I expect this to continue. While I don’t think he will ever be a walk machine, he doesn’t need to be. He doesn’t strike out that much for a guy with power, and I like his multi-skills. When Hart was just starting out he was compared to Richie Sexson due to his size and wingspan. I don’t think Hart will produce the kind of home run power Sexson did at his peak, but Hart is faster and move valuable defensively, and he does have some untapped power upside. It’s also possible he could stay where he is right now in the power department but add some additional batting average instead. Either way, I think Hart still has room for improvement, and given the fact that he’s already very good as it is, he could end up having some outstanding seasons heading forward.
...PECOTA really likes him. Comps include Sammy Sosa, Cliff Floyd, Joe Carter, Andre Dawson, Dave Winfield, Ron Gant, and Ellis Burks. The most negative comp is the second one, Wes Chamberlain. Top Sim Scores through age 25 are Bill Nicholson, Tommy Henrich, Ivan Calderon, Bobby Higginson, Jacque Jones, Jim Edmonds, Jon Nunnally, David Justice, and Larry Doby. Nunnally is the weakest player in the bunch. Both comparisons systems like what Hart is done and project him as a very solid player, even an excellent one.
Basically there is nothing not to like here. If Hart merely stays where he is right now, he’ll be a very good player. If he improves in some way, boosting additional power, or adding more batting average and OBP, or both, he’s a legitimate star. Some comparable players have ended up as Hall of Fame type talents. That’s an observation, NOT a prediction, so don’t go buying truckloads of Corey Hart cards. But it does show the direction some similar players have developed in.
Repoz
Posted: March 10, 2008 at 06:59 PM |
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Yeah, no sh*t Sherlock.
His defense is better than his numbers would indicate. He is the fastest guy on the team. He has excellent control of the strike zone and will change his swing depending upon the pitch/count/situation.
Basically everything Corey Hart does on the ballfield helps you win.
That's a darn small sample size, and none of those players seem particularly comparable to Hart. Widen the OPS+ to 125-127, and you get players who jumped, sustained the gain, and are more comparable (like Nick Swisher).
Yeah, I read that and was puzzled. Why choose only players with exactly a 126 OPS+? It would seem to make more sense to widen the sample a bit (say 126 +/- 5) and get a statistically significant dataset.
That strikes me as a weird set of comps. The young Sosa was not hugely productive and he peaked relatively late. Dawson was the reverse. Gant was another late-peaker as was Burks to an extent. And I'm pretty sure almost all those guys had a lot more playing time through age 25 than Hart has -- I find it hard to believe a guy was really running around with Dawson/Winfield/Sosa level of talent and nobody recognized it. Hart is turning 26.
I don't know that I consider those guys all that similar anyway and, in terms of playing time, steals, and (generally) defensive ability, they seem not a great set of comps for Hart. (I don't think PECOTA includes defense) That's not to say that Hart is slow or poor defensively.
Also, Hart was only a part time player in 2006 and it was more or less his very first ABs in the majors. Hell, he wasn't even an everyday player in 2007 until Braun came up. Yost is an idiot.
Sorry if you don't like it, but that's an overreaction. You think a subpoint made within one of five main points is bad so the entire article should be taken out? Like I said, that's an overreaction. Including the chart, the bit on Hart was less than 10% of the article.
I only looked at that group because I wanted to keep the sample size managable enough for the table to work.
Seriously? Why not just expand the criteria and list only those players who made jumps? Then at least we could get a sense of what Hart's odds are, if only on a limited scale.
Do you believe that the comps you cited are actually predictive of regression for Corey Hart? Did you do a larger study that supports that conclusion?
I knew the exact parameters were too narrow, yes. I didn't just look them up, though. I began with my guesstimate that he was due to fall back a bit, did that first search, and then looked up some more guys who had OPS+ leaps at similar age (give or take a year from his). Most of them fell back some. It wasn't perfectly systematic, but it was enough to make me think that I was on to something, though.
To be fair, most didn't fall back as far as Gedman or Brooks Robinson. This portion of the article was actually a little longer, with me comparing him with the guys listed, but the basic point was that I thought he would fall back, and there was no reason getting too detailed in it. (At one point, the article was over 3,000 words long; far too much for this).
In retrospect, the table was a bad idea. I should've made my points about how the big bats should fall back, and not try to cover too much. Looking back, I tried to cover too much ground in too little room, and ended up an inch deep analysis in a mile wide article. Thus the problem with the Hart chart.
Thanks, Chris.
He played both infield corners, and was almost always viewed as something of a butcher.
I certainly wouldn't brag about having written the Corey Hart section of that article. There is a bit more to projecting player performance than pulling up OPS+ numbers on Baseball Reference, I'm afraid.
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