Assessing Veteran Talent: Raul Ibanez

I started off my AVT series with the Phillies’ longtime leftfielder, Pat Burrell. I figured it only made sense to make my next installment about his replacement: Raul Ibanez. The fact that Ibanez is actually Burrell’s senior by four years yet is often regarded as a more youthful player made this decision all the more obvious.



Others have debated the value of Ibanez over Burrell as an overall player (i.e., they both suck in the field – this matter was covered in a nice article by Eric Seidman at Fangraphs last week), but I’ll shift my focus to offensive production and how it will affect Ibanez’s 2009 outlook. When you look at the stats, it’s hard not to like Ibanez. About the only area where Burrell has clearly been better has been in homeruns (and, if you’ll recall from my recent article, I see this being in grave danger of plummeting). Ibanez, at least in recent history, has been far superior in doubles, triples, average, runs and RBI. The latter two categories, I believe, are especially significant when you factor in the teams for which each has played.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Ibanez is his consistency. Since 2002, when he first became an everyday player in the majors, he has not hit lower than .280 or higher than .304. Furthermore, he hit between .289-.294 in five of those seven seasons. That’s five years hitting within a gap of .005 – how is that even possible?! His double totals have been equally paced – until he smacked 43 last year, he had produced in the range of 31-37 as a full-timer. And if you take out his 2004 season (in which he had his fewest number of AB’s but his highest average as a starter), his totals in homers, runs and RBI show pretty similar consistency.

In regard to power, Ibanez doesn’t appear to be on the decline that Burrell is, even though he is significantly older. Ibanez has a solid average standard distance – it’s been in the mid 390’s each of the past three seasons. Also, 8 of his 23 homers in 2008 were no doubt shots (meaning they were over 400 feet, and thus would’ve been a homer regardless of where they were hit), while only two were lucky homers. You would expect some regression of power for a guy who’s going to turn 37 next year, but playing in Philly may offset some of that. The only negative trend I noticed from his various scatter plots was that, like Burrell, he was showing more of a tendency to hit dead-pull shots, but this certainly wasn’t to the extent of Burrell’s homers.

I alluded earlier to fact that Ibanez’s former team is far worse offensively than his new team, or at least in terms of last year. To get a better idea of what exactly this difference is, consider this: the Mariners scored 671 runs in 2008, which was the fifth lowest total in baseball and the second lowest in the American League. The Phillies, on the other hand, score 799, which was good for eighth best in baseball and tied for second in the National League. That’s a pretty significant gap. What is important about this when assessing Ibanez is how big of a factor he was in his team’s puny run production. Looking at his overall run contribution (which I got by adding his runs and RBI, then subtracting from that his homerun total) and comparing it to his team’s runs, he was responsible for 25.6% of the Mariners’ runs last year. And while I’m not a big fan of relying solely on runs and RBI to judge a player’s value, there’s no denying the fact that this is a significant figure that bodes well for Ibanez. Just imagine what might happen to his numbers if he brings this level of production with him to Philly. Even though their lineup will be without Utley for a couple months, I don’t see how this new environment doesn’t become good news for Ibanez.

As always, there are a few caveats. Two obvious ones with Ibanez are his age and his defense. His poor defense likely won’t be too big of a factor for him, as Burrell had no problem getting consistent starts with his glove. He may get taken out for a defensive sub late in games occasionally, but that’s about it. I’m also not convinced that his age will come into play that much, either. Even though he will be 37, he’s kept his health to this point, with just one trip to the DL back in 2004. In his four years since then, the fewest number of AB’s he’s had has been 573. His skills don’t appear to be showing much sign of decay with age like you would expect, so it’s hard to say with certainty that these will start to show up this year.

One thing that does concern me about Ibanez, however, is his O-Swing rate. His rate of chasing pitches has increased in each of the past four years, rising from 18.4% in 2005 to 26.4% in 2008. And while it’s easy to dismiss this by saying that his average has stayed consistent in spite of this, one possible explanation of this is his contact rates on these swings. He matched his spike in O-Swing rate in 2008 with a large leap in O-Contact percentage, jumping from 63.9% in ’07 to 71.5% in ’08. Since the latter percentage is well above his career rates, I wouldn’t expect this success to continue. If this regresses towards the norm but his O-Swing rate continues to escalate, he could take a hit in his BA particularly, with other areas likely to follow.

Overall, Ibanez is likely to give you just below a .300 average with a legitimate shot at 100 runs and RBI (a lot of this will depend on Philly’s line-up and where he hits in it, but I still like his chances here). He won’t do much of anything with steals, but his homerun totals could progress in his new setting (with 20 being a realistic low-end expectation). Pending on how far he falls in the draft, he could be a very potent sleeper pick in middle rounds. You can count on his consistency, and he has surprising upside for someone his age.