The Angels have provided an opportunity for me to do a special edition
of “Breakout, Bust, or Rebound?” for their second baseman Howie Kendrick. The first part of the program will focus on
our BBR outlook on Kendrick, and then we’ll discuss the contract at the end
since it focuses more on the long-term outlook for Kendrick and his team.
There’s a reason that the Angels pursued a contract extension for Howie
Kendrick: his 2011 end results were awesome and he is still only 28 years
old. To get an idea of what we’re
looking at, here are Kendrick’s 2011 end results:
583 PA/ .285 BA/ .338 OBP/ .464 SLG/ 125 OPS+/ 120 wRC+/ 14 SB (6 CS/
70% SB Rate)
Those are great results from someone in the American League. Most would consider that all-star worthy, and
that’s exactly what Kendrick was in July of 2011. His successes in 2011 look even more
impressive when you consider what he did compared to the average 2nd
base slot for a major league team:
.255 BA/ .316 OBP/ .378 SLG/ 91 wRC+
As you can see, Kendrick was much better than your average second
baseman in 2011 at the plate. Throw in a
ridiculous 16.7 UZR, 0.7 dWAR and a 3.2 base running value (per fangraphs) and
suddenly you’ve got a great overall season.
These rates helped Kendrick earn a 5.8 fWAR and a 4.3 rWAR, which made
him one of the better infielders in all of baseball in 2011. However, BBR doesn’t look to what Kendrick
did in 2011. We are concerned with what
he’s going to do in the future. I am
labeling Kendrick as a bre…bus…rebou…nope, not calling him anything just
yet. We’ll get to that later. For now, let’s look at some other stuff
first.
The first part of understanding the potential thinking behind a BBR
selection on my part or a contract extension on the part of the Angels is to
look at what Kendrick has done in the last few years from an end result
standpoint and a rate standpoint. Let’s
look at the end result patterns first:
2009: 400 PA/ .291 BA/ .334 OBP/ .444 SLG/ 104 OPS+/ 105 wRC+/ 11 SB (4
CS/ 73% SB Rate)
2010: 658 PA/ .279 BA/ .313 OBP/ .407 SLG/ 99 OPS+/
96 wRC+/14 SB (4 CS/ 78% SB Rate)
2011: 583 PA/ .285 BA/ .338 OBP/ .464 SLG/ 125 OPS+/ 120 wRC+/ 14 SB (6
CS/ 70% SB Rate)
Total: 1641 PA/ .284 BA/ .327 OBP/ .436 SLG/ 109 OPS+/ 107 wRC+/ 39 SB
(14 CS/ 74% SB Rate)
And here are the other rates:
2009: 5.0 BB/ 17.8 K/ .152 ISO/ .338 BABIP/ 12.2% HR/FB
2010: 4.3 BB/ 14.3 K/ .128 ISO/ .313 BABIP/ 6.9% HR/FB
2011: 5.7 BB/ 20.4 K/ .179 ISO/ .338 BABIP/ 16.5% HR/FB
Total: 4.2 BB/ 16.9 K/ .141 ISO/ .339 BABIP/ 8.8% HR/FB
It is rather remarkable how well Kendrick’s end results and rates line
up. Kendrick has a good sample size for
each year and a good number of PA to judge him on from the three-year span. What we can see is that 2010 was a down year
for Kendrick, because his HR/FB rate was terrible, his BABIP suffered a 25
point drop, and his walk rate was rather low.
Even though his career averages suggest he’ll regress, it is unfair to
Kendrick to use them because he got such spotty playing time in the first three
years of his career (played 72, 88, and 92 games). It is better to judge him based on his
averages over the last three years where he has played at least 100 games a
year, and it’s even BETTER to look at just the last two years since they have
been full seasons:
2010: 658 PA/ .279 BA/ .313 OBP/ .407 SLG/ 99 OPS+/
96 wRC+/14 SB (4 CS/ 78% SB Rate)
2011: 583 PA/ .285 BA/ .338 OBP/ .464 SLG/ 125 OPS+/ 120 wRC+/ 14 SB (6
CS/ 70% SB Rate)
2010: 4.3 BB/ 14.3 K/ .128 ISO/ .313 BABIP/ 6.9% HR/FB
2011: 5.7 BB/ 20.4 K/ .179 ISO/ .338 BABIP/ 16.5% HR/FB
Here we see a tale of two seasons, and the reality is that Kendrick is
likely to be somewhere in-between (especially when the numbers from 2009 are
looked at).
Real Life Value to the Angels
As mentioned before, Kendrick’s value to the Angels is great, because
he primarily plays second base. However,
he also can efficiently play other positions.
The acquisition of Albert Pujols also should help Kendrick defensively
as it will allow him to play more up the middle instead of playing towards the
hole. Offensively, Kendrick is a beast
for the position that he plays, and he really shouldn’t be overlooked going
forward. Based on the numbers posted
above, I would anticipate the following rates from Kendrick for 2012:
5.2 BB/ 18.4 K/ .161 ISO/ .338 BABIP/ 13.2% HR/FB
Those rates should help Kendrick in achieving an overall slash line
that looks something like this:
.291 BA/ .331 OBP/ .439 SLG/ 121 OPS+/ 114 wRC+/ 14 SB (5 CS/ 74% SB
Rate)
These numbers should put him at roughly a 4 WAR on both fangraphs and
b-ref, which makes him a great guy to consider for an extension. He is a late-blooming 28 year old who will be
playing his 3rd full season in the majors, so it’s hard to just use
the typical age graph for reference here.
Players that are 28 typically are still plateauing from peak, but
players in their third full season typically have one of their best years. This makes me believe that Kendrick will have
a strong 2012 and 2013, but start regressing once he hits 30.
Fantasy Value
If you took Kendrick late, traded for him when his stock was low, or
picked him up off the waiver wire, you probably finished in the top 3 in your
fantasy league in 2011. As far as
fantasy numbers go, Kendrick played 140 games and put up the following numbers
in a traditional 5x5 setting:
.285 BA/ 86 Runs/ 18 HR/ 63 RBI/ 14 SB
So far, I haven’t had to mention much about lineup change when
projection a player’s future numbers, but this is a case where I have to. With Albert Pujols anchoring the lineup and
the potential for a healthy Kendrys Morales, the Angels should be able to score
a lot more in 2012. Kendrick could bat
anywhere from 2-5 depending on how the Angels build their lineup, so I’m going
to give a couple different potential projections based on the rates I posted
earlier:
Projection One- #2 Spot in Lineup:
.291 BA/ 95 Runs/ 14 HR/ 71 RBI/ 14 SB
Projection Two- #5 Spot in Lineup:
.291 BA/ 83 Runs/ 14 HR/ 92 RBI/ 14 SB
Those are actually better overall fantasy numbers despite Kendrick
having worse overall offensive rates. This is a good example of why rate stats are
better to look at than end results, because the changes around Kendrick in the
offense (more Trout, Pujols, and Morales) will allow his overall end results to
increase a lot. I like Kendrick in a
fantasy setup for 2012. I like him so
much that I would suggest taking him in the first five rounds, because his
overall numbers should not be too much worse than guys like Kinsler and Uggla
who are likely to go in the higher rounds.
The Contract
Ah, here’s the thing I am most concerned with. Based on reports, the Angels gave Kendrick a
4-year extension worth $33.5 million.
This means that the AAV for the contract will be $8.375 million, which
is a complete robbery on the Angels’ part.
This deal is great for us to use, because we’ve already got metrics to
use for projecting his future value from our previous installments of “Extension
Watch.” Here are the next four years in
d/WAR based on our previously used model:
2012: 4.0 d/WAR
2013: 4.3 d/WAR
2014: 4.6 d/WAR
2015: 4.9 d/WAR
This creates the average d/WAR of 4.45 million dollars per unit of WAR
for all extension candidates over this period of time. I’ve already talked a little bit about what I
expect from Kendrick in 2012 and beyond, but here are my estimates for his
average WAR (an average of rWAR compared to fWAR):
2012: 4.1 WAR
2013: 4.1 WAR
2014: 3.6 WAR
2015: 3.2 WAR
This projection gives us an overall total of 16 wins of value. Based on our market projection for extended
players, this means a completely market fair contract would call for roughly
$71.2 million for Kendrick over the next four years. Well, the Angels paid roughly half of
that. That means that Kendrick can
perform like this over that span and be worth the contract:
2012: 2.05 WAR
2013: 2.05 WAR
2014: 1.8 WAR
2015: 1.6 WAR
What we are looking at here is one of the better team-friendly
contracts signed in a long time. Even if
Kendrick is worth about half of what I have projected him to be, he is still
worth being paid 35.6 million dollars.
Kendrick has out-performed the average year on the most recent model in
each of the last five years of his career, and that is with very spotty playing
time, so I am confident that this will be a fantastic deal for the Angels. I think Kendrick got robbed and should have
waited to become a free agent in a rather weak free agent market for hitters.
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