For my ease, I took five-year averages for both WAR and the cost of a win when calculating the total. Over the last four years, he hasnt had a wRC+ under 110 or over 121, but theres so clearly the potential for so much more than that too few people have come away satisfied. Career statistics and player information from MLB, or ESPN, or Baseball Reference, or Fangraphs, or . All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, It was a true comfort level, not rattled at all. Heyward and David Peralta, a pair of veteran left-handed hitters, could see time against right-handed pitchers. Jason Heyward Positions: Rightfielder, Centerfielder and Leftfielder Bats: Left Throws: Left 6-5 , 240lb (196cm, 108kg) Born: August 9, 1989 (Age: 33-206d) in Ridgewood, NJ us More bio, uniform, draft, salary info 1x All-Star 2016 World Series 5x Gold Glove Wilson Overall Def Player 22 22 22 Become a Stathead & surf this site ad-free. It happens. Its not so stark there are reasonable arguments to be made for Cabreras dominance at the plate, even if they rely on team- and division-based outcomes in the end but there was some of that bubbling under the surface of the debate. I then looked at age-25 performance and eliminated anyone who was not within two wins of Heywards six-win season this year. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. While the $330 million figure is likely the one that jumps out, I would direct your attention to the smallest number: $159 million. All of this he managed while only stealing 21 bases. But lets diagnose why Atlantas prodigy is turning in a subpar sophomore season. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. According to Statcast, Walker registered a sprint speed of 28.5 feet per second with 30 feet per second being considered elite-level speed usually reserved for middle infielders and cat-quick centerfielders. Heyward was a little below the average offensively and well above the average defensively. Whatever the name, it might become a problem for them. There are only four players ahead of him on both offense and defense: Evan Longoria, Johnny Bench, Barry Bonds, and Cal Ripken. Biggio knows right field well. Jason Heyward graphs for Major League baseball. Maybe hed find a different path to a familiar destination. With better luck, health and a little more development, Heyward could be a monster in 2012. So how did he end up with some of the best non-stolen-base baserunning numbers in the game? All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. UZRs range component agrees. Quinn worked this winter with hitting consultant Ryan Sutterer, who analyzed Quinns body movements and helped him understand how he can repeat his mechanics on a consistent basis. But hes younger than Dustin Ackley, Jemile Weeks, Paul Goldschmidt, Dee Gordon, Jason Kipnis and a host of other rookies who had successful debuts in 2011, and hes younger than top-ranked prospects entering 2012 like Devin Mesoraco, Brett Jackson and Travis DArnaud. Gallo got the upper hand on the Red Sox in his second inning at-bat, drawing a walk to nullify Boston's shift. 2022 Updated In-Season Projections The Chicago Cubs already boasted one of the best young . Whether he finds a home with Cleveland certainly wont depend on whether Quinn can maintain his power output. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, Even if Heyward were to hit for more power, that might be offset by a drop in singles, or by an increase in strikeouts. Despite three home runs in his first five spring at-bats, thats not really part of his game. Im not going to worry about it.. Only Al Kaline, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Alex Rodriguez were within 15 runs on defense and ahead of him on offense. Perhaps rightfully so. Also keep in mind that ZiPS, Bill James and Oliver dont know that Heyward was taking cuts with a bad shoulder last year; they just see a young guy who struggled after a fantastic rookie year. But even so, it seems like he has endured some bad luck on balls put in play. Solid production, that, despite some disappointing seasons mixed in. He will split time with utility player Chris Taylor, who started at shortstop against Texas on Wednesday. Similarly, if you focus on Heywards triple crown numbers .269 with 27 home runs and 82 RBI youd be missing all that extra value he added in other facets of the game. Kiner-Falefa had a slash line of .261/.314/.327 . Freddie Freeman, and Jason Heyward . Dont look at me. Im a little stubborn in that way. The way hitters hit the ball is a reflection of the swing and the approach, and so look at what you see above. Lacking in top shelf power, Heyward still provided solid numbers on offense, and after a disappointing start with he Cardinals, he hit .306/.375/.455 with a wRC+ of 130 from the beginning of May to the end of the season. But a lot of the value Heyward accumulated last season he did in a fashion that might seem Troutian. Consequently, his walk rate has dropped from 14.6 percent to 11.1 percent. Freddie Freeman homers, Miguel Vargas walks again, Walker Buehler starts throwing. Only Garrett Jones (three of 108) had a smaller percentage of GDPs with a minimum of 100 opportunities. Heres why. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Sources - Fangraphs, Baseball Savant, MLB.com, Baseball Reference. As was the case with the offensive player-comps group, Heyward is more accomplished than almost all of the players on this list. Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:51 PM ET, Park Factors Roberts described Jason Heyward, the former Cub who came to Dodgers camp as a non-roster invite, as "more than adequate" in the field at center. Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:51 PM ET, Park Factors One spring of spring-training data. Crawford debuted young, but due to a team-friendly contract, he did not become a free agent until after his age-28 season, three years older than Heyward. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. by Handedness, 2007 June Amateur Draft - Round: 1, Pick: 14, Overall: 14, Team: Atlanta Braves. FanGraphs Membership. Theres a pretty good distribution of balls around the field. Just a couple years ago, it was Jason Heyward and Giancarlo Stanton that were tearing up baseball, looking like an unprecedented pair of rookie talents ready to continue on into the stratosphere together. The Dodgers announced Thursday that they've signed free-agent outfielder Jason Heyward to a minor league contract and invited him to Major League Spring Training. Their average WAR is below. Id imagine all those infield popups are at least partly due to his bum shoulder. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. Thats 40-50 points below the NL average and ranks among the likes of Aubrey Huff and Yorvit Torrealba. With a bad shoulder and back luck, he still held his own in 2011 . All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. Going solely by offense, this group has a total bust rate of one in three. Reported as the pre-2023 season number of waiver options remaining. From BIS, Heyward had the highest range numbers in the business. "I've talked . Gift a Membership. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Now, increasingly deprived of opportunities to pull pitches, Heyward in recent years has been going the other way more often, and 2014 saw more than 19% of his plate appearances end with him hitting the ball to the opposite field, a new career high, and a credible explanation for the plunge in distance and home runs. Its ever so early, but it seems like he could be working on that. If Heyward were coming off a .270/.365/.445-type season instead, you can bet he wouldnt be getting drafted behind guys like Corey Hart and Jayson Werth. A year ago, Jason Heyward was a fantasy baseball stud muffin. For an awfully consistent hitter, Jason Heyward is considered an awfully frustrating hitter. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, For a big man, he can run a little Historically, Heyward has hit about 30% of his flies and liners toward left. The above comparison paints an incredibly optimistic and rosy view of Heywards future, but there is some evidence to suggest that phenoms like Heyward age better than the rest of the population. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman. sent RF Jason Heyward on a rehab assignment to Gwinnett Braves. . fangraphs.com 1d. The 19-year old was a first round pick in 2007 and has wasted no time The 19-year old was a first round pick in 2007 and has wasted no time establishing himself as a premier outfielder I think the Bogaerts and Carpenter examples are meant to show that, while ground ball pull rate might not seem to be related to power at all (as you say, ground balls are not that great usually), Jeff thinks of it as an indicator of change.. Maybe Heyward just belongs in that 110 120 range of wRC+. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Age is the decisive factor here. In the *other* MVP debate, Miguel Cabrera represented, perhaps, a belief in the older-school stats, those three fetishized numbers that have been in the newspapers since the games inception. Jason Heyward CF B/T: L/L 6' 5" 240LBS Age: 33 Draft: 2007 Rd: 1, #14, Atlanta Braves Henry County (GA) HS Player Apps Pitch Highlighter Player Similarity Shifts Swing Take Profile illustrator Zone Swing Profile Player Comparison Transaction History Show Random Video Stats Statcast Standard Splits Game Logs MLB Minors Batting Fielding Visuals Depending how long Rodgers is out of the lineup and whether the Rockies want to let him continue his preparation into the early days of the regular season someone has to play second. With the injury to Gavin Lux, Miguel Rojas and Chris Taylor will see time at shortstop while Jason Heyward and Trayce Thompson will play in center field. Games. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Adding in 23 steals on 26 attempts and the rest of his baserunning, Heywards 22 runs above average on offense placed him within the top quarter of qualified hitters. But just looking at how Heyward has hit the ball, there are early signs that hes concentrating on pop. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts * as the source of default lineups. Taylor may also appear at third base in Cactus League games. You could make a strong argument that it was the most impressive performance for a batter under age 21 since The Kid took Seattle by storm back in 1990. Injuries happen and players decline unexpectedly. Very obviously, he can sting a ball when he gets extended. Gavin Lux is likely . Especially because of the accidental report that floated this week about Canario already being back on the field doing baseball work (he's not; still way too early for . Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Heywards main drawback, perhaps only drawback, as a player seeking more than $100 million is his lack of power. Heyward hasnt shown quite the same level of plate discipline this season, as his rate of swinging at pitches out of the strike zone has increased by about four percentage points (24.2 percent to 28.3 percent; the MLB average is 29-30 percent). Heywards .113 ISO was no less than 71 points below his career mark entering this year, he slugged just .384 and notched only 58 RBIs, despite making about one-third of his plate appearances as the fifth hitter in the Braves order. 3 outfielder who has yet to prove hes a reliable high-end fantasy option. Ideally, we could look for players like Jason Heyward who are good offensively and defensively and see how those players performed. Now, Heyward has an extended history of making various adjustments underneath, he hasnt been that static. I looked through age 25, but lacking enough comps, expanded the age range to 26 years old. Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:51 PM ET, Park Factors A decade ago, the serious baseball fan serious, as in desperately wanting to increase his or her chances of winning his or her fantasy league had few places to turn. 2023 600 PA / 200 IP Projections Steamer600. The group also has five players at the top who were tremendous successes. It really had good numbers on the computer. Jason Heyward Reality Check | FanGraphs Membership Maybe you heard that some guy named Jason Heyward made the Atlanta Braves' Opening Day roster. I looked for outfielders from 1960 to 2007 who produced defensive runs above average (which includes the positional adjustment) within 20 runs of Heywards 61.9 runs above average mark. Anyhow, heres where Heyward has hit baseballs in spring 2016: Of course Im wary of talking about anything based on so little data. Its really impressive to see a guy go out there and throw a ton of strikes and throw strikes with his offspeed pitches. 12 years and 0 . But Trejo, who came to Spring Training to try to change some minds, had a change in latitude because Gold Glove second baseman Brendan Rodgers sustained a dislocated left shoulder in the previous game. FanSided 1 day Jason Heyward . The former Yankees and Rangers first baseman topped out at 97 mph from the left side and struck out the first batter he faced swinging on an offspeed pitch. Jason Heyward pitch% heatmaps. A few trade pickups last year are rated highly in 2023. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted . His rookie year was off-the-charts good Gomber is working on a two-seam, sinking fastball that he hopes will work at altitude. But in the previous five years, he had bounced between eight different organizations, unable to find his footing in the majors before an opportunity arose with the Dodgers. A year ago, Jason Heyward was a fantasy baseball stud muffin. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. It could have something to do with the. by Handedness, Making Too Much of Too Little Jason Heyward, Effectively Wild Episode 852: 2016 Season Preview Series: Chicago Cubs, Evaluating the 2016 Prospects: St. Louis Cardinals, pulled ground balls have by far the lowest success rate of any balls in play. To isolate players similar to Heyward, I looked for players from 1960 to 2007 within five of Heywards 27.8 WAR and within 20% of his 3429 plate appearances. But theres real doubt about his ability to deliver even 15 home runs or produce high amounts of runs and RBIs in that lineup, regardless of where he hits. Im not all that mad about it. For an awfully consistent hitter, Jason Heyward is considered an awfully frustrating hitter. Thats been fairly consistent. and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. On Friday, the Cubs won the bidding for Jason Heyward, convincing the outfielder to come to Chicago despite offers for more guaranteed money from the Nationals, the Cardinals, and reportedly. Perhaps its fitting, if random, that Heywards most recent highlights on MLB.com are all home-run-saving catches. Up for debate is precisely how good Jason Heyward has been during his career, and more importantly for whichever teams signs him this winter, how good Heyward will be moving forward. Others call it a slurve or even a whirlybird. Phillies (24th, 1.4 WAR) With Bryce Harper undergoing Tommy John surgery and likely to miss the first half of the season, the spotlight is again on Nick Castellanos, whose performance in the first year of his five-year, $100 million deal was downright dreadful. and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not. ESPN, FanGraphs, MLB Pipeline . His BABIP this season is .256, while his expected BABIP sits around .315. 2023 Updated In-Season Projections Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted But consider this for a moment: despite those negatives, despite Heyward dealing with a lingering right shoulder injury and despite a 75 point drop in his batting average on balls in play (from .335 to .260), Heyward was still basically a league-average hitter in 2011. Heyward has been an above average offensive player, incredible on defense, and heading into free agency a few months after turning 26 years old, provides few realistic players for comparison. I cant wait to see how this turns out. Dodgers 'believe' in Jason Heyward; can swing change revive his career? Theres very little fly-ball action in left field. His arm isnt great BIS had him costing the Braves three runs in that manner but his range was so impressive that he offered center-field like defense even once he was penalized for playing in the corner outfield. Its not even clear this would be a good thing. Additionally, Heyward had no say in November 2014, when his hometown Atlanta Braves, the club for whom he had foregone a full-ride scholarship to UCLA, traded him to the St. Louis Cardinals. The next group of comps considers only offensive production. Players who rove around the outfield will qualify at the specific outfield position where he played the most innings provided it was a minimum of 75 percent (475 innings) of total innings at the specific position. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity. Gotta elevate if youre going to be pull-focused. The Cubs released Heyward. His work has appeared in numerous publications, and he has contributed to the 2014 and 2015 editions of The Hardball Times Annual. Donate to FanGraphs. by Retrosheet. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted Heyward did it all offensively as a rookie: he showed superb plate discipline (a 14.6% walk rate), hit for power (a .179 Isolated Power) and didnt punch out at an exorbitant rate (20.5 K%). May 23, 2011 Atlanta Braves placed RF Jason Heyward on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to May 22, 2011. Its not surprising. Throw caution to the wind, even. With a 21.8 percent infield fly ball rate, he hit the ball up the elevator shaft more often than any batter with at least 400 plate appearances. Dodgers outfielder Jason Heyward had glowing praise for manager Dave Roberts, whom he calls a "baseball rat" who loves being around the game. Heyward does need to keep the ball of the grass and pare down the pop ups to truly tap into his power, but its important to remember that hes still younger than many celebrated rookies and prospects. Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:51 PM ET, Park Factors Birthdate: 8/9/1989 (33 y, 6 m, 21 d) Drafted: 2007 June Amateur Draft - Round: 1, Pick: 14, Overall: 14, Team: Atlanta Braves Jason Heyward graphs for Major League baseball. News; Wikipedia: . Its where most hitters are strongest, and when Heyward had his powerful 2012, he hit just three of his homers the other way. Here is how they performed over their next ten seasons. BIS found more under-cover evidence of his speed: Heyward only grounded into five double plays in 145 GDP opportunities. If you can sign him without an opt-out, you might be in the rare position of having an 8- or 10-year megadeal where the player is worth his salary every year. In fact, only teammate Michael Bourn managed more defensive value all around from the outfield. Massive crying face emoji. Watch as both teams attempt to take one step closer to . All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. He went first to home on a double six of nine times, which is about average. Interesting stuff, but isnt this potentially terrible news for Heyward given that the spring spray chart only shows a significant pull increase on ground balls rather than all contact and pulled ground balls have by far the lowest success rate of any balls in play? Jacoby Ellsbury just finished Year Two of his contract. Last year he hit for almost zero power, and his grounder pull rate went from 68% to 43%. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, Trejo, 27, is fine with pushing for all the starts he can at second if thats his opportunity to be in the lineup. Ive pulled some images from Baseball Savant. Cavan Biggio will play half his games in the outfield. $8? and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. While hes never going to be a big stolen base threat, hes a quality athlete for a power forward-sized corner outfielder. Forget about everything else. Jason Heyward. The lowest member of the group, Willie Randolph, still averaged more than three wins per season. by Handedness. Notable in the Dodgers lineup is Jason Heyward playing in back-to-back games for the first time this spring, starting in centerfield for the second straight day.