St. Louis Cardinals rookie Stephen Piscotty's profile problem (or lack thereof)
The fight for NL Central supremacy began as an insurgency, a long-simmering, slow-growing movement toward the top of the heap by the Pirates. That's been going on for going on three years now, but all along, the Cardinals -- the division's royalty, the power center -- were able to hold them off. It seemed that the Pirates, although admirably smart and more talented than many believed them to be, were outgunned and outmanned. St. Louis ruled with an iron fist, and as recently as six weeks ago, it looked like that authority would go more or less unchallenged for one more summer.
Suddenly, nothing could be further from the truth. The Cardinals' lead in the division has withered to 4 ½ games (and just 7 ½ over the oncoming Cubs), and more importantly, they're starting to seem like the ones without the firepower to hold their position. The Central is in full rebellion, and the rebels have a real chance.
In fact, those rebels might already have overrun the sometime tyrants of the territory, if not for Stephen Piscotty. Matt Holliday is out indefinitely, Randal Grichuk went down on Aug. 16, and the Cubs and Pirates are 21-9 and 22-8, respectively, over their past 30 games. The Cardinals could easily have bumped along at .500 over that stretch, given their injuries, and if they'd done so, the Pirates would be leading the division, and the Cubs would be right on St. Louis' heels.
Instead, the team is 19-11 over in its past 30 games, keeping the would-be ascendants an arm's length, and Piscotty is right in the middle of that. He's played 33 games this season, and is batting .316/.349/.538. It's only 126 plate appearances and there are all kinds of signs that it might not last, but for now Piscotty is consistently driving the ball, and his excellent rookie showing has helped the Cardinals offense survive struggles from Kolten Wong and Jhonny Peralta, in addition to those aforementioned losses.
Piscotty is a fascinating case study in prospect profiling, in the potential variance that lives in any five-week sample of performance, and maybe, in the Cardinals' method of player development. The Cardinals grabbed Piscotty with the 36th overall pick in the 2012 draft, a pick they received when they let the Angels sign Albert Pujols. Piscotty came by way of Stanford, so it was no surprise that he hit well in the Midwest League that summer, at age 21. He opened more eyes, though, by continuing to put up good numbers (a strong batting average, plenty of walks, and gap power) at High-A and Double-A in 2013. Prior to 2014, he was on the back end of the top-100 prospect lists at Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and MLB.com. He spent all of last year at Triple-A Memphis, and while he struggled more than ever to consistently produce power, he still hit .288 and walked enough to be a useful corner outfielder. This spring, he was 32nd on Prospectus' Top 101 Prospects, and was tabbed as the top prospect in the Cardinals organization.
The scouting report on Piscotty in Baseball Prospectus' preseason ranking of the Cardinals system read roughly thus: a well above-average hit tool, average power, a very strong arm and a solid glove in left field. That's a good little profile, and it's a fairly common one. Most baseball fans can rattle off a laundry list of corner outfielders whose bats are serviceable for their position, maybe even a bit better, and who would be stars if they were but a little better in either the speed and defense or the power department. Being heavy on batting average is not a sin, if it comes with a solid approach and one can at least acquit oneself somewhere on the field. Piscotty does those things just fine.
Here's what's weird, though: Piscotty bats right-handed. In your mind, revisit the names that popped into your head when you first read the sketch of his skills. You probably thought of Ryan Sweeney, Mitch Moreland, Chris Coghlan, David DeJesus and Nick Markakis. Maybe you pictured a poor man's Alex Gordon, Bobby Abreu or Paul O'Neill. Those players (and most of the others like them) all bat left-handed. The picture painted by both Piscotty's scouting reports and his minor-league numbers is a jarring one for people who try to plot out the futures of guys like him, because the picture is backward. Right-handed batters succeeded with this general blend of tools 40 years ago, but today, it's almost exclusively the domain of left-handed hitters.
For all seasons since 1969, here are the number of batters who racked up at least 250 plate appearances, batted at least .270, had at least a .335 OBP, posted an ISO (isolated power, which is simply slugging minus batting average) no higher than .150, added no more than 10 runs as a fielder, and played at least 70 percent of their games at either first base, a corner outfield spot, or DH. The sets are split into left- and right-handed batters.
Is it a crime to be different? Certainly not. In fact, if it works, it would seem exceptionally valuable to have a right-handed hitter who does things in a way opponents are used to seeing only lefties do them. (It seems worth mentioning that of the three players to fit these criteria as right-handed batters the past three years, two are Cardinals: Holliday this season, and Allen Craig, circa 2013.) Now the question is, does it work?
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Projection systems aren't perfect, but one of the things they can do best is to help us frame a player. Instead of throwing one comp on a guy, good projection systems use hundreds, and they use those players to create a composite expectation -- a career arc that matches some average curve of all the curves traced by the many similar players who have gone before the player in question. On each player's individual page at Baseball Prospectus, we show the top 100 comparable players used to build that guy's current PECOTA projection. Going through them can sometimes provide as much important information about a player as reading the final projection PECOTA spits out for him.
Let's do that exercise, but rather than show Piscotty's notable comparables in isolation, let's establish some context. Kyle Schwarber, whose offensive excellence all the way up the minor-league ladder (in a very short time, it's true) and in the majors has PECOTA projecting him for a .308 True Average through the end of this season, has the following players on his comp list. (I'm not listing 100 players here. Rather, to approximate the chances that the profile this player has hewn out for himself is a sustainably successful one, I'm only reporting the players who, in the season being compared to the control players, had at least a .250 TAv in substantial big-league playing time.)
Kyle Schwarber, notable PECOTA comparables
| Player | Season | TAv |
| Nick Castellanos | 2014 | .254 |
| Colby Rasmus | 2009 | .255 |
| Oswaldo Arcia | 2013 | .267 |
| Christian Yelich | 2014 | .286 |
| Marcell Ozuna | 2013 | .258 |
| Prince Fielder | 2006 | .281 |
| Anthony Rizzo | 2012 | .288 |
| Logan Morrison | 2010 | .314 |
| Travis Snider | 2010 | .254 |
| Wil Myers | 2013 | .303 |
| Lonnie Chisenhall | 2011 | .251 |
| Evan Longoria | 2008 | .292 |
| Brett Lawrie | 2012 | .258 |
| Nick Evans | 2008 | .264 |
| Lastings Milledge | 2007 | .269 |
| Nick Franklin | 2013 | .260 |
These players are ranked by PECOTA's estimated similarity to Schwarber, so don't leap to the conclusion that he'll be as good as Fielder or Rizzo, but this is an encouraging list. There are no shortage of successful players, and two of the best fit Schwarber's profile in terms of handedness and build, too.
Here's Reds prospect Jesse Winker, a younger but comparable player to Piscotty, at least in terms of prospect hype (he ranked higher than Piscotty in Baseball America's and MLB.com's preseason listings, but lower on Prospectus'). Winker is a left-hitting outfielder whose scouting report reads almost exactly as Piscotty's does: very good pure hitter, average power (maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less), decent fielder, but not at a premium spot. His comparables of note:
This list might be a little unfair as an expectation-setter for Winker, since these are all guys who were doing well in the majors at his current age, and he's in Double-A (though he appears to have solved that level, and might be in the minors only because the Reds would gain nothing from promoting him to run out the clock on this season). Still, one can see the general profile. Winker might not be the athlete some of these guys are, but Freeman, Hosmer and Yelich, especially, are promising points of comparison.
Okay, here we go. Here's Piscotty's list of success stories for his current age, among his list of comps.
Jesse Winker, notable PECOTA comparables
| Player | Season | TAv |
| Billy Butler | 2007 | .268 |
| Freddie Freeman | 2011 | .287 |
| Eric Hosmer | 2011 | .274 |
| Christian Yelich | 2013 | .295 |
| Mookie Betts | 2014 | .300 |
| Brett Lawrie | 2011 | .327 |
| Jose Tabata | 2010 | .274 |
| Melky Cabrera | 2006 | .259 |
Stephen Piscotty, notable PECOTA comparables
| Player | Season | TAv |
| Caleb Gindl | 2013 | .278 |
| Chris Snelling | 2006 | .280 |
| Desmond Jennings | 2011 | .291 |
| Mitch Moreland | 2010 | .284 |
| Andre Ethier | 2006 | .288 |
| Ryan Sweeney | 2009 | .266 |
| Chris Coghlan | 2009 | .299 |
We have a problem. There are no truly successful, truly comparable players on this list who also bat right-handed. Of all the listed names (and there are fewer, in the first place, which isn't encouraging), only Jennings bats righty, and he's been good only when he's been able to play center field and do it capably. Piscotty isn't going to be sliding to center anytime soon.
Now, the shortcoming of any projection system is that it's hidebound by what it can see in a player's numbers. It knows heights and weights, ages and positions, even handedness, and it knows the numbers on the stat sheet, but a projection system doesn't see swing paths or projectable bodies or light bulbs going on over the heads of young hitters. Given the information it has about Piscotty, PECOTA isn't impressed. That should inform our analysis of him, but it shouldn't preclude us from seeing his upside, if it's there.
That's where what Piscotty has done during his brief time in the majors has to come into play. He's not playing to that challenging, maybe dying profile. He's playing like Randal Grichuk. Remember, the Cardinals traded for Grichuk in November 2013, and since arriving in the majors, Grichuk has far outplayed his expectations and projections. He hasn't really broken away from his previous profile -- which was a more typical one in the first place, a right-handed power-hitting corner outfielder with tenuous control of the strike zone but the ability to hit the ball hard all over the diamond -- but he's certainly maximized it. In 428 career plate appearances, he's batted .273/.319/.516.
Grichuk's power development isn't a huge surprise, though it's been thoroughly impressive. It's been much more unexpected, though, to see Kolten Wong and Matt Carpenter develop significant power over the past two years, forcing pitchers to pitch them carefully in a way they rarely had to while either player was in the minor leagues.
In the Baseball Prospectus write-up of Piscotty's call-up, Mark Anderson wrote that Piscotty's profile could work if he could reach his "30-plus double, 15-homer" power ceiling. In barely a month, Piscotty has streaked toward that ceiling, with 16 extra-base hits. The question now is whether he'll burst through it, showing the sort of overachievement his fellow Cardinals prospects have set as the standard.
In an effort to answer that question, I reached out to Prospectus' top prospect guru, Christopher Crawford. I wanted to know what might have changed, what Piscotty could have done to effect his uptick in power (which began in his second trip to Triple-A this spring) that a projection system wouldn't have seen, couldn't foresee based on his track record, and might not have had time to react to yet.
The key, as it turns out, isn't so much that Piscotty's newfound power is so recent an addition to his game. To the extent that that's true, PECOTA does a decent job of pricing it in, and of weighing the reality of it against the possibility that it's a mere hiccup, an illusion. The real answer, and maybe the key to both the specific mystery of Piscotty and the broader phenomenon of pop-up Cardinals breakouts, lies in one biographical detail for which PECOTA doesn't account: Piscotty's alma mater, Stanford.
If you're enough of a junkie, you might already know about The Stanford Swing. In case you aren't and don't, though, here's a single-sentence summation of it, from Crawford: "Stanford basically teaches you that pulling the ball is evil and that your swing path should take the ball to right field." For years now, Stanford's coaching staff has emphasized getting one's foot down early and making contact, even if all one does is push the ball on the ground. That isn't a sound or sustainable approach for modern pro baseball, but it serves the short-term interest of the school's coaches (winning games against inferior competition) well. As a result, good athletes with very good baseball skills fall into bad habits while they're there, and they can have a hard adjustment ahead after being drafted.
Piscotty never really had that rough introduction to the pros, though, and the credit for that goes to the Cardinals' player-development team. They clearly allowed him to keep doing things his way, focusing on barreling the ball instead of on driving the ball, until he was not only established, comfortable and successful in the minor leagues, but on the cusp of the majors. Only then did they begin working on the changes the big, strong outfielder would need to really thrive in the majors. He's implemented those changes smoothly so far, and if that continues, he still has star-level (or at least, solid regular) potential. The talent to do this was always there, and the Cardinals might have been wise to wait things out before asking him to use it.
