by Handedness, 2004 June Amateur Draft - Round: 17, Pick: 5, Overall: 496, Team: Milwaukee Brewers, 5 yr, $80M (2018-22); opted out of last 54 games of 2020.
A lifelong Cardinals fan, he got his start writing for Viva El Birdos. What I can say, though, is that Cain’s value has been tanked by his flagging production on flares, burners, and balls he hits under.
But Cain stole 12 fewer bases (18 on 26 attempts) and went from one of FanGraphs’ highest-graded base runners to merely mediocre.
If you merely look at his expected BABIP based on each ball’s exit velocity and launch angle, and fold in sprint speed for grounders, Cain has hardly lost anything this year: That’s comforting, but it’s also bizarre.
Bating Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) Lorenzo Cain.346: Strikeouts Percentage (SO%) Lorenzo Cain: 18.4%: Walk Percentage (BBP) Lorenzo Cain: 10%: Isolated Power (ISOP) Lorenzo Cain.084: Secondary Average (SECA) Lorenzo Cain.234: Extra Base Hit (XBH) Lorenzo Cain: 12: Best Hitting. ... when Cain put the ball in play, his BABIP fell off to a noticeable extent.
If Cain could simply be as “fortunate” on contact as he was in 2016, he’d have a wRC+ around 110, rather than his current disappointing 77, an increase that would be worth roughly 2.2 WAR. Maybe the ball will get de-juiced and that will restore Cain’s mojo. He also stole just 18 bases after averaging 28 the previous two years. Lorenzo has expanded his hitting zone in 2019, swinging more often at pitches that are difficult to drive in the upper part and on the outer edge of the strike zone. Cain is worth his contract as a leader on the team. Cain is still, for the most part, what he was last year. Age is coming for Cain, sooner or later. FanGraphs valued it at just over $45MM, more than half the total of his contract. This year’s production is all over the place: Some of these aren’t huge samples — Cain has 10 batted balls classified as “weak” this year. More of these soft line drives are carrying to outfielders rather than falling in front of them, as can be seen in this comparison between 2016 and 2019: It might be hard to tell the difference, but if Cain produced at his 2016 level on flares and burners, his wOBA would be 38 points higher this year. Strikeouts count against average without giving you a chance for a hit, so limiting strikeouts is a key component to hitting for a high average. Not only has Lorenzo’s hard-hit rate fallen off precipitously from last year, but one metric also suggests that he’s also lost a step in his age-33 season. I don’t know. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. His plate discipline metrics are all a tick worse this year. Reported as the pre-2020 season number of waiver options remaining. The Cain gamble couldn’t have worked out much better in 2018 for the Brewers, who saw him slash .308/.395/.417 (good for a career-best 124 wRC+) with 10 home runs and 30 stolen bases across 620 plate appearances. Team: Milwaukee Brewers (majors, restricted list) Born: April 13, 1986 in Valdosta, GA us Draft: Drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 17th round of the 2004 MLB June Amateur Draft from Madison County HS (Madison, FL).. High School: Madison County HS (Madison, FL) While he’s been slowed by a knee injury since early August, his season was hardly better before then — his wRC+ has actually increased since sustaining that injury. Theyâve made trades and given big contracts. How can you would of do something? All rights reserved. His contributions with the glove have helped pushed his overall value to roughly that of a league-average regular based upon his WAR totals (0.8 fWAR, 1.5 bWAR). That BABIP propped up an otherwise milquetoast forecast — were you to take away singles until Cain was projected for a .295 BABIP, his projected wRC+ would fall from 109 to 95. Razzball.com and the Razzball logo units are copyright Razzball LLC.Site by Design & Develop, | Rest of Season Player Rater (non-standard 5x5), | Season to Date Player Rater (non-standard 5x5), Top 100 Prospects for 2021 Fantasy Baseball, Steamer/Razzball 2020 Preseason Projections, Steamer/Razzball 2020 Rest of Season Projections, Relievonator (Today/Tomorrow Projections), Batter vs Pitcher Matchups (DailyBasebalData.com), Top 100 Hitters for 2020 Fantasy Baseball: Week 2, Top 100 Hitters For 2020 Fantasy Baseball Week 1. Cain wasn’t able to do that nearly as much as usual last year, in part because of a walk rate that sunk by 3.5 percent from the prior season and a strikeout rate that climbed by almost 2 percent. and play-by-play data provided by Baseball Info Solutions.
Defensively, there was no let-up at all. By keeping the ball on the ground and beating out infield hits, he accumulated extra hits. In Cain’s case, those soft hits simply aren’t finding outfield grass. His .253 and .321 marks in 2019 are near career lows. Player data for Lorenzo Cain maintained by Rudy Gamble | Updated: EST, Copyright 2007 - 2020 Razzball LLC.
Cain’s walk rate has also plummeted from a career-best 11.5% down to 7.0% — below his average from across parts of 10 big league seasons — further weighing down his OBP. Not only did he swing at a mere 23.6% of pitches outside the strike zone (o-swing), he also sliced four points off of his in-zone swing rate (z-swing), down to 64.0%. So have we solved it? Is Cain a victim of bad luck, or has something real changed that the stats don’t pick up? Please login to leave a reply. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com.
What’s happened this year? as distributed by STATS. Subscribe for all hitter DFS MLB projections. More surprisingly, Lorenzo Cain has gone from down-ballot MVP contender to merely another guy, and on a team without much outfield depth, the decline has been particularly tough to deal with. Cain has 116 flares and 72 balls he’s hit under this year, almost as many as he has in the other four categories combined. With a shortened season to work with, the arbitration estimates are a bit wider than usual. It’s a part of the game that Cain has often excelled at — he hasn’t struck out more than the league average since 2014, and he actually got better at it as the league has gotten worse, posting a career-low 15.2% rate last year.
All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. If it’s not the strikeouts, is it the home runs? That’s not to say that age won’t catch up with Cain. There’s good news for both, though. When someone has a systematic problem, as Cain does with his weak contact this year, it’s worth asking whether there’s an underlying cause. Becomes a free agent entering the 2023 season, after the conclusion of the 2022 season. In 2019, their young pitching staff would have another year of experience, and by adding Yasmani Grandal, the front office kept the talent pipeline primed. What remains to be seen is whether the small margins that separate success from failure will flip back in his favor in 2020. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Reported as the pre-2020 season number of waiver options remaining. and a trip to the NLCS felt like huge strides in the right direction. Now, it is down all the way to 28.0 ft/sec and is hampering him as he attempts to leg out infield hits at the rate he did last season (11.1% infield hit rate in 2018, 6.8% IFH in 2019).
Lorenzo Cain’s BABIP and xBABIP.
The last component of batting average is BABIP, and here we’ve struck pay dirt. We just recently updated our player pages for mobile and added a few new features!
as distributed by STATS. The problem with this explanation is that Cain never had a ton of power to begin with.
His exit velocity is down a bit, but not enough to explain a below-league average BABIP. For the Brewers and Cain, 2019 looks like a lost season. Not so fast. He also upped his hard-hit rate by about 2 percent from ’18, ranking in the league’s 69th percentile, and ended in the 88th percentile in expected batting average (.290). All minor league baseball data provided by Major League Baseball Advanced Media I don’t know.
For Cain, the silver lining in his precipitous drop is that it’s less of a catastrophe than it first appears. How much of the increased carry is here to stay, and how much is merely a quirk of Cain randomly hitting balls slightly differently than normal? Position: Centerfielder Bats: Right • Throws: Right 6-2, 214lb (188cm, 97kg) .
Check out our. Cain was more selective at the plate last season than he had ever been in his career. The entire package was worth 5.7 fWAR. Would have, not would of.
The last time he was hitting like this, he wasn’t Lorenzo Cain, star outfielder. The gap between this Cain (0.9 WAR) and star-turn Cain (5.7 WAR in 2018) is so wide that it’s hardly believable.
by Retrosheet. Updated: Saturday, October 17, 2020 10:52 AM ET, Park Factors Overall, he’s swinging the bat about 2% more than he did last year.