Rays Blog: Ben Zobrist and Jason Bartlett disappoint in surprise 2010 Rays season

In 2009, the Tampa Bay Rays were blessed with one of the most productive middle infield combinations in baseball in Ben Zobrist and Jason Bartlett, albeit in different styles.

One of the best Sabermetric measurement tools available to those who desire to fall on the sabermetric side of the stats versus scouting debate is WAR – Wins Above Replacement. Steve Slowinski of DRaysBay.com developed a very informative site for those interested in learning more about Sabermetrics called the Sabermetrics Library.

The site is a reference manual for all of the terms that are becoming more mainstream into the baseball analysis you see on television, hear on radio, or read in this column three times a week. On his site, Slowinski describes Wins Above Replacement as:

“If you had to pick one statistic – and only one statistic – to use in evaluating players’ value to their teams, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) should be it, end of story. You should always use more than one metric at a time when evaluating players, but that doesn’t change the fact that WAR is pretty darn all-inclusive. WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?”

For 2009, both Zobrist and Bartlett ranked in the top sixteen for the American League in their WAR totals. Zobrist’s 8.3 Wins Above Replacement was the highest value of any player in the American League in 2009 – even better than that of unanimous MVP Joe Mauer.

Zobrist’s WAR value was helped both by his amazing season at the plate and his tremendous work in the field, playing wherever manager Joe Maddon needed him to play on a particular night. Zobrist’s bat was the fourth most valuable in the American League, while his defensive value was second best in the league trailing only Seattle’s Franklin Gutierrez.

Jason Bartlett’s Wins Above Replacement value in 2009 was 4.8, which trailed only Derek Jeter at the shortstop position and made him the sixteenth most valuable player in the American League in 2010.

Unlike Zobrist, Bartlett generated nearly all of his value at the plate, as his defensive value was actually below league average after four straight seasons of nearly the exact opposite outcomes. Bartlett set career highs in nearly every offensive category across the board in 2009, surprising just as many people as Zobrist did with his huge surge in power numbers last year. Additionally, both players were amongst the most unlikely all-stars that were introduced in St. Louis two Julys ago.

2009 was a season in which both Bartlett and Zobrist exceeded the expectations of the organization and the fanbase in a season where the team’s overall performance was a disappointment.

In 2010, that script has been flipped as the team is out-performing the preseason predictions of most baseball analysts, despite the fact the dynamic duo of 2009 has been missing in action for most of 2010. Jason Bartlett has seen his WAR value slip to just 0.6 this season which is one of the ten worst in the American League while Ben Zobrist has seen his drop to 2.7. Where have things gone wrong for these two in 2010?

When looking at Bartlett’s 2009 season, it is impossible to think of any other term but, “career year.” His OPS (On Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage) was 120 points higher last season than it was at any other point in his career. His BABIP (batting average on balls in play) was 16 points higher than his previous career high. That was aided by the fact he had a 26% line drive rate last season; most batters have a 18-20% line drive rate over the course of a season. The higher a batter’s line drive rate, the higher their batting average as line drives have the best chance of landing safely in play. Even his home run to fly ball ratio was a lofty nine percent compared to his career average of just four percent. When a player sets career highs across the board such as Bartlett did in 2009, at the age of 30, the odds of repeating that are very slim. What Rays fans are seeing from Bartlett in 2010 is not a slump, it is simply him returning closer to his established career norms.
Bartlett did miss time earlier this season with a hamstring injury and that is part of the reason he is not attempting as many stolen bases as he did in 2009. The other part of that equation is Bartlett has not been on base as much this season which has cut back on his number of his stolen base opportunities. In 2009, Bartlett had 224 instances where he was on first or second base with the base in front of him unoccupied – a metric which is referred to as SBO (stolen base opportunities). In those 224 instances, Bartlett attempted 37 steals and was successful 81% of the time. In 2010, he has had just 159 SBO’s and has attempted just fifteen steals with a 67% success rate. In all, Bartlett’s bat and his feet have cooled off from his red-hot 2009 which makes his below-average defensive work less tolerable to the critical fan.

Ben Zobrist has been able to maintain his terrific work in the field throughout 2010 but his massive drop in offensive production this season is one of the biggest mysteries to baseball analysts in 2010.

Zobrist, by his own admission, has not been right physically all season. He has been bothered by a stiff neck throughout most of this summer and has had some other back issues at times this season which are likely a by-product of his hard-nosed play in the field. In 2009, he was able to set career highs in every category after being granted the increased playing time when Akinori Iwamura was knocked out for a majority of the season with a knee injury and his power improvement was backed up statistically. In just 227 plate appearances in 2008, Zobrist hit twelve home runs and had a home run to fly ball rate of 17%. In 2009, Zobrist hit 27 home runs and once again had a home run to fly ball rate of 17%.

In 2010, that home run to fly ball ratio has plunged down to six percent – a rate he has not seen since his limited playing time of the 2007 season. When a player shows a period of sustained production as Zobrist did from late 2008 through most of the 2009 season and then regresses as rapidly as Zobrist has in 2010, physical ailments are the first area to examine. A power hitter is nothing without his core and it is possible that Zobrist’s neck and back are bothering him more than he has let the public know. However, it is also quite noticeable to those who watch Zobrist play night in and night out that the league is pitching him much differently than they did last season.

Before 2009, pitchers were not afraid to challenge Zobrist with fastballs. In fact, according to Fangraphs.com, pitchers threw him fastballs 65% of the time from 2006 to 2008 and it was not until late in the 2008 campaign that he started making pitchers pay for utilizing that approach. In 2009, pitchers reverted back to their old habits and again challenged Zobrist with fastball but he made them pay with regularity throughout most of the 2009 season. Zobrist was also extremely selective in 2009 chasing just 20% of the pitches pitchers threw him out of the strike zone which was five percentage points better than the league average.

In 2010, pitchers have changed their approach to Zobrist and have worked in more change-ups and breaking pitches to get ahead while staying away from using fastballs on the inner half that he turned on with such regularity last season. This shows up by examining his Z-swing% which measures the percentage of pitches a batter swings at within the strike zone. In 2009, Zobrist swung at 59% of the pitches he saw within the strike zone but in 2010, that number has dropped to just 52%. That drop speaks to how effective pitchers have been in adjusting their pitch patterns and why he has the fourth worst strikeout-looking percentage on the roster. Zobrist’s selectivity from 2009 has also decreased as he has adjusted to the new ways in which pitchers have attacked him as he is chasing 25% of the pitches thrown to him out of the strike zone in 2010. Whether it is the injuries, a failure to adjust, or a combination of both, Zobrist’s 2010 offensive efforts have been one of the few disappointments on the Rays’ roster.

To Zobrist’s credit, he is still getting on base at a .356 rate and is 23 of 26 on the basepaths, but his batting average has been below .200 since July 1st and he has but seven extra base hits in the past two months. At age 29, he can still bounce back and have another productive year but that year may be somewhere in between what he has done these past two seasons rather than a repeat of his phenomenal 2009 season.

Despite the overall disappointing performances of the dynamic duo of just a season ago, the Rays are still just one game off the pace for the best record in all of baseball. There is another saying that baseball analysts swear by: Once you display a skill, you own it. The regular season has another month left and the Rays likely have a post-season spot awaiting them in October so there is still time for Jason Bartlett and Ben Zobrist to flash the type of skills that drove those 2009 numbers to help the 2010 club achieve more than anyone expected them to do as they broke camp in Port Charlotte in late March.

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Jason Collette is part of the BHSN Bloggers Network. He is a writer for The Process Report. Opinions expressed by members of the BHSN Bloggers Network does not reflect those of Bright House Sports Network.