An MMO Fan Shot by Nick Johnson
While it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the Mets will be heading to spring training with “former” top prospect Wilmer Flores manning shortstop, there are signs to suggest that Mets fans should be excited rather than disappointed.
Flores is about as polarizing a prospect as it gets for the Mets. He’s a guy that could hit 15-20 home runs and 40 doubles a year. Yet he is generally accepted by scouts as being a first baseman in waiting, wherein such numbers play with drastically less value at first than shortstop or second base.
Despite his many detractors, Flores has showed last season that he can play a league average defensive shortstop at least. FanGraphs rates him as being slightly above average in Ultimate Zone Rating (4.0) and slightly below average in Defensive Runs Saved (-3.0). According to Inside Edge, he managed to convert 98.6% of all routine plays, making only 4 errors on the season. Of course, this is all small sample size, but it’s reasonable to believe that fielding ability is less volatile in terms of fluctuation than hitting or pitching.
According to Sky Andrecheck at Baseball Analytics, “From an individual player’s standpoint, he is prone to make about 5 or so more or 5 or so less plays in a season than his true talent would usually call for.”
Typically, fielding quality doesn’t sharply increase or decrease from year to year unless it’s influenced either by aging or injury. With Flores being both young and healthy, increased reps at shortstop should only improve his play in the field.
In terms of Wilmer’s bat, examining Flores’ 2014 season at the plate paints an exciting picture in terms of his development for 2015. His counting stats were relatively low, slashing at a poor .251/.286/.378, ranking 23rd among shortstops (min 200 PA).
However, a deeper look into the metrics reveals room for improvement. Flores is a contact driven hitter, and he walks at a low percentage. This points to him being extremely BABIP-reliant. His weak average can then be explained by his low .265 batting average on balls in play through the 2014 season.
Throughout the minors Flores averaged a BABIP of .316, leading me to believe that Flores may have suffered from a bit of bad luck in 2014. Adjusting his BABIP for the season to .300 (considering some regression), Flores’ average and on base percentage rise to .293 and .321 respectively. Then adjusting his extra base hits accordingly, his slugging rises to .440. His new slash line of .293/.321/.440 would give him a wOBA of .337 ranking him 6th among all shortstops last year (min. 200 PA), just behind Starlin Castro and ahead of Ian Desmond.
To answer whether or not such a BABIP is attainable for Flores, look at his line drive rate (since well hit balls have a higher likelihood of falling). Flores had a line drive rate of 20.1%, sharing that number with eight other major league players. The average BABIP of that group, excluding Flores, is .304.
Combine his batted ball profile with his elite contact rate (87.6%) and his elite strikeout rate (11.3%), and he could easily attain my projected .293 average, should his BABIP normalize.
I still haven’t even considered that Flores has a wealth of untapped power potential. Looking over the course of the season, Wilmer spent his first two months with the team only managing a handful of extra base hits. Then in September he started belting extra base hits left and right, with most of his power going to left field.
Flores finished out his 2014 season with a bang, mashing the ball to the tune of 9 extra base hits and a .278 average for a slash line of .278/.313/.500. Pro-rating that slash into a whole season (550 PAs) would give him about 37 doubles and 24 home runs. While he may not show that much power, that slash is right in line with what he’s been doing throughout the minor leagues for the last three years.
Even with some power regression, he would still be mashing the ball by shortstop standards. Add that into the BABIP projections I’ve made and he projects to be an extremely dangerous hitter. That’s not to say Flores is absolutely going to start crushing the ball next season, but the ability is there.
Based on my projections we should expect him to at least be a good offensive minded shortstop, with the potential to be great. And sure, Flores doesn’t look very smooth in the field, and he isn’t going to make many highlight reel plays, but there’s value in being sure handed. No one is expecting him to light the world on fire with his glove, but he should do well enough to be held up by his quality bat. That’s a trade off the Mets should be happy with.
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This Fan Shot was contributed by MMO reader Nick Johnson. Have something you want to say about the Mets? Share your opinions with over 25,000 Met fans who read this site daily. Send your Fan Shot to us at [email protected]. Or ask us about becoming a regular contributor.
