Safety In Numbers: The Wonder Year

What would you do if I said you could have one year of phenomenal success in whatever field you wanted, but you’d either dwindle into obscurity or completely drop out of that field entirely?  Is it worth it for that one exceptional year?

If nothing else, at least you get the choice in that scenario.  For some players, they end up with a crazy year that defies the odds, only to fade out, a footnote in history.

Maybe it’s because opposing teams and players find a weakness to exploit.  Maybe a bad habit catches up.  Maybe the luck just runs out.  For whatever reason, their performance hits a wall.

Let’s look at some examples:

Kevin Maas

Let’s go back to 1990.  Zack Morris was causing havoc in the halls of Bayside High School on “Saved By the Bell” while Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block was destroying hotel rooms.  And the Yankees were in last place.

Yes, the Yankees.  Last place.  It’s an odd world to envision but it happened.

Don Mattingly was battling nagging injuries that limited his performance and at the end of the day on June 28, they were 27-43, 15 games behind Boston in the American League East.  Seeking some new energy in the lineup, the Yankees called up a 25 year old first baseman who had been tearing up the International League as a Columbus Clipper.  Kevin Maas was hitting .284/.390/.582/.972 before making his debut on June 29, 1990.

He went 1 for 3.

Then, Maas started to write a fairy tale that was soaked in Americana.  A fledgling Yankees team needs a boost, a new face enters the scene.

And on the fourth of July, he stood in the batter’s box in the sixth inning at Royals Stadium.  On the mound stood 1989’s Cy Young Award Winner Bret Saberhagen.  Maas drove a ball down the right field line for his first career home run.

Oh, but that was just the start of it.

Three days later, another homer.  Three days after that, he hit two more.  He added homers on July 23, 24, and 25 and Maas fever was in full effect.  He finished July with eight homers.  The power continued into August where he added another eight.  At the end of the season, he had 21 homers in 300 plate appearances and finished just behind Sandy Alomar Jr for the Rookie of the Year Award.

Maas started 1991 as a regular and while he continued to walk and hit homers, that’s about all he did.

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Generated 1/18/2011.

So What Happened?

Maas actually ended up with more homers in 1991 than in 1990, but took nearly twice as many plate appearances to do so.  His HR/FB rate in 1990 was 20.6% but dropped to 12% in 1991.  His line drive rate dropped from 24% to a more typical 17%.  He made nearly twice as many outs in the air as he did on the ground, so a lot of the fly balls that left the yard in 1990 just weren’t carrying the same in the next season.  Maas struck out a lot, but not so much that it was a killer – though it sure didn’t help.

Things really got ugly in 1992.  The home run rate continued to drop, the contact rate didn’t improve, and the last valuable skill Maas had shown – the ability to take a walk – had disappeared.  He was still around league average, but nothing like the bright star he’d seemed to be after his debut.  He floated around the minors after 1993 and left the game in 1997.

Bob Hamelin

George Brett had just retired and yet the Royals were red hot.  With young star pitcher Kevin Appier and 1994 Cy Young Award Winner David Cone on the staff, the Royals rattled off a 14 game winning streak in the middle of the summer.

A big part of that on the offensive side of things was Bob Hamelin, the Hammer.  He was a big guy at 240 pounds, but by the end of 1993, he’d been able to harness enough power to drill 29 homers for Omaha.  

He hit six homers in April, then, as the Royals heated up in the summer, he added nine more in July.  He’d hit three in August before the players’ strike ended the season and shut down any momentum the Royals had to take the American League Central.  He won the Rookie of the Year that season, running away from some guy named Manny Ramirez.

Nonetheless, while Hamelin was mashing and Royals fans waved inflatable hammers in the stands, the first baseman was also battling chronic back problems that had plagued him throughout his minor league career.  His patience and power at the plate gave the Royals hope that more would follow in 1995.

At the end of May 1995, however, Hamelin had only two homers and a .171/.299/.280/.579 line.  He spent time in the minors starting in August and returned in September but he never got anywhere, ending the year with a .168/.278/.313/.591 blemish.

The Royals gave him another shot in 1996 and in limited duty he was fairly productive, but the power that he’d shown in his rookie season had been gone.  Injuries had slowed his arrival in the majors (he was 26 as a rookie) so at 28, his skills were starting to decline.  His incredible walkrate was all that kept him above replacement level – for his career, Hamelin walked in 13.7% of his plate appearances.

Hamelin ended up hitting 18 homers for the Tigers in 1997 and posted a 122 OPS+ in 369 appearances, but wasn’t a reliable everyday batter anymore.  He made his last appearance in the majors as a Brewer in 1998 before retiring mid-game for the Toledo Mud Hens in 1999.

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Generated 1/19/2011.

So What Happened?

Like Maas, Hamelin had a high walkrate and a high, but not drastically high, strikeout rate.  Hamelin retired with a 109 OPS+ for his career, but in the context of his first impression, his career look disappointing.

He had fairly stable batted ball numbers and actually finished with pretty good line drive rates.  His HR/FB was well above average.  With Hamelin, though, he had a small window for success.  Debuting at 25 and being a full time player at 26 gave him a couple seasons at his “peak” development, and with his weight and back issues, he had two strikes against him.

Perhaps the strike had a hand in his demise.  The 1995 season started almost a month later than usual so there might have been too much downtime or not enough focus to keep his skills well-honed for the big league level.  Hamelin didn’t exhibit a sharp platoon split, though he was used more as a platoon lefty in the last couple seasons, so that may not have helped keep him in playing shape.

Chris Shelton

If you looked at Chris Shelton‘s 2006 season and compared it with his 2005 season, you’d notice fairly similar numbers.  There was a bit of a difference in the slash categories, but the rest of the numbers aren’t that far off.

Those two seasons represent his largest amount of playing time in his major league career, but in neither case were they really that impressive relative to other players’ seasons.  But in the spirit of a surprise player setting the world on fire, we have to look at his 2006 month by month.

You know where I’m going with this, I’m sure.

The first rumblings of Shelton’s brief run of stardom came in September 2005 when he hit six homers to finish the year.  He ended with 18 in 431 plate appearances.

The power kept coming at the start of 2006.  Interestingly, Shelton started his surge against the Royals, drilling two homers off Scott Elarton on opening day.*

*As a Royals fan, I refuse to admit that Scott Elarton started on opening day for us.  You can’t convince me this actually happened.  What a sick joke that would be, right?

Two games later he hit another pair of homers.  The next day there was another blast.  In the end, Shelton had 10 homers in the month of April and seemed like a breakout power threat.  After that first spectacular month where he’d put up a .326/.404/.783/1.187 line, he hit only six more homers and put up a mere slash line of .256/.318/.363/.681 from May until the end of the year.

Oh, and that doesn’t count the 26 game stretch that he spent in Toledo in Triple A.  He hit three homers in August for the Mud Hens.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 1/20/2011.

So What Happened?

Even in his reasonable 2005 when he’d hit 18 homers, Shelton was only putting 10% of his flyballs over the fence.  That’s about league average, but not what you’d expect from a guy who had hit six homers to close out 2005 and opened 2006 with 10 more.  In 2006, he had 10.3% of his flyballs turn into homers, but it wasn’t enough to sustain.

For one, Shelton struck out 28.7% of the time in 2006; the league average was 18.9%.  Those whiffs were largely his own doing, as he just didn’t make contact on a lot of his swings.  According to Fangraphs, he swung at pitches outside the strike zone about the same as the rest of the league.  That’s fine.  What isn’t fine, though, is that when he did take those swings, he missed about 12% more often than league average.

Shelton is still hacking away trying to make it back to the big leagues.  He finished 2010 in the Astros system.

Looking at the present

Brennan Boesch had a great first half.  A magnificent first half.  He and Austin Jackson looked poised to carry a Rookie of the Year race to the end.

Through the first half of 2010, Boesch had a .342/.397/.593/.990 line with 12 homers.

Just a magnificent first half.  I can’t stress that enough.

In this era of advanced statistics and deep projection systems, nearly everyone, short of Mr. and Mrs. Boesch, could tell you that his numbers were going to regress.  I’m of the mind that you can’t solely look at someone’s BABIP and say it HAS to regress to the typical .300 league average, but Boesch’s .384 BABIP was due to fall.

Boy, did it ever.

Boesch hit .163/.237/.222/.559 in the second half.  His BABIP was .201.

So What Happened?

Brennan Boesch likes to swing the bat.  He really likes to swing the bat.  The major league average for percentage of pitches swung at was 45.6%.  Boesch swung at 57.3% of the pitches he saw.  In the strike zone, out of the strike zone – it didn’t matter, if it was in there, Boesch was offering at it.

While his contact rate was  close to league average, it doesn’t seem that he made very good contact in the second half, especially after pitchers figured out that he would swing at everything under the sun.  When Boesch was at bat, pitchers threw the ball in the strike zone 40.7% of the time.  The league average was 46.5%.

This became problematic for Boesch, since, when he got to two strikes in the count, he had an OPS of only .475.  It seems pitchers took advantage of his over-aggressiveness, let him swing at bad pitches, and in the second half, that poor plate discipline led to some bad contact.  In 2010, Boesch hit an infield flyball 21% of the time, well above the 13% league average.  The league adjusted to his tendencies and Boesch either never recognized it or never tried to change himself.

There’s always a danger in attributing more fanfare onto a player after just one season of greatness.  It happens all the time.  For whatever reason the stars align and a player plays above their head for a sustained amount of time.

Baseball isn’t a kind game.  It puts players through a grinder as they develop, putting challenge after challenge as they increase their level of competition.  By the time a player hits the big leagues, he’s had thousands of plate appearances that have both formed who he is as a batter  and also who he thinks he is as a batter.  It’s tough to change those habits, especially if they’ve gotten a guy to the Show.

It takes a rare mix of talent, opportunity, luck, discipline and effort that gets a player to the majors.  It’s even more to keep them there.  In the cases of these four players, they certainly worked hard to get where they are, but the inability to adjust to a competitive league or their own problematic tendencies can cut what looks like a blossoming prospect down to size.

Maybe if things had worked out differently, Kevin Maas would be counting a number of World Series rings.  Maybe Bob Hamelin could have broken the Royals single season home run record.  Maybe Chris Shelton would have been good enough to keep the Tigers from trading for Miguel Cabrera.

It’s not too late for Boesch yet – though he’s going to have to learn to lay off some pitches before he can be deemed anything more than a blip on the radar in baseball history.

You can stay current on all the Call to the Pen content and news by following us onTwitter,Facebook, or by way of our RSS feed. Michael Engel is the lead writer for KingsOfKauffman.com, a Kansas City Royals blog on the Fansided network