Is Eduardo Escobar For Real?

That makes him incredibly valuable. Shortstop is the position of smooth leather and limp bats. The average American League shortstop hit .264 with a 690 OPS. Escobar matched that batting average, but exceeded the OPS by 64 points. If he would have maintained that production for 54 more plate appearances, he would have had the second highest OPS among qualified AL shortstops, just 22 points short of up-and-coming Red Sox superstar Xander Boegarts.

Not bad for a guy who started the season as the utility infielder.

All of this is a complete surprise. It certainly is to me, who trashed the acquisition of Escobar when I wrote “10 Things I Hate About The Francisco Liriano Trade.” Escobar was reasons #19 though #21.

Escobar was a light-hitting, free-swinging, decent-fielding utility player with a lot of versatility. It’s not uncommon for those first three adjectives to gradually improve with age and experience, but the trickiest is the “free-swinging,” It can also have the largest impact. It certainly seems to have with Escobar.

Through July 31^st last year, Escobar had struck out 53 times, walked just nine times and was posting an underwhelming .241 batting average with a .653 OPS per Baseball Reference. About that time, manager Paul Molitor started relying on him at shortstop. If you ask Escobar about his sudden improvement, he’ll note that. “You play every day, you change, you know?”, says Escobar. “I stayed at one position, too, so that’s why it’s different.”

However, his statistics suggest a change in approach, too. Remember that 53/9 K/BB ratio before July 31^st? It was 33/19 over the second half of the year. Remember that .653 OPS? It was .874 after August 1^st.

Was that two month stretch a fluke? On the one hand, a lot of that success was when Escobar was red hot in August (.952 OPS). He cooled a bit in September (.812 OPS). But he wasn’t just getting lucky hits; his BABIP actually dropped in 2015 compared to 2014 as did his batting average. The difference in OPS was the power and the patience.

If you press Escobar a bit beyond talking about his increased playing time, he also talks about a change in his approach at the plate. “I worked hard to take more concentration to home plate, see more of my pitches, so I don’t swing at everything”, he continues. “After that, I saw better pitches.”

The correlation of patience with increased productivity, along with the fact that Escobar seems to recognize the change, suggests he might be a fundamentally different hitter and that we may have witnessed a transition. That increased plate discipline isn’t as easy as it sounds. It might not even be a conscious adjustment; more of an expression of self-confidence. Twins general manager Terry Ryan has his own theory about that growth. “For me, it’s the old adage: it takes a guy a year or two for a guy to get comfortable before they change clubs. And usually it’s the case. It just happens.“

Whatever the cause, Escobar's free-swinging days might be over. If we see that same approach this year, I suggest he’ll exceed last year’s .754 OPS which already exceeds projections systems like ZIPS, which is projecting a .711 OPS. It's possible, maybe even probable that we're wrong about Escobar. One could argue that we already have been.