Odds of MLB's Biggest 2015 Surprise Stars Continuing in the 2nd Half
Before any given season, we always think we know who baseball's big stars are and what they're going to do. And to our credit, for the most part, we tend to be right.
But then there are those other guys who show up. You know, the ones who play way above their apparent abilities and leave us to ask whether what they're doing can possibly last.
Yeah, them. If they're also on your mind, well, good news! Our purpose here is to look at 10 of MLB's biggest surprise stars and determine the odds of them keeping up the good work in the second half.
Regarding who could qualify for the list, I focused on guys without recent track records of success while also ignoring guys who are only coming off one bad year. I also ignored recently elite prospects whose breakouts anybody could have seen coming.
As for our system of odds, using actual numbers is a bit much for a task like this. Instead, we'll be using one of four words to describe a guy's chances of carrying on down the stretch: good, fair, slim or none.
We'll start with the least surprising breakout and count down to the most surprising one. Step into the box whenever you're ready.
10. Mike Moustakas, 3B, Kansas City Royals
1 of 10
Yes, Mike Moustakas was an elite prospect once. But that was way back in 2011, and he spent his first four seasons looking like a complete bust.
That feels like ancient history now. The 26-year-old third baseman has finally broken out in 2015 with a .294 average and a .782 OPS.
As for how he's done so, his main area of improvement is no secret by now. Moustakas has responded to frequent shifts by hitting the ball to left field much more often. He entered Sunday with a career-high 31.4 opposite-field percentage, as well as a career-best .858 OPS to the opposite field.
"I feel like I'm going back to the hitter I used to be, someone who can drive the ball the other way," Moustakas told Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com back in April, referring to his hitting habits in the minors. "The shift has definitely made me more of a complete hitter."
Elsewhere, Moustakas is also outperforming his career numbers against lefties, mainly by cutting his strikeout rate against them in half. He's not crushing them yet, but he's giving himself a fighting chance.
Before 2015, Moustakas' extreme pull habit and platoon split were two easily exploited weaknesses. Now they're less easily exploited, giving him a chance of finishing 2015 strong.
Odds: Fair
9. Hector Santiago, SP, Los Angeles Angels
2 of 10
Hector Santiago wasn't a bad pitcher before 2015. He just wasn't an especially good one, posting a 3.53 ERA between 2011 and 2014 while splitting his time starting and relieving.
But all of a sudden, he's pitching like an ace. Santiago earned an All-Star berth by going into the break with a 2.33 ERA in 108.1 innings. Per Baseball-Reference.com, his WAR is on par with those of Cole Hamels, Jake Arrieta and Johnny Cueto.
Santiago has done his part to earn his success this year. His strikeout rate has always been solid, and this year has seen him finally get his walk rate down around the league average. Since that's the latest stop on what's been a downward trend, it's believable enough.
The questionable stuff lies in Santiago's batted-ball profile. He's an extreme fly-ball pitcher with a 50.8 fly-ball percentage that ranked second among qualified starters heading into Sunday. And rather than improve, both his soft-hit (Soft%) and hard-hit (Hard%) rates have regressed from where they were in 2014.
It's not out of the question that Santiago will continue to get away with it, though. He pitches his home games at a very favorable pitcher's park, and defensive runs saved says he's pitching in front of one of the league's five best outfield defenses.
Instead, the big worry with Santiago is his workload. He's on his way to 200 innings, which is quite a leap for a guy who's topped out at 149 in the majors. He's likely to tire down the stretch.
Given that he's found a pitching style that works, however, that doesn't mean disaster is guaranteed.
Odds: Fair
8. Brandon Crawford, SS, San Francisco Giants
3 of 10
Brandon Crawford came into 2015 with a reputation as an all-field, "meh" hitting shortstop that was more or less what he deserved. His defense was great, but for his career, he was a below-average hitter.
Not anymore. After a modest breakthrough in 2014, Crawford's bat has broken out in a big way in 2015. With a .266 average, an .800 OPS and 12 home runs, he's arguably baseball's best offensive shortstop.
More than anything, Crawford's increased power stands out. But while that should be surprising, it's actually not. His power has been trending upward since he first entered the league in 2011, and this year, it's backed up by what's easily a career-best hard-hit percentage. He entered Sunday hitting the ball hard 33.2 percent of the time.
Meanwhile, Crawford is showing that the extreme success he had against left-handed pitching in 2014 was no fluke. He's doing even better against southpaws this season, in no small part because he entered Sunday destroying them to the tune of a 41.2 hard-hit percentage.
But his real improvement has been against right-handed pitching. He's doing better than ever against righties, and for much the same reason that he's doing well against lefties. His 31.1 hard-hit percentage against righties doesn't match his stat against lefties, but it's still a career best.
The one thing that doesn't look good is Crawford's approach, as both his chase rate (O-Swing%) and his swinging-strike rate (SwStr%) have taken turns for the worse. But since that's all been in the service of regular hard contact against lefties and righties, he should keep getting away with it.
Odds: Good
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7. Kyle Gibson, SP, Minnesota Twins
4 of 10
Yes, it's true that Kyle Gibson was widely regarded as a top-100 prospect back in 2013. We're including him in this discussion anyway, however, because he hardly looked like a top prospect through his first 41 starts in 2013 and 2014. In those, he posted a 4.92 ERA in just 230.1 innings.
After that, it's darn surprising to see him with a 2.85 ERA through 113.2 innings this year. By Baseball-Reference.com's reckoning, he has the same WAR as Jacob deGrom. That's, um, a good look.
Some metrics say to trust this look only as far as you can throw it. FIP and xFIP, for example, indicate that Gibson deserves something more like an ERA in the high 3.00s or low 4.00s. What they're seeing is a guy with a strikeout rate that's much too low and who doesn't limit walks well enough to offset that.
However, those two metrics are probably underestimating Gibson.
He may not be a strikeout pitcher, but he's one of the AL's elite ground-ball pitchers with a ground-ball percentage of 54. And though he's not particularly great at racking up soft contact, his soft percentage and hard percentage are on par with or better than league average.
All this isn't coming out of nowhere. Per Brooks Baseball, Gibson has increased the use of his changeup this year, and it's been a weapon in terms of whiffs and ground balls.
Has Gibson been a little too lucky? Yeah, probably. But he's definitely a different pitcher than he was in 2013 and 2014, and in a good way. He'll likely regress, but he shouldn't crash and burn.
Odds: Fair
6. Stephen Vogt, C, Oakland A's
5 of 10
Stephen Vogt was a good, solid player in 2014, batting .279 with a .752 OPS while working in a platoon role that had him playing wherever the Oakland A's needed him.
But even that didn't prepare us for what Vogt has done in 2015. He earned an All-Star berth and is now hitting .285 with an .859 OPS and 14 homers. He's easily the AL's best hitting catcher.
One thing that stands out is that Vogt is drawing a lot more free passes this year, as he's doubled his walk rate from where it was in 2014. He told Eno Sarris of FanGraphs that this is a case of him reactivating patience he always had, and it holds up under the microscope. Vogt showed strong discipline in 2014, and this year, he's added some patience by dropping his swing percentage from 41.3 to 39.7.
Also standing out is Vogt's power, as his isolated slugging rate is way above the league average. But that's where things get fishy, as his hard-hit percentage has actually dropped to 28.4 from 32.9 last year.
Worse, it looks like his best hard-hitting days are squarely in the rearview mirror:
Coinciding with this has been an ongoing slump. Furthermore, as Brooks Baseball can show, since it's also coinciding with an increasing percentage of fastballs, one wonders if pitchers have found Vogt's weakness.
There's plenty to like about Vogt, but it looks like his breakout is already on ice.
Odds: None
5. Brock Holt, UTIL, Boston Red Sox
6 of 10
Of all the players anyone could have predicted would have been the Boston Red Sox's lone representative at this year's All-Star Game, nobody would have picked Brock Holt.
And yet, he was actually a perfectly sensible selection. He's been an above-average hitter with a .289 average and a .782 OPS. Between that and his good defense at multiple positions, Baseball-Reference.com WAR put him among the AL's top 15 position players heading into the break.
Overall, Holt's breakout looks pretty legit.
His drastically improved walk rate is reflective of patience and plate discipline that already existed, and in general, his approach at the plate is the good kind of rare. Per FanGraphs, only two players went into the second half with a whiff rate under 6 percent, a swing rate under 40 percent and a chase rate under 26 percent: Carlos Santana and Holt.
Elsewhere, Holt went into Sunday with MLB's seventh-best line-drive rate at 26.7 percent. That's par for the course for that area of his batted-ball profile, but a difference this year is that Holt is spreading the ball around better. About 67 percent of his batted balls are going up the middle and to the opposite field.
The only thing that doesn't pass the smell test is Holt's success against lefties, as it's unlikely to continue so long as they're punching him out 32.2 percent of the time. But since that's really the only thing to gripe about, Holt's odds of continued success in the second half look pretty good.
Odds: Fair
4. Logan Forsythe, 2B, Tampa Bay Rays
7 of 10
In his first four seasons, Logan Forsythe hit .235 with a .646 OPS. In the meantime, he wasn't really known for being a defensive wizard. So yeah, he was pretty much just a face in the crowd.
My, how things have changed. Forsythe has emerged to hit .278 with a .787 OPS and a career-high nine homers in 2015. Combined with good defense at second base, Baseball-Reference.com says he went into Sunday with a higher WAR than Jose Bautista, Mark Teixeira and Albert Pujols. True story.
Some of this adds up. Forsythe has always had a good approach, and this year, he's turned that into a walk-to-strikeout ratio that he's probably always deserved. His rise in power, meanwhile, can be traced to a career-high fly-ball rate and a 27.7 hard-hit percentage that's almost three ticks up from where it was in 2014.
There are also cracks. The 28-year-old's strikeout rate has been on a steady rise as the year has moved along, and it looks like his best hard-hitting days are behind him:
Lastly, you can throw in the reality that Forsythe has been slumping for a good month at this point. It looks like we've seen the best of his breakout season.
Odds: None
3. Chris Heston, SP, San Francisco Giants
8 of 10
Chris Heston was such a non-prospect coming into 2015 that even calling him a "non-prospect" is stretching the limits of the term. Baseball America saw him as the No. 25 prospect in the San Francisco Giants' entire system and figured he was nothing more than a "reliable emergency starter option."
So much for that. Heston has a 3.39 ERA in 111.2 innings across 18 outings this year—numbers that qualify him as a bit more than an emergency starter option.
That's some breakout, and it hasn't come out of nowhere.
As we noted after his no-hitter against the New York Mets, the 27-year-old right-hander put on 15 pounds of muscle over the offseason. The result is increased velocity and movement. That helps explain the solid whiff rates (see Brooks Baseball) he has with his three secondary pitches, as well as how his sinker could help him achieve one of the majors' top 10 ground-ball rates at 56.3 percent.
All this is the good news. The bad news is that Heston's walk rates are on an upward trend as the season progresses and hitters are also hitting him a lot harder lately. Here's the breakdown:
You can add in the fact that Heston is nearing uncharted territory with his workload. He's on his way to 200 innings, which is a lot for a guy who topped out at 173 in the minors.
Therefore, Heston is due for a rough second half.
Odds: None
2. Matt Duffy, 3B, San Francisco Giants
9 of 10
Before 2015, Matt Duffy had the look of a classic org guy who would only be suiting up with the Giants when they needed a warm body somewhere.
But then he morphed into a star. He's hitting .302 with an .809 OPS and eight homers, making him one of the best offensive third basemen in MLB. Once an afterthought, he now looks like a weapon.
"You could tell that this guy has a talent to hit the ball," Giants skipper Bruce Bochy said of Duffy in June, via Abbey Mastracco of Fox Sports West. "He's got more pop than I thought. You look at the guy, he's like, I don't know, 170 maybe? But he uses the whole field and he can turn on the ball."
Bochy is right about Duffy's all-fields talent, as his batted-ball profile reveals his Pull%, Center% and Oppo% rates to all be over 30 percent. That helps explain his .349 BABIP.
But it doesn't explain all of it.
Even in praising Duffy, Grantland's Jonah Keri noted that he strikes out four times more often than he walks. That means he's reliant on good luck, and you can wonder if he's enjoyed too much of that.
Though Duffy spreads the ball around, he's also a ground-ball hitter (53.5 GB%) with a good-not-great hard-hit percentage of 30.7. That makes his .349 BABIP look suspicious, and it looks all the more suspicious once you notice how it exists mainly thanks to huge amounts of luck on fly balls. He entered Sunday with a .179 BABIP on fly balls, more than twice the league average of .073.
In all, it looks like Duffy has some regression ahead of him.
Odds: None
1. Alex Rodriguez, DH, New York Yankees
10 of 10
Given that he owns 673 career home runs and a .941 career OPS, it does feel weird to refer to Alex Rodriguez as a "surprise star."
But then, he did seem to get more and more broken between 2011 and 2013, and then he missed the entire 2014 season to a performance-enhancing-drug suspension. He'll also soon turn 40.
So yeah, to look up and see A-Rod among the AL's very best hitters with a .278 average, . 898 OPS and 19 home runs is a bit unexpected. And to some extent, he does look like the same old A-Rod.
For one, there's the fact that his walk-to-strikeout rate is right in line with his career norm. For two, he's hitting the ball better than he has in years with a 38.8 hard-hit percentage.
That's where a crack begins to materialize.
Dive in deep, and you'll notice that A-Rod's contact has been slipping a bit every month. I demonstrated the point using exit velocity in my recent 25 post-All-Star predictions piece, but it works with hard-hit percentage as well:
- April: 50.0
- May: 38.0
- June: 34.7
- July: 33.3
This suggests A-Rod's loudest contact may be safely behind him, which is what you'd expect from a guy pushing 40. Beyond that—and this is another thing I noted in my predictions—you just can't expect A-Rod to finish the year with numbers that only Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds have ever put up at his age.
Odds: Slim
Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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