Rising Value - Stephen Drew by John Dorhauer

This is an article by Behind the Plate's new writer John Dorhauer. John is a very talented writer and I'm looking forward to many good things to come from John. Here is his look at a very interesting young player, Stephen Drew.


Evaluating young talent is one of the trickier and, consequentially, most dangerous aspects of preparing for your fantasy league draft. It’s tricky because you don’t have a very large sample size from which to gather data, which presents the dangerous aspect of not having a definitive way of telling what will happen next for the given player. I tend to be the type of strategist that welcomes a certain element of risk when pursuing players, although admittedly I have been burned by going after young talent more than a few times. The trick, I’m finding as I’ve become more and more immersed in stats and sabermetrics, is knowing which stats to look at as indicators for future growth and trying to find trends there. Let’s use this approach to look at a blossoming young talent: Stephen Drew.


It’s important to consider the context of a player when evaluating him, so let’s first look, briefly, at his position. The shortstop position, in this amateur analyst’s perspective, is one of if not the most unique positions to evaluate because of the substantial and definitive drop-off that has occurred between the upper echelon of talent and everyone else. Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes and Jimmy Rollins already belonged in this group, but three more appear to have emerged: J.J. Hardy, Jhonny Peralta and Drew. What is interesting about this is that the latter three have a greater propensity for power, while Reyes and Rollins are primarily valued for their speed. (Ramirez is the exception, as he has established himself as a legitimate threat in both power and speed.) Since I’m talking about Drew, though, let’s take a look at what some of his prominent power categories have done this year as compared to 2007, which was his only other full season in the bigs:

2B 3B HR ISO HR/FB% Avg. BABIP LD%
2007 13 7 5 .133 5.9% .238 .271 16.5%
2008 44 11 21 .211 9.7% .291 .326 22.6%


As you can see, every category saw a rather dramatic increase. Keep in mind, Drew played in basically the same amount of games in these years (150 and 152), and he was the D-backs’ starting shortstop consistently throughout this time. Although the spike in extra-base hits is substantial, it serves as a very shallow perspective doesn’t really tell us anything about how he got those numbers or what we can expect of him in the future. What is significant in regard to his actual power expectancy, though, is his ISO total, which soared to .211 this past year (second among shortstops only to Hanley). You can also see that more of his flyballs were going for homers, which helped his home run numbers. And while you can chalk up a lot of this to the fact that he didn’t have a very good year at all in 2007, I still tend to think this wasn’t a fluke due to the fact that Drew showed this kind of potential in AAA in 2006 (13 homers, 16 doubles in 83 games with an ISO of .173) as well as, to an extent, his call-up at the end of that season in the big leagues.


Also significant was Drew’s massive increase in batting average. More importantly, though, his ability to hit line drives indicates that this may not be a fluke, either. While Drew hit about the same amount of ground balls (170 in ’07, 177 in ’08) and fly balls (205, 216) in these two seasons, his line drive total went from 74 all the way up to 115. Since line drives are the type of contacted ball most likely to end up as a hit, you can see why balls that he hit in play fell for hits more frequently in ’08, which also led to his increased average. If this trend continues, look for an even more improved average next year.


However, it’s not all sunshine and roses for Drew: his one major caveat is his plate discipline and, more specifically, his knack for swinging at bad balls. His strikeout rates aren’t all that bad, especially for a young player. In fact, his K-rate dropped from 18.4% in ’07 to 17.6% in ’08. It’s his walk total that serves as his Achilles’ heel. Although he had 44 more plate appearances in ’08 than in ’07, he walked a total of 19 less times, causing his walk rate to plummet from 10% to 6.3%. This can be explained by his spike in swings on pitches outside the zone: in ’07 he swung at such pitches 21.77% of the time, but in ’08 this rose to 28.19%. And while his contact rates have increased across the board – which is always a good sign – any further increase in chasing pitches could have a cloudy effect on his otherwise pleasant future forecast.


There are other things to watch for with Drew that can’t necessarily be easily predicted. For example, he had a really good run total (91) and a decent RBI total (67), but these can either go up or down pending on what Arizona’s line-up does next year. If their young power-heavy talent lives up to the potential many thought they had going into 2008, and especially if the D-backs keep Dunn, these totals could easily ascend. It’s also important to note that you can’t expect much in the stolen base department from Drew, and if your league values this, he could potentially hurt you in this category as someone who plays a position that tends to value speed. Overall, though, Drew’s emerging power and solid batting average tell me that he could easily be a risk worth taking in next year’s draft.