Stephen Vogt Latest Example of A's Striking Gold in Unexpected Places

The Oakland Athletics are as much a deep salvage operation as they are a baseball team. To get ahead, they'll go wherever they can in hopes of finding whatever they can.

They don't hit on all their searches, of course. But every now and then, they find a Stephen Vogt.

If you're just now joining us, Vogt looks like he's come to the 2015 A's straight from the 1927 Yankees. Through 31 games, he's slashing .337/.420/.673 with a 1.093 OPS and nine home runs, all tops among catchers. And, according to FanGraphs, only two other qualified hitters in MLB are outpacing Vogt in adjusted offense.

Player	Team	G	PA	wRC+
Adrian Gonzalez	Dodgers	32	136	212
Nelson Cruz	Mariners	32	136	211
Stephen Vogt	Athletics	32	119	200
Bryce Harper	Nationals	34	147	194
Josh Reddick	Athletics	28	118	186

So, meet the newest Oakland A's sensation. And yes, "Oakland A's sensation" still translates to "guy who has no business being a sensation."

So it goes with Vogt. He's a former 12th-round draft pick who didn't debut in the majors until his age-27 season in 2012, and who's just now embarking on his first full major league season at the age of 30. And with a stocky, 6'0", 215-pound frame, he hardly resembles an athletic specimen.

As the man himself told Ben Reiter of Sports Illustrated: “I’m definitely a stereotypical Oakland A."

So true. So, so true.

Vogt fits into a narrative that's essentially baseball's version of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. To review, it goes like this:

• Guy languishes in the shadows of a cruel and spiteful organization.
• Guy gets rescued by the Oakland A's.
• Guy escapes shadows.
• Guy becomes a star.

A's general manager Billy Beane has been the master storyteller behind it all for close to two decades, and his success telling the story certainly didn't end with the island-of-misfit-toys team that was chronicled in Moneyball. In the last few seasons, the likes of Josh Donaldson, Josh Reddick, Brandon Moss and Brandon McCarthy have emerged as classic A's success stories.

And now there's Vogt, whose own story might as well be the model A's success story.

It was in early April 2013 that the A's acquired Vogt from the Tampa Bay Rays in a conditional deal. Beyond being enough for a press release, the occasion barely moved the needle. Put more frankly, nobody cared. 

Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

And not without good reasons. Vogt's major league resume consisted of 25 hitless at-bats across three stints with the Rays in 2012. And though he had some solid minor league numbers to his name, they only meant so much. At no point was Vogt a top prospect. And given that he began 2013 at the age of 28, he had pretty much crossed over into non-prospect territory.

Nevertheless, the A's saw something.

Most notably, Vogt resembled the kind of hitter the A's were sucking up like a tractor beam between 2010 and 2013. Andrew Koo of Baseball Prospectus highlighted how and why the A's were targeting fly-ball hitters, and Vogt fit the description.

“My swing has natural loft in it, I’ve always been a fly-ball kind of guy,” Vogt told Eno Sarris of FanGraphs. “That stems from my ability to make contact and try to manipulate the bat, and use my hands to guide the ball.”

Beyond Vogt's ability to hit the ball in the air, the A's were likely also drawn to his catching potential. Sarris highlighted how Vogt was "the dreaded bat without a position" with Tampa Bay, but his spring trainings with the Rays afforded him opportunities to learn from Jose Molina, who is otherwise known as the granddaddy of all pitch framers.

It's a common misconception that the Moneyball way is all about on-base percentage. It's really about market inefficiencies. Given that the league's fly-ball rate was steadily dropping and pitch-framing wasn't yet a mainstream topic of conversation, we can say now in hindsight the A's were actually acquiring a living market inefficiency when they brought Vogt aboard.

Whatever the case, the deal meant a fresh start for Vogt. And to hear it from him, that's something that should never, ever be underestimated.

As he told Reiter:

"

I think that a lot of times what happens to players is that maybe there’s one thing you didn’t do real well when you first started in pro ball, and you kind of get labeled as a guy who can’t do this or can’t do that by the organization you came up with, fair or unfair. But a lot of times, what you see is that when guys get to a new organization, they’re told, 'Just go play, we don’t know anything about you.' And for a lot of guys, there’s that fresh start, that ability to make new opinions.

"

Vogt started making new opinions of his abilities down the stretch in 2013. He began getting regular playing time as a left-handed platoon partner for Derek Norris in late July and ultimately finished the year with a .270 average and a .715 OPS in his final 35 games.

He picked up where he left off in 2014. Once again in a platoon role with Norris, Vogt hit .279 with a .752 OPS and nine home runs in 84 games. He also went from being a bat without a position to a bat with many positions, filling in at first base, left field and right field in addition to catcher. He wasn't the best player the A's had, but he was certainly one of their most indispensable players.

But now? Yeah, now Vogt is the best player the A's have.

Vogt isn't just doing the same things he was doing in 2013 and 2014 and getting better results. That stands out most in how he's more than doubled his walk rate (5.6 to 12.6) and his power production (.152 ISO to .337 ISO, via FanGraphs). Rather than luck, Vogt says this is the product of adjustments.

Vogt told Sarris that he made a "conscious decision" to not walk as much in 2011, so as to try to hit his way to a role in the majors. With that done, he's found pitchers are being more cautious—his Zone% at the start of Tuesday was 40.7, according to FanGraphs, well below the league average of 46.2—and is responding accordingly.

As for Vogt's increased power, it would seem he's been caught up in what Kevin Ruprecht of Beyond the Box Score highlighted as a team-wide move away from the club's emphasis on fly balls. Rather than in the air, Vogt told Sarris that A's hitting coach Darren Bush wants him to focus on hitting the ball hard.

His power production says he's doing just that. So does his hard-hit percentage, via FanGraphs, which has progressed like so:

Factor in a below-average strikeout rate of 14.8 percent, and Vogt is doing everything you can ask a hitter to do. He's taking his walks, making contact when he swings and generating lots of loud contact when he connects. For his efforts...well, you can see the numbers.

To boot, Vogt isn't just contributing on offense.

The offseason trades of Norris and John Jaso opened the door for Vogt to get regular action behind the dish, and he's seized the opportunity. His caught-stealing rate of 35 percent is better than the league average of 30 percent, and Baseball Prospectus' metrics rate him as one of the 15 best framers in MLB.

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

"He receives the ball well and calls a great game," veteran left-hander Scott Kazmir told Jimmy Durkin of the San Jose Mercury News. "That's what you want in a catcher. He's a leader out there on the field. That's what you need to be a quality catcher, and I think he has all those qualities."

Ultimately, there's really only one question left to ask: Just how good has Vogt been?

Pretty darn good. FanGraphs puts Vogt's Wins Above Replacement at 2.2, which is bested only by Mike Trout (naturally) and his 2.3 WAR. But since their WAR calculation ignores framing, it's possible that Vogt's value is at least equal to, and maybe even greater than, Trout's.

In other words: Yes, there is an argument Vogt has actually been the best player in baseball through the first five weeks of the 2015 MLB season.

Not bad for a guy who was lost in the non-prospect shadows as recently as two years ago. And as much as one would like to believe Vogt's rise to power could have happened anywhere, there's a more logical conclusion at play here.

Only in Oakland.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted/linked.

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