Javier Baez, Sammy Sosa, and the Need for Patience

It was less than a year ago, but far enough back that Jason Parks had not yet passed through the black veil and out of the Internet’s reach forever. In mid-May 2014, Javier Baez was scuffling badly at Triple-A Iowa. Through May 15, Baez had come to bat 118 times, struck out 45 times, walked 10 times, cracked five extra-base hits, and posted a .142/.229/.255 batting line. Parks, then the prospect czar at Baseball Prospectus, went so far as to wonder whether Baez had some sort of vision shortfall that was making pitch recognition so unexpectedly escape his grasp. Baez commenced a tear at about that time that would last the 75 games or so before he was promoted to the majors. However, before the hot streak, a little bit of panic had set in on Cubs Twitter, and in order to assuage it, a leading Cubs blogger reached out to Parks to ask for more insight on Baez. This quote ran on May 23:

“Has a lot of approach issues to work out. Likely to be Sosa-type over Cabrera-type. Big power, but inconsistent contact. Baez is going to take a lot of time, even when he starts to figure out Triple-A­—which will happen. MLB arms will punish him for a while.”

“Baez tries to hit everything,” Parks continued. “He doesn’t have his spot locked in yet. Very similar to a young Sosa. He just swings it.”

“But once he learns how to avoid swinging at pitches in his problem areas and focuses on swinging when he gets ‘his pitch,’ he will take off.”

That was no idle comparison to Sosa, as it turns out. It was regarded, in most circles, as a reinforcement of what we all thought we already knew about Baez. (Funny how confirmation bias works.) He was raw. He was undisciplined. He had tremendous potential, but dangerously rough edges on his game. He could become a superstar, but had significant hurdles to clear. And of course there were the obvious connections to Sosa: they’re both Latino, Cubs, and regarded as a bit cocky. You could see it, even if it felt like an uninformative composite sketch.

It runs a little deeper. That’s the takeaway that should probably have been clearer, sooner, but was glossed over until Baez’s MLB debut—which was a slightly longer, equally hideous version of that stretch to open the season in Iowa—brought his flaws into painfully sharp focus. Baez isn’t just akin to Sosa in terms of what he might one day be, but in the length of time it might take him to get there, and in the difficulty of the adjustments ahead.

Sammy Sosa came to the major leagues in 1989 with the Texas Rangers. He batted 88 times for them in 25 games. In those 88 trips to the plate, Sosa struck out 20 times and didn’t draw a single walk. He was traded to the White Sox, spent another month in the minor leagues, and had an impressive stretch of 115 plate appearances to close out the season. But he remained an unknown quantity heading into 1990. The White Sox let him run wild that season, and he stole 32 bases, but was caught 16 times. He cracked 51 extra-base hits, but struck out nearly five times as often as he walked. By mid-1991, Sosa’s age-22 season, they were so fed up with his failure to adjust—he had a .235 OBP on July 19, thanks largely to an 81-to-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 272 PA—that they demoted him to the minors for another month. He finished the year with only modestly encouraging showings in August and September, striking out less, but trading much of his power to make some contact. He was not developing plate discipline, at least not in any discernible way.

Obvious progress began at age 23 for Sosa, after the Cubs traded for him on the eve of the 1992 season. A broken hand and a broken ankle took big chunks out of his season, but he began a metamorphosis that year. He struck out less often, walked more, and held on to enough of his power not to be spooked out of the new approach that would serve him well. With health and development finally falling into lockstep, Sosa blew up in 1993, and never looked back. He didn’t become an OBP machine, but he waited out enough at-bats to let his natural power show through. He didn’t become Carlos Beltran on the bases, or in the field, but he picked his spots a shade better when stealing and reined in his wilder defensive derring-do. He became an above-average everyday player with an exciting strengths profile—and that was before Jeff Pentland or The Secret Stuff or God Himself crawled into Sosa’s skin and started Hulkamania in 1998.

Can I drop a second (and, sorry, even longer) block quote on you? This is from The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, written during Sosa’s absolute peak, just after the start of this century. It’s not about that peak, though; it’s about the way Sosa developed:

“Was it foreseeable that Sammy Sosa would develop into a star? Two teams gave up on him before he broke through … They didn’t foresee that he would become a star. Should they have?

Absolutely they should have. It was not inevitable that he would become a star, but it was always at least a 50/50 shot, and baseball men should have known it. … There are few examples on record of players who were regulars at age 20 who didn’t become stars. … [Sosa] could have continued to struggle; he could have devolved into Juan Samuel or Claudell Washington. But his work habits were always good, and his attitude was always good. One should never promote such a player as a star, because that increases the pressure and complicates the player’s development, but the Rangers and White Sox were short-sighted not to realize that he was probably going to be a very good player.”

(Bolded emphasis mine; italics his.)

Javier Baez was never not going to be hailed as a star. Even 15 years ago, James couldn’t imagine the way coverage of the minor leagues—and specifically, of top prospects—would work today. No one made a mistake in promoting Baez as a future star. That mantle was inevitable, given his skills and the media world in which we live. Therefore, Baez has, as James called it, a more complicated development path ahead. He has to be willing to adjust even more than Sosa did, and he has to do it despite hearing about how good he is, isn’t, could or should be, every day. Still, history is plainly on his side.

Baez, of course, was not a regular in the majors at 20. (Incidentally, neither was Sosa, the way I peg a regular; James took some liberties to make his point.) His debut came at 21, and he’ll go back to the Pacific Coast League at 22, at least for a short while. Getting too caught up in one number, though, can disguise where Baez really is, developmentally. Bryce Harper was the youngest player in the National League from the time of his debut, in April 2012, until Baez’s, in August of last year. Harper, as Baseball Twitter can’t wait to tell you for the hundredth time, has never faced a pitcher younger than he as a professional. Baez, though, has only had three plate appearances against such pitchers. It’s not as notable an achievement in his case, but it’s still plenty notable.

Since 1988, there have been 74 players who amassed 1,200 or more plate appearances through the end of their age-23 seasons. Sosa was among the very worst of them, worth only 1.3 Baseball Reference WAR over that span. However, he’s also one of 12 of that group (so far) who racked up at least 50 rWAR from their age-24 season onward. Twenty-eight of the 74 have been worth at least 25 rWAR since age 24. Forty-five have been worth at least 10 rWAR. Fully half of the list members are still active, so these numbers will all rise. Without presuming to speak for everyone, I can confidently call 54 of the 74 very positive potential outcomes for Baez.

Baez isn’t to this plateau yet, of course. In fact, he would need a healthy 971 plate appearances over his next two seasons to get there. Complicated development or not, though, he’s at least as advanced a player as Sosa was at this age. Baez was on first base when a single was struck six times last season; he reached third base on five of the six. He also stole five bases in six tries in the majors. (His success rate was noticeably lower in Triple-A.) The coaching staff, for whatever this is worth, raves about his accountability for his struggles at the plate, and about the things he does exceptionally well away from the plate. Sosa wasn’t this good a defender or baserunner at 22. He was probably never this good a defender, accounting for positional value.

Even for Baez, a 60-homer season is a league-wide change in offensive environment away. He’s not going to have the signature Sosa seasons, if only because those seasons are impossible to replicate under modern conditions. He’s going to develop, though, just the way Sosa did. It might take time—something the suddenly competitive Cubs may not have to give him. (Indeed, the 1992 White Sox felt they were contenders, and so traded Sosa for over-30 slugger George Bell, feeling it would give them a better shot at the AL West crown.) If there was one thing neither the fans nor the organization fully understood before last summer, it was the sheer time commitment necessary to bring along a talent like Baez.

The team’s depth at second base—Tommy La Stella, Arismendy Alcantara, and Addison Russell—will force Baez to earn playing time. He should be able to find a place when he’s ready, though, since he’s a better defender than La Stella, and since Alcantara and Russell have higher utility elsewhere on the diamond. In the next few months, one of a few things almost needs to happen:

1. Baez makes whatever first wave of adjustments is necessary, is promoted, and settles into the third spot in the Chicago batting order.
2. The Cubs sign Baez to a contract extension that gets them at least two years of free-agent options at a minimal cost, leveraging the fact that he has stared failure in the face, in order to save money if and when he breaks out, even if it takes time.
3. Having rebuilt his trade value by letting the memory of his ugly debut fade, the Cubs trade Baez, for something much better than George Bell.

In the meantime, though, watch Baez with the knowledge that, however rough he looks in any given plate appearance, the next one could be the beginning of a very predictable, very fruitful offensive evolution.