Boston Red Sox: Bobby Dalbec and the wild wacky world of Three True Outcomes

Small sample sizes, while rarely predictive, can sometimes be fun. Such is the case with Boston Red Sox power-hitting prospects Bobby Dalbec. He is off to one of the more bizarre starts we’ve ever seen.

Bobby Dalbec has been one of the more interesting and frustrating prospects to follow since he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 2016. We talked about him being the most likely prospect to see a jump like Michael Chavis did in 2017. But that was predicated on his ability to cut down his strikeouts.

So far in 2018 within the Boston Red Sox minor league system, he has posted a fairly ridiculous line of .211/.361/.561 with 5 HR. With the caveat that it’s early enough that he will almost assuredly not maintain it for the season, let’s have some fun and dig into it a little.

The Three True outcomes king?

If Bobby Dalbec were to continue this all season long, he would end the year with an impressive 48 HR. That plus his triple slash would put him in Joey Gallo territory for production.

In fact, Joey Gallo’s .209/.333/.537 with 41 HR along with a 14.1% walk rate and a 36.8% strikeout rate looks remarkably similar to what Bobby Dalbec is doing so far. That’s known as a Three True Outcomes (TTO) hitter. The Three True Outcomes being home runs, walks, and strikeouts because they don’t involve fielders.

Bobby Dalbec’s Three True Outcomes percentage in 2018 is 58.3%. Joe Gallo’s in 2017 was 58.6%. The first question that comes to mind is whether this is sustainable or whether Joey Gallo is an extreme outlier in the history of the game. To check this, we’ll need to dig into historical stats.

The all-time leaderboard for Three True Outcomes.

Filtering out batting averages of .250 or higher, the all-time leader in Three True Outcomes is Adam Dunn with 4027. Second on that list? Mark Reynolds with 2748. Adam Dunn’s Three True Outcomes percentage is just 50.1% while Reynolds clocked in at 47%.

Neither seems like a great comp for Bobby Dalbec or Joey Gallo. When we filter by percentage and remove hitters with fewer than 400 PAs the list gets a bit more interesting. Our top 20 looks like this:

Rank	Name	PA	HR	BB	SO	BB%	K%	AVG	OBP	SLG	TTO	TTO %
1	Joey Gallo	685	48	95	272	13.87%	39.71%	0.201	0.321	0.498	415	60.58%
2	Jon Singleton	420	14	60	151	14.29%	35.95%	0.171	0.290	0.331	225	53.57%
3	Jack Cust	2578	105	443	819	17.18%	31.77%	0.242	0.374	0.439	1367	53.03%
4	Ryan Schimpf	527	34	69	175	13.09%	33.21%	0.195	0.317	0.492	278	52.75%
5	Keon Broxton	709	29	76	264	10.72%	37.24%	0.226	0.317	0.422	369	52.05%
6	Chris Carter	2853	158	327	951	11.46%	33.33%	0.217	0.312	0.456	1436	50.33%
7	Adam Dunn	8042	443	1279	2305	15.90%	28.66%	0.236	0.364	0.487	4027	50.07%
8	Russell Branyan	2771	157	340	889	12.27%	32.08%	0.233	0.331	0.483	1386	50.02%
9	Kyle Schwarber	764	46	96	229	12.57%	29.97%	0.222	0.329	0.471	371	48.56%
10	Jared Sandberg	557	24	55	191	9.87%	34.29%	0.225	0.305	0.441	270	48.47%
11	Jeremy Giambi	554	25	105	136	18.95%	24.55%	0.241	0.394	0.461	266	48.01%
12	Chris Davis	4701	267	472	1504	10.04%	31.99%	0.246	0.328	0.490	2243	47.71%
13	Mark Reynolds	5846	281	661	1806	11.31%	30.89%	0.237	0.329	0.455	2748	47.01%
14	Steven Souza Jr.	1537	65	164	489	10.67%	31.82%	0.236	0.325	0.426	718	46.71%
15	Matt Davidson	532	29	29	190	5.45%	35.71%	0.224	0.273	0.449	248	46.62%
16	Kirk Nieuwenhuis	1116	31	123	366	11.02%	32.80%	0.221	0.311	0.384	520	46.59%
17	Juan Francisco	1091	48	81	375	7.42%	34.37%	0.236	0.297	0.439	504	46.20%
18	Mark Bellhorn	2117	62	302	606	14.27%	28.63%	0.235	0.349	0.408	970	45.82%
19	Kelly Shoppach	1855	70	155	624	8.36%	33.64%	0.223	0.312	0.413	849	45.77%
20	Carlos Pena	5821	283	807	1560	13.86%	26.80%	0.231	0.346	0.462	2650	45.52%

That’s quite a list, but what does it tell us? For one, what Joey Gallo is doing may not be sustainable over the long haul. Jack Cust is the only person on this list with more than 1000 PA and a greater than 51 percent Three True Outcomes percentage.

And he’s more than 7 percent lower than Joey Gallo. Only Adam Dunn has more than 3000 and crests 50%. In fact, six of the top ten on this list have fewer than 1000 PAs on their careers. All of them are active players.

How about a visual aid?

Looking at this through a scatter chart we can see the two significant outliers are Adam Dunn and Joey Gallo — when your hope is that you end up being one of two extreme outliers, things aren’t looking too good.

Bobby Dalbec’s early season numbers look much more like Joey Gallo, of course, but the hope is he can eventually transform into something more like Dunn by the time he joins the Boston Red Sox.

That would require cutting down on the strikeouts. During his prime years, Adam Dunn had strikeout percentages in the range of 25-29% or so.

More from Call to the Pen

Of course, it’s more likely that Bobby Dalbec ends up like one of the other 18 players on the list if he does make the majors. And even if he does, he’ll likely end up in the lower left-hand corner of the chart. That would mean a shorter but potentially productive peak.

What will Bobby Dalbec end up being?

Perhaps something like Chris Davis who struggled to stick as a major league regular in his first three seasons. After being traded to the Baltimore Orioles, he busted out for four highly productive years.

He dropped below league average in 2017 and has been struggling so far this season.

It’s a tricky profile and one that has almost no margin for error. Yeah, it’s possible he ends up an outlier like Dunn and is productive for a long time, but I surely wouldn’t bet on it. He’s probably just as likely to be Jeremy Giambi or Jon Singleton.

Or a career minor leaguer. But maybe Joey Gallo is forging a new sustainable path for the modern game. After all, Bobby Dalbec would slot in at number 2 all time on this list by percentage of TTOs if he was doing this at the major league level with the Boston Red Sox.

Next: Red Sox affiliate embracing inner Star Wars

Whatever the future holds, Boston Red Sox fans are rooting for Bobby Dalbec to be the exception. His power is incredibly tantalizing, and even a brief window of it playing at Fenway would be a treat for fans.