SAGNOF Special, Week 9: Sell Steven Souza?
June 1, 2015 | Closers, Steals | 45 Commentsby: RotoLance
This is the SAGNOF Special “broken record edition” where I repeat things I’ve touched on in the past. Danny Santana bad. Rajai Davis good. But let’s start with: sell Steven Souza. Why? So many reasons, but the most important are his 37% K rate and 35.7% HR/FB. The K rate is bound to come down some, but how much? 32-35% might still be too high for Souza to have great value going forward, once the HR/FB rate regresses. To put that HR/FB rate in perspective, last year’s leader among qualified batters was Jose Abreu, with 26.9%. Nelson Cruz‘s HR/FB rate was “only” 20.4% last year. So on the one hand you can be very successful with a much lower HR/FB rate, on the other hand if Souza’s HR/FB rate were halved and we assume that half of his home runs were instead FB outs, his AVG drops from .238 to .206. While he can in fact have value with such a low AVG, the problem is, will the Rays send him down? To look at it another way, think of how low his average might be during a 3-4 week home run drought. So who to trade for? If you want a similar type player maybe Charlie Blackmon or Gregory Polanco. If you need some pitching maybe Jake Arrieta. In any case, I’m trying to tell you to trade him as a player batting .238 with 10 home runs and 7 stolen bases, because that’s what he’s done. So if you trade him make sure you get plenty in return because you are assuming the risk that he can lower his K% down to 32%-ish while maintaining a HR/FB of above 20%, because if he can do those things he can be pretty good. But I don’t think his value will ever be higher than it is right now.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
