Defending Navi

There is only so much you can defend when talking about a player who has played valiantly to his replacement level tagline, but, despite being on a smaller level when compared to players like Burrell, its confused me how the general consensus is that Navi's struggles are so irrecoverable that its time to give up.  While I wouldn't mind seeing a trade (not for overly priced and defensively challenged Victor Martinez, mind you), I don't necessarily think its time to give up on our 25 year old catcher, even for this year.

The first thing many people point to when talking about Navi in 2009 is the complete lack of plate discipline.  This year his BB% sits at an unacceptable and very Angels-like 2.6% in the 280 Plate Appearances he has accumulated to this point this year.  People always seem to be able to cite that statistic, but not that Navarro had posted a BB% of 7.6% in 900 Plate Appearances as a Ray and Dray coming into this season.  The first question when seeing that should be, where did the discipline go, and I'll try and shed some light on that.

It takes just a quick glance at Navi's more specific discipline figures to see that it shouldn't be a huge surprise his BB% has dipped, but should it have dipped this much?  His swing percentage has jumped by nearly 3.5%, and that is very significant when coupled with a 2% drop in contact rate.  What is funny is that his out-of-zone contact rate has actually climbed a little bit, by about 1.2%, but the contact rate hit comes mostly from nearly a 2% drop in In-Zone contact rate.  Why is he missing more pitches in the zone?  The big 6% jump in first pitch strike percentage against implies that pitchers have become more aggressive on him when compared to years past; does Navi receive a boost to his batting line on pitches later in the at bat, once he is given an opportunity to see more pitches from the pitcher? 

While there are a slew of small things effecting his BB%, I personally feel that with all this his BB% should not have taken a nearly 66% drop from the 900 PA combined of years past.  Also, while it is hardly any consolation, since May 12th his BB% has been about 1 point higher at 3.6%, closer to his true talent level, but probably not quite there yet.  Just for reference’s sake, Zips projects a 6.7% BB% the rest of the way, and I actually think, given the plate discipline numbers, it will be slightly lower than that, but, I know some people really like the methodology of Zips, so thought I might throw it out there.

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My second point is going to address the second criticism of Navi this year, and that is the rather alarming 6% decline in LD% from 2008 to 2009.  Currently his LD% sits at 17.6% (by no means a horrible LD rate) and was up at 23.5% last year (just for good measure it was 17.0% in 2007).  So 1.5 of the 2.5 seasons we have data for say that Navi's true talent in hitting line drives is closer to 17.5% as it is this year than 23.5% as it was last year.  The interesting point; however, in regards to the line drive rates, is that in 2007 and 2009 Navi saw dramatic increases in his fly ball percentages.

By year his FB% has been 41.2% / 30.1% / 43.4% for 2007/2008/2009 respectively.  Alongside, his LD%s were 17.0% / 23.5% / 17.6%.  Just for good measure his GB%s as well 41.8% / 46.4% / 38.9%.  The first thing I notice is that in years when the LD% is lower almost the entire difference seems to have gone to FBs.  When I see this, it makes me wonder why the lost LD% isn't distributed better between his FBs and GBs, and I'm obviously not smart enough to come up with a concrete answer.  That makes me think it might be more of a systematic thing with coaching or a personal decision to try and hit more fly balls, and is less of an issue with his mechanics, as the two bad seasons are strangely similar in how they occurred.  If anyone understands swing mechanics more than I do, I would love to see something done taking each of the three years and comparing them to each other, to see if it is in fact a conscious effort to alter it. ((Just for reference, the 300 PA between the Dodgers and Rays in 06 was a 23.5% LD rate, so the evidence for/against a higher LD% is split, right down the middle.))

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My last point is going to be something that no one seems to want to talk about in relation to Navi (as it would generally hurt their arguments), but Navi has a BABIP, currently, of .244.  The simple LD%+.120 method spits out .296 as an expected BABIP, but with a low GB% and a slow (but a faster than last year) runner, should spit out somewhere around a .280 expected BABIP.  Funnily enough, ZIPs spits out just that as an expected Rest-of-Season BABIP.  That means Navi has between .35 - .40 points of BABIP to recover before he is playing at the level he "should" be.

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To show that, in fact, it would make a difference, I'm going to make a few batting lines using his current Single, Double, Triple,  and walk rates to show what A) his season to this point has truly been offensively and B) what we can expect the rest of the way.  For the second line I'm going to use these numbers - 19% LD rate (split between the two season of high and low, but slightly favoring recent performance)/ 42% GB rate / 39% FB rate, a 6% HR/FB%, and a 4.5% BB rate, and a 13.5% K rate, numbers we should all agree are fairly easily attainable.  Just for reference, my batted ball BABIPs are going to be as follows (from earlier in the year, June I think), LDBABIP .725, FBBABIP is .145, and GBBABIP is .238.

23.8% Ground Balls = Hits

14.5% Fly Balls = Hits

72.5% Line Drives = Hits

Dioner Navarro’s Non-HR hit Percentages

Single % = 77.35%

Double% = 22.65%

Triple% = 0%

Season to date line (using his to-date rates, but changed BABIPs)

True Season-to-date Line

279 PA – .258/.291/.369/.660

Rest of Season Line (using the rates outlined above)

Rest-of-Season Line

177 PA - .273/.324/.393/.717

Below is my work for the “rest of season” line, the season-to-date was done in the same way.

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177 PA rest of the way –

8 Walks

4 Hit by Pitch

6 Sacrifices

159 AB

21 strikeouts

138 batted balls

138 Batted Balls – 26.22 Non HR Line Drives – 19 hits – 14.7 singles – 4.3 doubles

138 Batted Balls – 50.52 Non HR Fly Balls – 7.325 hits – 5.6 singles – 1.725 doubles - (3.3 Home Runs) ((got the HRs just using the 6% HR/FB rate from before and taking that out of all fly balls hit))

138 Batted Balls – 57.96 Non HR Ground Balls – 13.8 hits – 10.7 singles – 3.1 doubles

31 singles / 9.125 doubles / 3.3 home runs

31 + 18.25 + 13.2 = 62.45 total bases

43.425/159 = .273 batting average

62.45 / 159 = .393 slugging%

55.425 / 177 = .324 on base%