Believe in Byron Buxton

I guess I'd be OK with that.  Twins wasted close to that much on Ricky Nolasco, without the potential upside.

 

This is off subject a little bit, but I wonder with technology as it is today, if there could be a way to test/improve pitch recognition.  Say with high speed cameras and some sort of device held in the hand,  have the player stand in the batters box, no bat or anything, and just try to recognize the pitch. That way they are not worrying about any swing mechanics or anything like that, just pitch recognition. Have multiple buttons for FB CB CH SL  and have the device synched to the cameras to see how quickly and accurately the player distinguishes the pitch.  Maybe it could pick up that one particular pitch gives them problems or all non FB pitches, or whatever. Just thinking out loud, probably not workable or maybe they have some variation of this already. probably just a another dumb idea by me.

lasic

I get the FO side of the service time thing. I agreed with the Oncler when he kept biggering and biggering, that biggering was the right thing to do. However the Onceler failed to heed the Lorax that biggering needs to be sustainable.

Consuming human beings’ output without considering their needs much like the other Bill James discussion....

James is right, just like Falvey is right, but they’re going about it wrong. Sustainability with human capital requires treating them well.

I hope Buxton does a LeBron James and not a LeVeon Bell, but I don’t think Falvey can afford to find out which direction he goes, and will trade him.

Trees just end up dropping leaves in the yard and I end up spending all day Sunday raking them up. 

Also... Deer run out of the forests and crash into my car. Less trees will give me a fighting chance. 

It’s not just his style of play though. He comes away from situations with debilitating injuries when others would walk away with nothing. When you make a list of fluke injuries....eventually you should consider dropping “fluke” when your list gets long enough.

Having a 11.7 WAR for his defense didn’t keep Pedro Florimon on the field at shortstop. It has kept him floating in and out of a job in baseball. If Buxton can’t hit, that is what his future might look like.

Florimon in his best season with the Twins (age 26) had a .611 OPS. Buxton had a .714 OPS at age 22 and a .728 OPS at age 23. He also has an .874 OPS in the minors, 200 pts higher than Florimon. The two aren't comparable offensively. 

 

I think some folks are reeeaallly letting recency bias skew their perception of the realities here. 

2018 was not the only time Buxton has been in the .600 OPS range for this team Nick.  He gave us nearly 300 ABs in 2017 at .583.

So, yes, he has been comparable to Florimon.  Worse, even, for significant stretches.  

It'd be nice if you'd acknowledge that the floor with him is not nearly as high as you keep indicating.  And that's a demonstrable fact.  As in, hundreds of at-bats/many games, worth of evidence to the contrary.  Doesn't make your desire to sign him to an extension wrong, but it's sure as hell a different context than the one you keep suggesting.

Huh? He had a .728 OPS in 2017. You can't just cherrypick portions of the season and ignore the MVP-caliber stretch that balanced out the bad. I could just as easily say he had a .780 OPS over nearly 450 ABS in 2017, removing April from the equation.

 

I haven't seen any real evidence that Buxton's floor as a hitter, when healthy, is anywhere near as low as you're making it out to be. As a whole, if you subtract 94 mostly injury-hampered PAs in the majors this year, Buxton has been a solid hitter in the majors since 2016 and a dominant one in Triple-A. And he still. hasn't. turned. 25.

 

 

Buxton wasn't on the MLB roster at season's end. I think that's all the meaning there is to be derived from that depth chart, which features only players who ended the year on the active roster (and aren't free agents).

I'm not cherry picking when it happens for half a season Nick.  

I think you've started with a thesis that is flawed and now you're really reaching to defend it.  You've said Buxton has made steady progress.  That injuries are explaining away his struggles.  That anyone who posts about 3 month stretches is cherry picking.  It's clear none of us can say anything to get you to take a second look at your "floor" talk.  Ok....well, maybe this guy can:

Buxton's spring was an extension of his breakthrough September in 2016. Once again, the young outfielder was flashing visible confidence, regularly connecting with good pitches and putting together solid at-bats. His performance was impressive enough to convince Paul Molitor that Buxton was ready to bat third in the lineup.

But in April, the self-assured hitter who finished last season on a blistering hot streak and piled up a team-leading 10 extra-base hits in the ensuing spring has inexplicably gone amiss. Buxton looks as timid and clueless in the box as he did as a green MLB newcomer, if not more so. With each horrendous plate appearance, the issues only seem to further compound and snowball.

The strategy of letting him try to fight through his struggles is yielding no discernible progress. Although the strikeouts have subsided somewhat, Buxton continues to be an exceedingly easy out, with mediocre or worse pitchers consistently having their way. In his first nine games he went 3-for-34. In eight games since, he's 3-for-31. According to FanGraphs, only one ball put in play this year by Buxton has qualified as a line drive. His 47 percent K-rate is 12 points higher than MLB pitchers have produced at the plate.

You would literally expect better from a random Single-A scrub thrown onto the big-league stage. From a player of such immense talent who posted an .880 OPS in the minors, it boggles the mind. And considering Buxton's monumental importance to the franchise, it's a highly disquieting dilemma.

 

 

 

 

I disagree that Nick Nelson has not seen Buxton's floor.  Nick Nelson circa 2017 also seems to agree with me.

Florimon is 31 and has a career .588 OPS. Buxton career .672. To say nothing of their minor league history or pedigree.

They are not remotely similar. Nobody would have considered a long term deal for Florimon, ever.

Certainly Buxton has been massively disappointing, but there is undeniable talent, potential, and pedigree there.

This all misses the point.  Nick has been insinuating Buxton can be a major league player based on defense alone.  I brought up Florimon putting up a 12 WAR defensive effort for the Twins one year as proof that defense alone is not enough.  None of us were singing Florimon's praises that year because he has such an awesome dWAR.  We were all wondering how the hell we were letting a guy with a .600 OPS play every day.  

If Buxton can't be more than a .600-.700 OPS player he will have trouble staying in the big leagues.  Regardless of what he brings with the glove.  That's the point.

I get your point, Levi, but I'd make this distinction: Florimon's talent is not comparable to Buxton's. Florimon closed the gap between his talent and his skills when he was with the Twins and that wasn't good enough. Buxton, for a very brief time narrowed the gap between his talent and his skills, but he didn't master his skills by any stretch of the imagination.

 

For me, it comes down to the point of view one takes. Is he more likely to persist in maintaining this gap? Or is he more apt to at least partially close this gap? Because of his immense talent, and probably because the field staff believes in his make-up, they view even the prolonged struggles as correctable. Not a mirage, but correctable.

 

So I agree, his "floor" has been established.

Again, I'm not giving up on Buxton.  He's right there in CF in my blueprint.  The talent is obvious, I haven't given up on him.  He's abundantly more talented than Florimon of course.

None of that changes the fact that his floor is a guy who can't hit.  And no matter how good your defense is, it won't keep you on the field if you can't hit. 

Like me, you sound like you're under no illusions about what the downside is. All I'm pushing back on is what I feel is an unfair counter argument to concerns about him.  The concerns are legit and based on significant samples.

That is not the point I've attempted to make, at any point. He HAS hit enough to be valuable, and these Florimon comparisons are extremely off the mark. In the season you're referencing Florimon was a 1.4 WAR player despite his dWAR; in 2017 Buxton was a 3.5 WAR player. That's a top 30 mark in the American League! 

 

You're correct that if Buxton hits like he did in April 2017, or in 90 at-bats this year, his defense won't be enough to make up for it. I just don't think there's any reason to view those stretches as his full-season floor. Not based on precedent, or his talent level, or historical comps. 

And this comes back to why WAR may not be all that useful to this discussion.  I doubt most people are going to be thrilled with a .650 OPS player in the every day lineup no matter what his WAR total is.  

My point is simply this -we have significant samples in which he has NOT hit.  Most of his time in the big leagues so far, in fact.  And at times, as you said in the post I quoted, it's not just that he's been bad.  He's been historically bad.  With all sorts of serious red flags all over his offensive profile.

It is a very real downside that those samples become the reality.  And that should be acknowledged, even if you want to bet on the upside.