Never judge a book by it’s cover. F that.The first thing I do is immediately judge a book by its cover because on the cover is written the title of the book. If I don’t like the sound of it, there’s a 99.9% chance I move onto the next. The 0.1% is reserved for books that have pictures of naked ladies on the cover. I’ve got kids to raise and DFS lineups to make. I ain’t got the time to not judge a book by its cover. The same principle can be applied to most things in life. Whether we like it or not, we judge people by how they look. It’s only natural, as that’s usually the first piece of information we are exposed to.The roots can probably be chased back to our caveman days when everything had to be classified as either friend or foe. What if we can’t see a person? But can only judge them by the sound of their name? Manuel Margot. How did you pronounce it? Was it like MarGO? Like Vincent Van Gogh or escargot? Sounds French. Smooth and sophisticated perhaps. How about like MarGOT? Like Marge Schott? Sounds rough and abrasive. The cool thing about baseball is that we don’t give a shit whether a player is black or white, tall or short, fat or skinny, or is named Rusty Kuntz or Johnny Dickshot. At the end of the day, it’s all about whether they produce or not. Will we be soon be calling him Manny MarGOAT?
Over the past week, Margot is 15-for-33 with two doubles, one triple, three home runs, six runs scored, six RBI, and one stolen base. GOAT! GOAT! GOAT! Grey has only been writing about him for like the past week. If you want to travel in time without buying that DeLorean on Craigslist, read what Grey wrote about him in the offseason. For the season, his triple slash is .281/.321/.431 with eight home runs and 11 stolen bases.
Really, the only thing I don’t like is the low walk rate of 5.5%. Other than that, MarGO. The speed is legit, so the stolen bases should be plentiful. The strikeout rate of 21% isn’t great, but it’s not turrable. The .336 BABIP could be a little high, but speed guys usually have an elevated number. The .149 ISO is nice and doesn’t seem outlandish. He did have an .162 ISO in 37 plate appearances in 2016. I know, small sample size, but it still happened.
The batted ball profile looks solid. 22.6% line drive rate with a small 5.6% infield fly ball number. The hard contact rate is only 25.2%, but the the medium rate is 50.4%. I really like that he sprays the ball to all fields (28% pull, 39% center, and 32% oppo).
The swinging strike rate is only 9.1% and the contact numbers are very good (89% in the zone and 80% overall). He does swing at 31% at balls outside the zone, so that’s a little concerning but nothing to indicate that he’s a flailing hacker.
In terms of splits, he hits both righties and lefites well. Seven of his eight home runs have come against righties. He mashes at home (,407 wOBA), while on the road it’s .231. I’ve been to San Diego many times. Makes complete sense to me. Plus, he’s 22 years old so the whole travel thing may be annoying.
Margot usually bats lead off in the batting order, but occasionally is slotted in the two-hole. I’ve seen him slotted sixth or seventh as well, but not too often. The Padres suck, which probably gets people to overlook Margot. He’s been playing very well and offers power/speed from a top-of-the-order guy. Plus, you know the Padres are going to let him do his thing because…well, they suck.
VERDICT
