The Return of the Scapegoat

By Matt "The Stat" Himelfarb
Posted Monday, July 30, 2007

When baseball fans try and dive into the psychological aspect of the game, the fact is that they usually end up reaching some ingenious conclusion based on a terrible mood swing or the belief that by carefully studying a player’s expression you can somehow read his mind. These ideologically based distortions are about as provable as those “reasoned arguments” you’d fine on each page in my history textbook.

Furthermore, when you’re home on Sunday night trying to enjoy a ballgame on perhaps your one night off, and Carlos Beltran hits a lazy fly ball as though his target the whole time was the center fielder, wisdom will simply not prevail. Even though Carlos Beltran is probably forcing himself to play when he shouldn’t, when he’s making $119 million over the next nine seven years and you’re making the bare minimum, you’ll be tempted to call him lazy. When you’re pretty much sure clutch hitting doesn’t exist but Beltran kills yet another rally, you’re going to end up complaining about his lack of clutchness. In other words, even though you might have some knowledge of the game, it’s only inevitable that brains will simply disappear at that moment.

But right now, the answer to Beltran’s struggles is simple; he’s trying too hard.

That may come as a surprise to those who read my work on a consistent basis. I find the prospect that Paul Lo Duca’s leadership abilities somehow compensates for the fact he’s performing terribly in nearly offensive category nothing but mere garbage. But after looking over some of the facts, it’s become all too obvious to me that Beltran simply needs to relax and play his own game.

The first question everyone needs to ask before putting any type of label on Beltran is, what kind of player is he? Most people simply excuse Beltran “struggles” this year as nothing short of what we should’ve expected. Of course, its true Beltran hasn’t hit as high as .280 since 2003. But also, for those who actually resort to meaningful statistics, Beltran’s has been offensively better than most people believe. In his two years prior to coming to the Mets, Beltran compiled an OPS. of almost a quarter over .900. In addition to his offensive prowess, Beltran still remains one of the top defensive players in the game:

FPCT:……. RZR……. PM

2007 .993 .926 +16

Now, it’s easy to be skeptical about defensive statistics, but when the correlation between nearly all these numbers is as significant as it is above, there’s little doubt Beltran is defensively superb. So, ultimately, when you consider the money that Alfonso Soriano was paid over the off-season, there’s no doubt that Beltran is not only a superstar caliber talent,

That leads us to this question: Why was Beltran such an excellent offensive player during his Kansas City and Houston days, as well as his 2006 season with the Mets? It’s possible that in the environment of Kansas City where he felt no need to win, or when he had protection behind him in the lineup during his time with the Astros and the 2006 Mets he felt far more comfortable. But can we really prove that? Not as much as we’d like to, but the only way we can actually justify those claims is if we compare those years to his subpar 2007 campaign.

One of the widespread claims is that Beltran has been slightly more unlucky this year than he has been in recent past. What people tend to forget, however, is that BABIP is something that a hitter occasionally has complete control over in contradiction to pitchers, since LD rates is a repeatable statistic, or a skill if you prefer, for hitters, while pitchers tend to have very little control over their line drive rates.

As a result, Beltran’s .280 BABIP, which is 20 points below the league average, is actually deserved. The data below shows that Beltran’s low BABIP is simply due to the fact he’s not making great contact.

Carlos Beltran MLB Average

LD% 17% 19%

So, I’ll close this by taking a look at how Beltran is seemingly trying too hard this year. First of all, Beltran has no one to blame but himself as to why his IF/F is at an all time low this year (16.5%), since infield flies almost never fall for hits. This supports Keith Hernandez’s claim that Beltran is upper cutting with his swing and looking to hit the long ball. Another of Beltran’s fallacies this year is that, while his strikeout rate is basically the same as it’s always been, his walk rate is slightly down (12.0%). This shows that Beltran is simply not as patient as he was last year, nor as his days in Kansas City and Houston.

What Beltran needs to do is sit himself on the DL for awhile, and once he returns, take it easy on himself. Otherwise, Mets fans might’ve found themselves a new scapegoat down the stretch.

You can contact Matt at: matthimelfarb@gmail.com