May 28, 2016; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; A detailed view of New York Yankees hat and right fielder Carlos Beltran (not pictured) glove against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
May 28, 2016; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; A detailed view of New York Yankees hat and right fielder Carlos Beltran (not pictured) glove against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports /
The New York Yankees acquired OF Billy McKinney in a July trade with the Chicago Cubs. What sort of player is he?
Who Is He?
McKinney was originally drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the 1st round of the 2013 draft out of high school in Texas. He made two stops with the A’s system that summer, playing with the Arizona Rookie League team and also with Vermont of the New York Penn League. Combined, he hit .326/.387/.437 with 3 HR, 3 triples, and 8 steals, flashing strong center field defense.
He moved up to high-A Stockton in 2014 as a 19 year-old, skipping low-A, a fairly aggressive move for a high school draftee in his first full season (by comparison, 2015’s #1 overall pick, Dansby Swanson, came out of college and started the season in high-A this year and was considered fairly advanced). As one may expect, McKinney struggled with the jump, hitting .241/.330/.400 before he was part of a deadline deal with Addison Russell from Oakland to Chicago that brought Jeff Samardzija to the Athletics. He finished out 2014 on a high note with the Cubs’ high-A Daytona team in the Florida State League, going .301/.390/.432, ending up with a .264/.354/.412 combined season at high-A for a 19 year-old, with 11 home runs and 6 stolen bases, along with a 61/100 BB/K. He was rated by Baseball America as the #83 prospect in the game, and Baseball Prospectus had him pegged at #81.
In 2015, the Cubs moved their high-A affiliate to Myrtle Beach in the Carolina League, and they started McKinney there, and he tore the league apart with a .976 OPS before being promoted to AA Tennessee in the Southern League. He had an overall season of .300/.371/.454 with 7 home runs and 31 doubles along with a 44/60 BB/K rate and was ranked #88 by MLB.com and #74 by Baseball Prospectus. One knock from Baseball America, however, was that he had moved from a center fielder to a corner outfielder at this point, and that changed his value pretty strongly, requiring more power from the bat.
The Cubs sent McKinney back to Tennessee to start 2016, and he was shuffling, to say the least, hitting .252/.355/.322 before he was part of the Cubs’ deal to acquire Aroldis Chapman. He’s moved to AA Trenton now with the Yankees and continued the same sort of hitting with their squad in 11 games, going .268/.348/.390. He did not make MLB.com’s top 100 midseason list, and Baseball Prospectus only releases a top 50 midseason list, so he did not make that either.
McKinney is listed at 6’1 and 205 pounds. He looks all of that, and he carries a good chunk of his weight in his lower body. He’s definitely a guy who would look good getting off of the bus. McKinney is a lefty swinger and thrower.
Hitting
McKinney has a very short, compact swing that generates very good contact power but also has good bat control through the zone. He’s shown before this season an ability to handle tough breaking pitches inside and outside, and he’s also done well driving pitches that are hung in the zone, but this year has been a struggle in both of those regards.
With no change that I can see in his 2015 film to his 2016 film in approach, hand placement, body size, swing path, or anything obvious like that, McKinney is now struggling to drive those balls in perfect power zones for a lefty hitter, and he’s really getting fooled by breaking pitches on the edges of the zone, especially to the inside part of the plate. This has led to a lot of weak contact rather than strikeouts, as he’s kept his strikeout rate about the same, but he’s just not putting the ball in play with authority. It’s not a BABIP issue either, as he’s typically a guy with a .320ish BABIP, and he sported exactly a .320 BABIP for Tennessee and has had a .303 BABIP with Trenton, so it’s not like he’s getting unlucky by any means.
McKinney has been kept in the leadoff position in spite of not having big stolen base numbers primarily because of his excellent eye, and he’s never had a walk percentage under 8% at any partial stop along the way. This season, even with his struggles, his walk rate has been around 12-13% all year long. He’s got excellent zone judgement and pitch recognition, but, like I mentioned earlier, for some reason handling those pitches just isn’t happening this year.
McKinney has a level, contact-oriented swing. A guy with a swing like his is likely not going to hit a ton of home runs just because the swing path leads to more of a flat angle on the ball and leads to a lot more line drives, so his power will be seen in doubles and triples more than home runs, but if McKinney’s a permanent corner outfielder, his value will rely on more balls leaving the park in the future, and that will take a fairly significant swing adjustment for him.
Base Running/Fielding
McKinney is certainly build like an athlete. He reminds you of a defensive back as he walks to the plate, but then he gets on base or attempts to chase down a ball in the outfield, and you keep expecting him to kick in one more gear of speed on top of what he’s showing. To use a good “redneck” analogy, he’s akin to the 4-speed pickup truck that can only work in the first 3 gears, so you can rev it up all you want in that 3rd gear, but the truck simply won’t shift into fourth anymore.
That said, he does have fairly good instincts when base running. He’s not an adept base stealer, but he tends to know how to grab an extra base on a single to the outfield or when to bluff or when to go on a fly ball to the outfield.
On defense, McKinney has an above average arm, but nothing spectacular, and his instincts off the bat are quite good in tracking the ball, but once again, he seems to be missing one gear of speed, which would make him an excellent corner outfield defender, but not really a passable center fielder.
I tend to see a fourth outfield future for McKinney in that he could pass in center on occasion, handles the corners very well, can hit pitching from both sides, is patient, and doesn’t really hurt a team offensively. The problem is that those skills are why you keep a guy on your bench, and not why you insert him into the starting lineup, and that’s where McKinney has seemingly stalled out this season.
He certainly has the athleticism and natural power to alter his swing and turn into a guy who could put out 20+ home runs in sacrificing a bit of average, and that could play quite well with his patience at the plate, but I have a feeling the Yankees will want to do that over an offseason of work with him. He also will be playing with the cozy right field porch in Yankee Stadium, which could allow his “okay” power to play up into a 20-homer hitter without making adjustments.
I really see McKinney comparing well to a guy like John Vander Wal. He’s a guy who had a long career as a bench bat and pinch hitter, playing 14 years and making over 3,000 plate appearances. Vander Wal only got over 450 plate appearances in a season twice in his career, typically being used in pinch hitting or part-time action, but he was extremely valuable in that role.
McKinney’s next step will really be up to the Yankees. He turns 22 at the end of this month, so he’s not old by any means to be at AA, and they could send him to the Arizona Fall League to work on his power swing rather than an average swing. I could also see him spending a lot of time at fall instructs and then going to the Yankees’ choice of a winter league to work on that swing with a coach they want to see him with. He’s fallen a bit off of the prospect radar this season, but there’s still a useful major leaguer in McKinney’s skill set.
