Podcast: Fixing Yasmani Grandal and Yoan Moncada
Rundown:
- Recap of Yasmani Grandal and Yoan Moncada’s seasons
- How big of a factor is age regression for Yasmani Grandal’s struggles in 2022?
- Can Grandal adopt a similar hitting approach we saw Jose Abreu recently take?
- Is walking more the cure for Moncada’s woes?
- What’s the performance level for Grandal and Moncada to merit their contracts?
Haven’t we got to the realization that 2019 was an aberration power year and shouldn’t be used as some kind of indicator for a player.
The 2019 ball’s power surge didn’t apply equally to all players. The high EV (huge strength/raw pop) hitters like Judge, Stanton, etc weren’t much affected by it. The smaller, bat-control-oriented hitters like Lindor or Bregman are who had career power years. It’s because the 2019 ball carrying more helped warning track fly balls become wall-scraping homers.
Moncada to me is more in the former group; he’s always been very strong, COVID year excepted, but struggled to barrel the ball consistently. His EV that year was very high, 8th in the league at 93.1, by far a career best, which wasn’t the case for Lindor or Bregman. I think his power production that year was more coincident with the bouncy ball than a product of it; he simply barreled the ball up much more often with aggressive swings.
Good summation at the end there Josh.
No one disputes that Moncada will make a lot of money in 2023 or that he a very bad year in 2022. Everyone is concerned about Moncada’s future production and cost.
I’m not posting to convey any undue optimism on Moncada going forward. I’m posting to say that I think Josh’s comparison method of looking at the 5th highest paid third baseman’s WAR this year and setting that as the bar for the Moncada to be successful next year is not a valid evaluation method.
Moncada having an OPS+ of over 115 with good defense next year (by no means a certain or even a likely outcome) would certainly be a success for a team like the Sox with no other legitimate third basemen on the roster or in the upper minors even if he’s “overpaid”. Every successful team has some overpaid players (and some bargains).
I think they just need Moncada and Grandal to not be underwater in terms of their production. At their respective pay, about 2.5-3.0 WAR should do the trick. Not star production, but above average should be good enough to make them at least worth what they’re being paid and certainly a lot better than the disasters they were in 2022. heck, that’d be a 5-6 win swing if they could just manage that much.
DJ LeMahieu did have a 116 wRC+ (.261/.357/.377; 12 HR – God offense was way down in 2022) and ended up being a 3.0 fWAR player. I see your point in which if Yoan Moncada put up those numbers, it’s fine even at $17 million.
The $24 million next year owed requires a significant jump in play, and I think pressure needs to be applied to Moncada. He’s making more money than Jose Ramirez.
Moncada’s salary will matter a lot for an organization that won’t exceed the Luxury Tax. He needs to earn that paycheck.
The analogy to someone struggling to play the first five notes of a song on guitar struck a little closer than I would care to admit.
As somebody who’s spent quite a bit of money at Guitar Center in the last year, yeah, I felt that one.