The Nine Best First Basemen for 2013
Last week I rolled out the best catchers for 2013. And let me tell you, that list was a lot easier. The first base crop is great at the top, but then it gets a little bit less clear. Plenty of debate should come from this, but here are my top nine first basemen for the 2013 season.
9. Eric Hosmer (Royals)
Yeah, yeah, yeah his 2012 was a disaster. But I’m a believer. He’s very young and I’m comfortable writing off one bad season after he broke onto the scene in style in 2011 and during spring training last season. I love his glove and when he squares up a pitch, it can go a long way. If 2013 doesn’t go well for him, I’ll back off, but for now, I’m still a believer.
8. Anthony Rizzo (Cubs)
If you multiply the half season he played in the majors in 2012 by 2, he’d have been a top five first basemen. Not everyone is capable of doing that over a full season, but I think Rizzo is. His defense was good for the Cubs and I really like his swing. Solid average and good power. If he can improve the patience a touch, which I think he will, Rizzo could be a star.
7. Allen Craig (Cardinals)
Craig is a bit of tossup. His glove at first isn’t wonderful, but he’s a phenomenal hitter. He mixes contact and power in an excellent fashion. If he can stay healthy he’s great, if not, he won’t be. Simple as that. I’ll bet on only a couple weeks on the DL and say he’ll be a top nine 1B.
6. Mark Teixeira (Yankees)
Teixeira does certain things well. He hits for power. He walks. He plays excellent defensive. What he does not do well, is make contact. People who don’t make contact don’t crack the top five.
5. Freddie Freeman (Braves)
Freeman walks, hits for power, and plays solid defense. The average needs a boost and I buy a breakout from the young Braves first basemen. His lineup is better than last year and he’ll be another year older and wiser. Freeman is a guy to watch in 2013.
4. Adam LaRoche (Nationals)
LaRoche is also someone who combines power, walks, and defense. Well he did in 2012. He’s a bit of a wild card, but I’m going for it. He was a mess in 2011 due to a low BABIP, but I’m going to bank on him for one more year in the middle of that great Nationals lineup.
3. Prince Fielder (Tigers)
Prince is an excellent hitter. He hits for average. He draws walks. He has prodigious power. He hits behind the game’s best slugger and is one of the most durable baseball players in the world. He doesn’t play good defense though, so he can’t crack the top two.
2. Albert Pujols (Angels)
2012 was a down year for The Machine, but 30 HR and 3.9 WAR is better than a down year for almost every person on Earth. Pujols just set a very high bar. The future Hall of Famer is probably on the decline, but coming down from his insane peak still leaves a lot of room for him to be great. Look for a couple more great years before the party is over.
1. Joey Votto (Reds)
There is a case to be made the Votto is the best offensive player in baseball. In 75% of a season in 2012, he posted a 5.9 WAR. He’s a good defender, too, but man the offense. I’m just going to let his slash line do the talking, because really, what could I say that it doesn’t? .337/.474/.567. Read that again and let it sink in. Unbelievable.
The Mysterious Eric Hosmer
2012 opened with very high hopes for Royals’ 1B Eric Hosmer. He was coming off a solid four month debut in 2011 and had a monster spring training. Scouts in ST said he looked as good as anyone in baseball at the plate in March.
Hosmer was one of the breakout candidates in baseball in 2012, but that didn’t happen. I was among the fans of Hosmer who saw big things in 2012 and put my money where my mouth was, drafting him 66th overall in my fantasy baseball league, right about where Yahoo! had him ranked. He finished in the 340s.
But we all know that fantasy baseball stats don’t reflect a player’s true performance, so that isn’t enough to tell us Hosmer disappointed. But he did. He posted a -1.1 WAR in 2012 which was among the ten worst in all of baseball among qualified hitters.
Hosmer, the future star, played like Michael Young and Brennan Boesch according to WAR and traditional fantasy stats. Or did he?
I went inside the numbers, and I have no idea what to think. He posted a 1.6 WAR in 2011 in about 75% of a season, so let’s call it a baseline of 2.2 WAR. We would expect him to improve in his second season, so let’s say we’d expect him to put up a 3.0 WAR in 2012.
His true WAR was 4.1 wins below that number. That’s pretty substantial. Let’s try to explain why.
First, UZR doesn’t like his defense (although many expect him to be a top tier gloveman), but it didn’t like his defense much last year. That accounts for maybe 0.5 WAR of the difference.
Hosmer walked more in 2012, but also struckout a bit more. The slash line dropped across the board. The average dropped 60 points, OBP by 30, SLG by more than 100. His BABIP also fell by more than 60 points.
So this would seem to indicate he was making the same amount or more contact, but the contact he was making was substantially worse. Is that true?
His line drive rate is the same and he’s traded 4% of his flyballs for groundballs, but that can’t be it. He hit fewer infield popups. He swung at fewer pitches outside the strikezone.
What happened to Eric Hosmer?
Two explanations emerge. First, Hosmer is hitting the ball just as squarely, but is doing so with substantially less force. I would think that this would result in more popups and fewer line drives, but it’s possible that it doesn’t. Maybe, Hosmer lost power despite getting a year older and a year better.
Or maybe he was extremely unlucky. Maybe he was so unlucky we can’t even believe it. His BABIP dropped dramatically, which is an indicator of luck. But there is skill inside BABIP, maybe that skill deteriorated. We generally think as sample size increases, luck tends to balance out.
But we also know that BABIP takes three years to balance out to the real value. What if Hosmer had the unluckiest of seasons?
It seems unlikely, but we would expect that over the course of many seasons, one player would stand out as supremely unlucky over the course of a season. Wouldn’t simple randomness lead us to at least one strange outlier?
That’s my take. I don’t really know what happened to Eric Hosmer in 2012, but I have images of the 2011 version of him mashing baseballs with tenacity, so I’m not so sure I know what else to think.
Maybe 2013 will provide us with answers. But for now, I’m calling Eric Hosmer’s 2012 season the Unluckiest of All.
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