More on Heyward

Not long ago, I had a fairly extended discussion on Jason Heyward in the comments of a Dave Woody post.  An intended continuation was trumped by Chipper Jones’ torn ACL and then the Lee trade*

*Quick hit analysis of said trade: fair. Would have liked to hang onto Robinson Lopez to leverage more in a different trade, but that’s really marginal, seeing as the chances of him making a real impact at the MLB level for the Braves were really low (he’d have to become a productive major leaguer and then have a spot on the staff to get enough innings, both of which seem iffy).

Now that there’s a bit of a lull, though, all my diabolical plans come to fruition (by writing a post about Jason Heyward, yes. I need better plans).

First, a quick review: Heyward has posted a 2.5 win season so far, with a 121 wRC+ and 3.0 UZR  (his +/- is more favorable, at +11 DRS). I want to emphasize that this is really, really good. Rookies in their age-20 season don’t generally perform as above average major leaguers. It isn’t the Albert Pujols type rookie year it looked like we might see over the first couple months of the year, but that isn’t any reason to undersell the value Jason has already brought in, nor the continued optimism that he can be a class-of-the-league type star if some things go right.

It’s felt by some, though (most notably for this post, the aforementioned Dave Woody), that we really were in store for something legitimately Pujols-ian, if not for a thumb injury that was sustained in early June. The injury basically ruined that month, and in that regard certainly has been a drag on his cumulative stats to one degree or another. Heyward was then placed on the DL from late June stretching through the all-star break. His performance in the time period following (30 games going into this afternoon’s contest) is where opinions diverge: either the thumb injury is a more serious problem which won’t really heal until the offseason – and thus is hindering performance to a large degree – or it was largely salved by the DL stint, and is either affecting production to a fairly small degree (well within error bars for luck) or not at all.

There is obviously some middle ground here, but for the purposes of this post it’s basically going to be ignored. So are, really, the actual merits of each argument – Heyward’s struggles can be attributed to the thumb, or a simple continuation of some problems that were always prevalent; namely unfortunate ground-ball tendencies. The latter point of view also hinges on pitchers gaining a bit of a book on Heyward, as happens with most rookies.

The point, then, of this post (other than to summarize), if it isn’t to examine merits, is to look at what each argument would mean, if correct. During the original thread, my position (that the thumb injury is probably a fairly small factor post ASB) was seen as being overly optimistic, I guess because it implies we should see a definite rebound at some point in the final month of the season and into whatever post-season play the Braves are involved in. In a wider view, though, I think it’s actually the more pessimistic view (this is to make no statements on quality – again, not merits here): if you think that Heyward’s thumb injury is significantly sapping his performance, the implication is that his true talent level is within a reasonable distance of his season-opening performance, which would mean we’re looking at 6 win type seasons going forward (this is a possibility in both scenarios; mine would just require more development).

If, however, you think we’re looking at something more akin to simple rookie season inconsistencies (to dip a toe into merits despite my aversion, I think this is strongly supported by Heyward’s strong month of July – albeit only in 15 games – which in terms of rate stats is squarely between his April and May.), that would make predictions of slightly less super human performance into the next few years a lot more reasonable. If, say, Heyward ends up around 3 WAR total for this year, you might project 4 or 4.5 going into 2011 – it’s hard to say, as it should be with rookies.

So, there are your viewpoints. Either the first two months of the season were very close to real and the Braves have a legitimate 21-year-old star whose had some bad luck, or he’s just a very, very good rookie who also had a tough break, but not a season-shattering one. We don’t know which one is correct currently, and we might not ever, really, but where you fall has a huge impact on where you’ll project the 2011 Braves.