Tuesday: The Curious Case of Michael Young, Part II

In a follow up to last week's post about the state of Michael Young's career and his chances for a rebound (The Curious Case of Michael Young, Part I), I wanted to demonstrate exactly what kind of trend in which Young is entrenched. Fortunately, http://www.fangraphs.com/ provides exactly the kind of visualizations that we need. Aside from the commentary I've made, notice how drastic his ascent was, offset only by how steady his decline has been. The symmetry of his graphs is pretty remarkable, if you think about it. How many players have careers like this? My guess: not many. If you can find one, post it in the comments!

Batting Average

It's not terribly surprising that Young's BA has taken a tumble. Batting average is usually one of the first statistics to take a hit as a player ages. The problem here with Michael Young is that most of his value was in his ability to hit .315 every year. I think we'll see Young's batting average teeter between .280 and .300 (a lot of which may depend on his BABIP) for the next several years.

On-Base Percentage

On the surface, this looks just about as bad as batting average. However, when examined along with his BA, we can see that more and more of Young's OBP has been made up of walks, hit-by-pitches, etc. We can see this by subtracting Young's BA from his OBP (which will tell us the part of his OBP that is independent from his BA). I'm not sure if this stat actually has a name, so I'm just going to call it OBP-BA**.

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2003 OBP-BA: .35 2004 OBP-BA: .40 2005 OBP-BA: .54

2006 OBP-BA: .42 2007 OBP-BA: 51 2008 OBP-BA: .55

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Thus, aside from Michael's MVP-calibre 2005 season, he's been taking more walks and working the count more, which is a good sign. Many of you will be quick to notice that this has also resulted in more strikeouts, but an increase in walks and pitches per plate appearance always results in more strikeouts, and is part of any player's transition from what Bill James called "young player skills" to "old player skills." As long as more and more of his OBP is made up for by walks (assuming his BA stays mostly where it is and doesn't plummet any more), this is a sign for hope.

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**Side note: For the other math nerds out there like me who realize that you can't truly subtract these two statistics because they have different denominators (at bats for BA and plate appearances for OBP), I chose to sacrifice rigor for simplicity, which works well because this stat is easier to understand and exemplifies the same pattern as a more complicated hybrid stat.

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Slugging Percentage

Sometimes, as players age, they are able to keep their power numbers up by transitioning into a Jim Thome-type hitter. Most of these players had pretty impressive power to begin with. Michael Young, however, never was a tremendous power hitter, and what power he did have for the four years that he was above average (see graph) left him pretty quickly. It's hard to say why his home-run power and patented rightfield-gap power left him so briskly. We won't see any more than 10-12 home-runs from Young ever again, but if he emerges as a more patient, selective hitter (as his OBP-BA above suggests), we could see his doubles climb. All in all, however, I see Young's SLG% staying around the .410-.420 range.

Summary/Prediction

To summarize this mini-analysis, I believe that Young's batting average will stay about the same (improving very slightly), his OBP-BA will will continue to rise (thus increasing his OBP), and his slugging will slightly improve. This year (and most likely in subsequent years as well), I predict that Young will post a BA/OPB/SLG line of .291/.353/.421. Not spectacular for a third baseman, but good enough to ensure him a spot in the everyday lineup (as long as he keeps it up).