regression fairy to start the 2012 season.
Liddi’s performance so far this year is a near mirror for what Carp did last summer, and just like that performance shouldn’t have gotten you too excited, neither should this one. That’s not to say that Liddi’s not useful, or that he should never play, but he’s not really doing anything that should make us rethink our opinion of his ability to produce at the big league level. After showing some better contact rates in April, he’s been the same swing-and-miss guy that he’s always been in May, and there’s not enough there to offset the lack of contact to make him an impact bat.
Liddi should play against left-handers and perhaps pinch-hit for Brendan Ryan in certain situations, but he’s not a guy that the team should be looking at rearranging the roster to get into the line-up everyday. Unless he can significantly increase the rate at which he puts bat on ball, he’s probably going to top out as a nice role player, and right now, he’s just stuck behind players who are simply better than he is – or, in Justin Smoak’s case, should be.
Why not play Liddi at 3B and move Seager to short? Seager has shown that he is at least a competent 3B, so why not see if we can convert that to a SS, and let Liddi play his natural position? That way we don’t have to see Liddi boot plays like he did with that fly ball he butchered in LF today.
Almost strangely, this team has too many kids. What to do? When Guiti comes back, it would seem the best options are to stick him in center, ich in right, platoon carp and wells in left, seagar at 3rd, ryan at ss, ackley at second, but i can’t imagine they want to platoon smoak. So what do you do here? We have too many DHs.
One thing that would be nice for fangraphs would be to keep the projected stats around so we can compare to what actually happened in a year. I think that whle projections seem to be fairly accurate, looking at the differences might help to identify the things we’re still missing. I don’t want to get all Brian laHair on why these projections aren’t accurate (the guy has a very high BABIP right now so this all might be luck) but I’m guessing there’s still a lot to learn on player projections.
I’ve been disdainful (in my mind) of the Seager to short ideas, but he is a solid defensive 2B with the arm to play third. It seems hard to believe he couldn’t be at least adequate at short.
Arguments against include Ryan’s glove, which benefits the soon-to-be-very-young pitching staff. More importantly, you wouldn’t want to undermine Seager’s breakout year in order to squeeze Liddi into the line-up and Catricala is less obviously on the way than he used to be. Also, two of the best prospects in the organization presently play shortstop. (Rumors have Brad Miller as maybe a future CF, but for now he’s a SS.)
I’ve heard that Liddi is terrible at first base. Any truth to that?
Uh, Eternal – you forgot about Saunders. Unless Carp catches fire over the next month, it’s probably unlikely that Condor will be the odd man out with regard to outfield playing time once Guti’s back. Carp’s out of options, so he’ll likely be thrown into the 1B mix too.
Great write up! Thanks Dave.
Also, you can’t really bring up one guy that’s defying projections while ignoring the 100s with whom projections are spot on. That’s the sort of thinking that keeps casino owners rich.
“I’ve heard that Liddi is terrible at first base. Any truth to that?”
There’s worse:
http://seattlesportsinsider.com/news/sabr-candyland
“Mariners first baseman Justin Smoak has now made FOUR absolutely horrendous defensive plays in three innings……
As bad as it sounds, someone who doesn’t deserve it is going to have to go back to AAA. I know people have said Smoak has nothing to learn down there but it may take the pressure off him for a bit and he can get his head straight. It would still allow for the young guys to get more playing time. Let Justin build back his confidence in a less pressured arena and come back when he gets right.
Seager isn’t an everyday SS. Neither is Liddi. Brendan Ryan is the best SS on the M’s roster, and he is an everyday SS.
Yes, we know he can’t hit very well. He’s still on pace to be the same 2-3 WAR player he usually is (the hitting’s going to come up a bit, the defense will probably come down). It is not improving the team to bench him for Seager or Liddi unless you’re giving him the occasional day off to keep him rested, because neither of them are likely to be (on balance) better players at that position.
The associated question from the other direction is what do you do with Smoak? You have Millwood saying that confidence at that level is a big deal and Smoak must have shaky, if not broken, confidence right now. It’s almost worse when you get it going a little bit, as he did, only to go back instead of continue forward.
They’ve given him some days off and moved him down in the lineup to take the “pressure” off. While some believe that doesn’t matter, and maybe it doesn’t, the players and managers seem to believe it does, and maybe that matters. Smoak has had his problems, but he’s also had a fair amount of time to get past them and has never seemed even close to what he was out of the gate in 2011.
Smoak as projected would be a valuable player in the lineup. The question is how do you get him there?
As for what to do with Liddi: at this point I am fine with him being the platoon partner for whichever of Carp/Smoak/Seager needs the day off against a LHP at 1B/DH/3B, to go along with Wells covering the OF positions (LF/CF). It strikes me that at this point, Figgins is pretty much useless on the roster when you bring back Olivo- Kawasaki and Seager can both cover the middle infield if you want to bench Ackley or Ryan for a day, you have Wells/Carp, you have Liddi/Smoak/Carp/Ackley covering corner infield positions, you have Montero/Jaso/Olivo, so it’s pretty easy for the team to stack the lineup with lefties or righties.
As for Smoak: 1000+ PAs of below-replacement level play. He’s 25. I think “but he’s still learning” is getting really, really old.
(Incidentally: “Smoak as projected”… well, ZIPS and Marcel have never really liked the guy. He may have Jeremy Reed Disease- flashy stats in the low minors for one season, nothing that’s made him all that in the high minors.)
Maybe this isn’t what the M’s will do, but I’d send Smoak to AAA to see if someone can fix his swing. He was long touted by scouts as a future star, but his numbers have never lived up to what the scouts saw. Now, scouts see a long loopy swing and no ability to hit breaking balls. Something’s wrong, and I don’t see how he’s going to fix it at the big league level. Send Smoak down, and get Liddi, Wells, Carp and Jaso into the lineup more often.
What’s bothering me more than how to get Liddi more playing time is, how to get Wells more playing time?
All the outfielders we have not named Ichiro; Saunders, Carp, Guti (when he comes back), and Wells, they all project similarily, with Welss being a far better defender (with a better arm as well) thanall but Saunders.
Trying to put Liddi in the already overly crowded outfield makes very little sense to me.
Personally, I think we’ll probably need to make a couple of trades to sort this all out, but until/if that happens, I’d really like to see Wells get a lot more playing time, and for Wedge to STOP using him only against opposite handed pitchers,since heactually has hit as well if not better against same handed pitchers.
It’s my own opinion that of all the OFers we currently have, Wells, not Carp, not Saunders, not even Guti, and certainly not Liddi is our most likely long term option out there, if Wedge would just give him some fracking time out there to prove it.
I’m all for starting Ryan, but let’s not confuse luck and declining contact skills with ability.
I agree with CCW, send down Smoak for a bit even if just to get a little confidence back.
Dave: you’re known as a top baseball stat wonk. But “bitten by the regression fairy”? You can write at a big league level as well.
You know what just struck me? This season we’ve been talking about ways to get Liddi into the mix, ways to get Wells more starts, how to keep Seager playing, etc. Remember, just a couple years back, when the team was carrying two aging DHs and we didn’t really have decent backup options for some positions?
This is a much better “problem” to have.
The real problem is that we have too many mediocre hitters and no really good ones. I just checked and the Mariners are the only team in the AL that doesn’t have at least one player with an OPS above .800 (min 100 PA).
Unfortunately, playing Liddi anywhere isn’t going to solve this problem.
Remember, just a couple years back, when the team was carrying two aging DHs and we didn’t really have decent backup options for some positions? This is a much better “problem” to have.
Hear, hear. Although I do wonder what the balance is between platooning for best matchups vs. everyday play for player development / long looks at people.
Liddi should play against left-handers and perhaps pinch-hit for Brendan Ryan in certain situations, but he’s not a guy that the team should be looking at rearranging the roster to get into the line-up everyday.
Exactly. Except if the alternative is having Miguel Olivo in the lineup, then Liddi needs to play at all costs.
“Also, you can’t really bring up one guy that’s defying projections while ignoring the 100s with whom projections are spot on. That’s the sort of thinking that keeps casino owners rich.”
I’m not saying that the projections are inaccurate based on one player. I’m only saying that there’s probably still more to learn. More data helps.