And in the 5 games since this post: .667/.750/1.067, 5bb, 4k in 20 PA. OPS back up to .898.
What do you think his floor is exactly? This is only his 2nd full season in the Majors and only his 3rd (and a half) as a pro. He slashed .312/.392/.540 in the minors with 74bb/63k in 657 PA. What do you think is fake? Do you think he won't hit for contact? Do you think he won't walk 10% of the time? Do you think he won't have an ISO close to .200? What do you consider a star? If he does all those things, he's a .280/.350/.480 type at worst.
He just turned 24 so to expect no improvement from last year or going forward seems odd. There is something about Ben10 you don't like because you've been consistent in your opinion about him. I just don't see what your opinion is grounded on.
Bumping this from the trade targets thread 'cause I'd like to give it adequate attention. The core of the matter is his performance and learning curve against left-handed pitching.
Since he just turned 24, examining his past two years is a clean way of looking at how he compares to other precocious left-handed hitters his age. Here are the 29 LHH who logged 700 or more major league plate appearances at the ages of 22-23 since this data was recorded in 2002, and their isolated wOBA against LHP. (I'm excluding statistics these players put up
before turning 22, since in some cases, like Crawford, they were called up very young out of necessity.)
Harper - .374 wOBA (361 PA)
Dunn - .372 (352 PA)
Daric Barton - .372 (195 PA)
Jay Bruce - .350 (296 PA)
Corey Seager - .344 (415 PA)
Morrison - .343 (216 PA)
Yelich - .338 (302 PA)
Fielder - .337 (417 PA)
McCann - .332 (295 PA)
Markakis - .326 (344 PA)
Hermida - .326 (207 PA)
Hosmer - .310 (432 PA)
Mauer - .306 (370 PA)
Freeman - .304 (453 PA)
Mazara - .303 (234 PA)
Chris Davis - .301 (225 PA)
Cano - .300 (303 PA)
Blalock - .300 (366 PA)
Crawford - .296 (394 PA)
Heyward - .289 (376 PA)
Sean Burroughs - .288 (301 PA)
Rizzo - .287 (284 PA)
Benintendi - .282 (249 PA)
Sizemore - .282 (421 PA)
Colby Rasmus - .274 (205 PA)
Odor - .262 (339 PA)
Corey Patterson - .258 (255 PA)
Gerardo Parra - .253 (192 PA)
Gregory Polanco - .230 (198 PA)
First, the obvious. The fact that Benny's on this list means he's really good, because players promoted to the majors by 22-23 years of age are good. Second, Benintendi doesn't fare fantastically here, relatively speaking.
Sizemore figured out lefties at 24 and put up a .364 wOBA over the next two years (I calculated by birthday, not player season). He's an encouraging comp, and what we should be hoping for. Rizzo did the same, destroying them at a .395 wOBA clip across his 24-25 years. Statcast doesn't go back that far, but Fangraphs data says Sizemore and Rizzo's hard hit ball rates across their 22-23 seasons are modestly higher than Benny's is (though AB's walk rate is higher).
A lot of the other guys in the bottom half of this list are more worrisome, obviously. Some of them remained useful players, but many did not figure out lefties. In any case, there's discordance among those comparisons to the player we (and the league) think Benny to be.
There are six other smaller factors that taken alone are not a big deal but added together start to feel significant to me.
1. The Sox have faced a disproportionately low number of LHP. Benny was promoted exactly a month after his 22nd birthday, but even factoring that, he's faced fewer LHP compared to other regulars. Sox hitters have faced LHP 23.83 percent of PAs since the beginning of 2017 — 27th in MLB. (League average is 26.54 percent.) That's not huge, but it'll correct itself at some point, and when it does there's reason to think it'll suppress Benny's numbers.
2. The exit velocity thing, which I wrote about in the other thread. For what it's worth, Benintendi is slightly below MLB average. Since the Sox just targeted a slew of hitters with top ranking exit velocities in last month's draft, this seems like something the FO cares about.
3. Because of park factors and his batting profile (average/below-average exit velocity, lots of pulled fly balls), he's not an ideal fit playing half his games in Fenway. (He'd be a terrific fit for Yankee Stadium, sadly.)
4. He plays the easiest outfield position in the major leagues.
5. He's got the reputation of a center fielder without the resume of a center fielder (some evaluations believe he is not a good one). That affects his perceived value around the league, but it's also a skill that may erode if he's not playing there.
6. The Red Sox have a far more difficult time signing and developing pitchers than hitters. You can make an argument that this is sound strategy because pitching is more volatile, but it means that the FO accounts for a certain number of position players to become trade bait.
Again, I wanna stress that I don't think Benintendi is going to collapse. I think he's a very good player and his floor is quite high, and he has improved a bit against LHP this year. I'm not trolling folks excited about him and I'm not trying to die on this hill. I want Benintendi on my team and I like him a lot, but I wouldn't hesitate to trade him right now for an ace. The problem is, there are very few pitchers in the league that could possibly be equitable value. Snell, Berrios, Nola, maybe DeGrom? That's it.