All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. In 2022, Heyward will earn a base salary of $22,000,000, with a total salary of $24,500,000. Out of 11 players, only Jim Fregosis production would not have justified a $200 million contract. Now, increasingly deprived of opportunities to pull pitches, Heyward in recent years has been going the other way more often, and 2014 saw more than 19% of his plate appearances end with him hitting the ball to the opposite field, a new career high, and a credible explanation for the plunge in distance and home runs. Shelby Miller is a good young pitcher, but straight up for Heyward? It could have something to do with the. First, there are questions as to whether Heyward is actually worth as much as the defensive metrics say he is. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. While those deals might no look great now, age is a major factor. by Retrosheet. Gomber is working on a two-seam, sinking fastball that he hopes will work at altitude. Solid production, that, despite some disappointing seasons mixed in. Yet, its difficult to project just how hell play during the rest of the season. To bring this all back: There are very early signs that Jason Heyward is focusing more on the pull half of the field. The chart below shows the varying WAR averages from above for Jason Heyward comps at age-26 through age-30, as well as 26-35. Interestingly, although Heyward swung less frequently than in any season since his 2010 debut, he finished with a 10.3% walk rate thats below his career average and set a new personal low for pitches per plate appearance. Sources - Fangraphs, Baseball Savant, MLB.com, Baseball Reference. Examining The Cubs' Fifth Starter Options from MLBTradeRumors.com at 2/22/2023 4:39:00 AM. Just ask Jason Heyward. Ronald Guzmnex-first baseman for the Texas Rangers, is pumping out 97-98 fastballs. by Retrosheet. Drafted: 2007 June Amateur Draft - Round: 1, Pick: 14, Overall: 14, Team: Atlanta Braves. by Retrosheet. A few trade pickups last year are rated highly in 2023. and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location,
All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Dont look at me. Contract: 8 yr, $184M (2016-23) AAV: $23.0M. In the *other* MVP debate, Miguel Cabrera represented, perhaps, a belief in the older-school stats, those three fetishized numbers that have been in the newspapers since the games inception. Heyward does need to keep the ball of the grass and pare down the pop ups to truly tap into his power, but its important to remember that hes still younger than many celebrated rookies and prospects. sent RF Jason Heyward on a rehab assignment to Gwinnett Braves. Anyhow, heres where Heyward has hit baseballs in spring 2016: Of course Im wary of talking about anything based on so little data. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. Alan Trejo will likely move into the second base spot with Brendan Rodgers on the IL. Since Heyward is also the tallest of the four young outfielders at six-foot-five, we have reason to be worried about how long this can hold up for him. All this before you look at his 11 home runs, easily a career low, less than the 14 he put up in two separate seasons when he averaged just 448 plate appearances. News; Wikipedia: . He clearly can the man stands 65. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted
Its easy to lose sight of Heywards age, considering that he has been in the majors for two years, stands 6-foot-5, 240 pounds and could probably grow a beard by noon if he shaved right now. Latest News/Blog Posts about Jason Heyward. Its not surprising. "I've talked . The Fans: .279/.378/.468, 21 HR. But, after falling to a .227/.319/.389 triple-slash and 14 homers in 2011 while bothered by a bum shoulder, Heyward ranks 31st among outfielders (114th overall) in MockDraftCentral.coms latest ADP rankings. Since the end of World War II, there are 42 players to have produced more than Heywards 61.9 defensive runs above average through age-25, and there are 61 players responsible for more offensive runs above average than Heywards 94.5 through his age-25 season. Nov 6 2015 Extended a $15.8 million qualiying offer by St. Louis (STL) Nov 17 2014 Traded to St. Louis (STL) from Atlanta (ATL) with Jordan Walden for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins. Eno, how do you have the nerve to put up a Jason Heyward article before an article about Chone Figgins release? The most important years are likely to be those at the beginning, in which the team hopes to underpay their player. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted
It really had good numbers on the computer. Just how healthy is Heyward? Indiana State vs Bradley MVC Tournament odds, tips and betting trends. Maybe Heyward just belongs in that 110 120 range of wRC+. It may sound strange, but in a way Heywards 2011 season is actually a testament to his supreme ability. . For a big man, he can run a little Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted
Heyward improved slightly in the years to come but still struggled to get back to the form he showed prior to coming to Chicago. Advanced fielding statistics Ultimate Zone Rating (. 1 day ago. Mike Trout represented, perhaps, a belief that we could quantify the other aspects of the game and assign them value. His average ranking is 7.5. This spring, Heyward has hit 17 grounders, and hes pulled all but one of them. Tony Conigliaro was unfortunately never the same after a pitch permanently injured him, while other players like Ruben Sierra and Carlos Baerga simply did not produce despite opportunities. As to the first, this is not the article to convince someone about advanced defensive metrics, but his highlight-reel catches, mutiple Gold Gloves and three Fielding Bible awards seem to indicate there is some consensus from all viewpoints on the excellence of Heyward as a fielder. And then well see if he wants to stay on the same course. He went second to home on a single 82% of the time, which was 16th-best among 131 players. The Dodgers lost their starting shortstop for the entirety of the 2023 season in the third game of spring training. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. But just looking at how Heyward has hit the ball, there are early signs that hes concentrating on pop. FanGraphs Membership. Just a couple years ago, it was Jason Heyward and Giancarlo Stanton that were tearing up baseball, looking like an unprecedented pair of rookie talents ready to continue on into the stratosphere together. Heres a bomb to right. Jason Heyward was a very good baseball player for a very long time. We need your support to make FanGraphs sustainable so you can continue to enjoy all of the stats and tools you've come to rely on, like The Leaderboards. As in the case of the first table, we again see some of the greatest baseball players. Looking at the numbers from 26 to 30 in each group, it is. by Handedness, 2007 June Amateur Draft - Round: 1, Pick: 14, Overall: 14, Team: Atlanta Braves. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location,
Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. But, man oh man, do people ever love to talk about Jason Heyward not hitting for enough power. Heyward will get paid. Hes still really young The Dodgers announced Thursday that they've signed free-agent outfielder Jason Heyward to a minor league contract and invited him to Major League Spring Training. Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:51 PM ET, Park Factors
Now, just two years later, weve got Mike Trout and Bryce Harper one-upping them. Even if Heyward were to hit for more power, that might be offset by a drop in singles, or by an increase in strikeouts. Birthdate: 8/9/1989 (33 y, 6 m, 10 d) Drafted: 2007 June Amateur Draft - Round: 1, Pick: 14, Overall: 14, Team: Atlanta Braves Dodgers outfielder Jason Heyward had glowing praise for manager Dave Roberts, whom he calls a "baseball rat" who loves being around the game. Rojas, a 34-year-old, glove-first veteran, was acquired in the winter to aid the groups depth. I was like, I really just want to see a strike, Heaney said. Perhaps the most aggravating trends for Heyward are his propensity to pop the ball up, producing gimme outs, and chop the ball into the ground, failing to make good use of his prodigious power and 6-foot-5, 240 pound frame. For my ease, I took five-year averages for both WAR and the cost of a win when calculating the total. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Its where most hitters are strongest, and when Heyward had his powerful 2012, he hit just three of his homers the other way. The way hitters hit the ball is a reflection of the swing and the approach, and so look at what you see above. Limiting Heyward comps solely to free agents leaves little by way of realistic comparison. To isolate players similar to Heyward, I looked for players from 1960 to 2007 within five of Heywards 27.8 WAR and within 20% of his 3429 plate appearances. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location,
A recent graduate of Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for Fangraphs, The Pittsburgh Sports Report and Baseball Analytics. Reported as the pre-2023 season number of waiver options remaining. He flew out to center field in his other at-bat in Friday's game. Andy Pages emerging, however, could free Taylor up for the infield (we'll talk about him more in a bit). Swinging at more off-the-plate pitches, hitting the ball up the elevator shaft, smacking ground balls like a slap-hitting middle infielder none of these are good things. Perhaps rightfully so. At an age when most players are chasing a trip to Omaha or cutting their teeth in Low Class-A, Jason Heyward crushed major league pitching in 2010. He homered off former Dodger Andrew Heaney in Wednesdays second inning. Jason Heyward opens baseball academy in Chicago from TrueBlueLA.com at 2/4/2023 5:04:00 AM. De Paula hit .350/.448/.522 with 13 doubles, five home runs, and two triples in 53 games in the Dominican Summer League in his professional debut, and the power was intriguing enough that FanGraphs wasn't alone on an island. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted
fangraphs.com 1d. According to FanGraphs, the 26-year-old was worth 6.0 fWAR (FanGraphs' Wins Above Replacement) in '15the sixth most WAR among outfielders. And Heywards 57 percent ground ball rate places him among lightweights like Alexi Casilla, Kosuke Fukudome and Elvis Andrus. The chart below shows the varying WAR averages from above for Jason Heyward comps at age-26 through age-30, as well as 26-35. Even with a bum shoulder, Heyward has managed to draw a decent amount of walks and hit for some power. While Heyward is a solid offensive player, he does get a decent portion of his value from defense, which causes some concern about how Heywards value will sustain itself as he ages. I dont want to start my first game of Spring Training going 3-0 on a guy or nibbling. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Theres a pretty good distribution of balls around the field. Only Garrett Jones (three of 108) had a smaller percentage of GDPs with a minimum of 100 opportunities. While hes never going to be a big stolen base threat, hes a quality athlete for a power forward-sized corner outfielder. Dec 11 2015 Signed an 8 year $184 million contract with Chicago (CHC) Nov 15 2015 Player declined $15.8 million qualiying offer. Throw caution to the wind, even. But lets diagnose why Atlantas prodigy is turning in a subpar sophomore season. 1 seed Bradley Braves (24-8, 16-4 MVC) square off against the No. Combining average power with a low strikeout rate (14.8% in 2015) and a solid walk rate (9.2%), Heywards wRC+ of 121 puts him in the upper third in terms of the leagues hitters. If Heyward had one or two games where he hit everything the other way, that would make this look way different, and thats why its too early to say anything. But, when seen in the light of this years AL MVP debate, as well as the context of these four young outfielders, it is remarkable that Heyward has taken a similar path to Mike Trout, even with an athleticism that might be touch short of that demonstrated by the American League Rookie of the Year. It was a massive year-to-year swing, as Bogaerts concentrated on getting hits the other way. But for now, we can revel in the fact that Jason Heyward, yeah he does a pretty good Mike Trout impression. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. And he continued to hit far too many ground balls (nearly 54 percent of the time he put it in play), limiting his power output (.162 ISO). by Retrosheet. Currently, Yahoo! The names brought up most recently with regard to Heyward are Jacoby Ellsbury, who got seven years and $153 million from the New York Yankees two years ago, and Carl Crawford, who received seven years and $142 million from the Boston Red Sox five years ago. Jason Hayward signed an 8-year/$184,000,000 contract with the Chicago Cubs, which includes a $20,000,000 signing bonus, $184,000,000 guaranteed, and an annual average salary of $23,000,000. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. by Handedness, Trying to Put a Value on Jason Heyward in Free Agency, Effectively Wild Episode 761: An Offseason Friday Gallimaufry, The Best of FanGraphs: November 2-6, 2015. Free agent Jason Heyward agreed to a $184 million, eight-year contract with the Cubs, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. Aggravating as it might be, we dont know the answers to those questions. There are two graphs below estimating the value of Heywards comps over the next ten years. Using the players from the chart above, here is how those players played from age 26 through age 30, the first five years of a potential Jason Heyward contract. Castellanos hit just .263/.305/.389 for a 94 wRC+ (matching his career-worst mark . Its not even clear this would be a good thing. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. Updated: Saturday, March 4, 2023 4:51 PM ET, Park Factors
If you can sign him without an opt-out, you might be in the rare position of having an 8- or 10-year megadeal where the player is worth his salary every year. 2023 Pre-Season Projections Its really impressive to see a guy go out there and throw a ton of strikes and throw strikes with his offspeed pitches. Cavan Biggio will play half his games in the outfield. The 19-year old was a first round pick in 2007 and has wasted no time The 19-year old was a first round pick in 2007 and has wasted no time establishing himself as a premier outfielder Heyward, a .211-hitter in 2021 and 2022, made significant swing changes over the winter. From 26 to 35, the group got better offensively and the only player who completely busted was Carey Patterson. At the very least, we should expect Heywards average over the rest of the season to climb considerably. Signup . A year ago, Jason Heyward was a fantasy baseball stud muffin. So I was like, Im just gonna kind of throw it at him down the middle. And he hit it out. Ideally, we could look for players like Jason Heyward who are good offensively and defensively and see how those players performed. Thats baserunning without those gaudy stolen bases. by Retrosheet. Last year he hit for almost zero power, and his grounder pull rate went from 68% to 43%. FOX Sports - Rowan Kavner 1d. Heaney then tossed a middle-middle fastball, hoping for an easy strike. On June 3, Higgins recorded his first major league hit, . The headline raises the red flag right off the bat Im probably making too much of too little. The coaches that were working with me were trying to get me to throw a sinker because sometimes my fastball sinks, Oviedo said. The Chicago Cubs already boasted one of the best young . Look at Jason Heyward. What follows is an attempt to find similar players to Heyward using various methods: WAR, offense, defense, and a hybrid of offense and defense. by Handedness. Technically, the entire 1927 Yankees couldnt legally buy a beer, either. I looked through age 25, but lacking enough comps, expanded the age range to 26 years old. Heywards 131 OPS+ as a 20-year-old bested that of Willie Mays and put him in the same company as Ken Griffey Jr. Its no surprise, then, that there were enormous expectations for the Braves right fielder in 2011: the fans projected him to hit above .290 while getting on base nearly 40 percent of the time and slugging north of .500. by Retrosheet. Crawford debuted young, but due to a team-friendly contract, he did not become a free agent until after his age-28 season, three years older than Heyward. With an injury (and a team deflation) taking some of the wind out of Stantons sails, and Buster Posey blowing up the National League Most Valuable Player debate, the new toys got a lot more attention than the old new ones. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. I then looked at age-25 performance and eliminated anyone who was not within two wins of Heywards six-win season this year. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity. Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards. Notes: PitchCom, Jason Heyward, cold weather Dodgers pitchers are hesitant to use the PitchCom device to call their own pitches. For comparisons sake, the average age for hitters in the Low-A South Atlantic League (which Heyward aced at 18) was 21.4 in 2011. Especially because of the accidental report that floated this week about Canario already being back on the field doing baseball work (he's not; still way too early for . and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. Overall, the group still put up above average numbers offensively. He was 97-98 [mph], but I dont think that was the most interesting part of the outing. Heres why. . Chicago Cubs. When signing long-term contracts, teams tend to pay them out equally over the length of the contract. Heywards production, meanwhile, has been excellent from an early age, similar to multiple Hall of Famers. He has slugged eight homers in 599 plate appearances as a big leaguer. The lowest member of the group, Willie Randolph, still averaged more than three wins per season. Play-by-play data prior to 2002 was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted
Dodgers Add Jason Heyward LA signs five-time Gold Glover to a minor league deal with an invite to major league camp via Bleacher Report Jason Heyward Cubs Moving On from Heyward Team. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Heyward, as you know, is left-handed, and here is where he hit baseballs between 2014 2015: I dont know what, if anything, stands out right away. Using FanGraphs approximate current cost of a win at $8 million, the numbers are even bigger. Searching again for players from 1960 to 2007, limiting those players through age-25 within 20% of Heywards PAs, but instead of using WAR, look at players with a wRC+ between 110 and 125 and within 15 points of Heywards 121 wRC+ at age 25. Apparently the Dodgers will do anything to keep James Outman on the farm. For one thing, pitchers have shied away from trying to bust Heyward inside, and instead are focusing on trying to get him to chase pitches away. Our premise is that their bad (or Gallo got the upper hand on the Red Sox in his second inning at-bat, drawing a walk to nullify Boston's shift. Its hard not to fall in love with the fantasy potential of Jason Heyward, especially for those of us who cant forget the cant-miss hype surrounding his debut and a rookie season that seemed like the precursor to imminent superstardom. Id imagine all those infield popups are at least partly due to his bum shoulder. Maybe hed find a different path to a familiar destination. The last qualifier hurt more than helped Heyward, as Barry Bonds and Adrian Beltre were removed from the list. Good defensive outfielders might simply be a smaller subset of that group overall. All Win Expectancy, Leverage Index, Run Expectancy, and Fans Scouting Report data licenced from TangoTiger.com. For an awfully consistent hitter, Jason Heyward is considered an awfully frustrating hitter. Crawford is WAY ahead of simba according to pretty much every defensive metric this year. Lacking in top shelf power, Heyward still provided solid numbers on offense, and after a disappointing start with he Cardinals, he hit .306/.375/.455 with a wRC+ of 130 from the beginning of May to the end of the season. Earlier this week, August Fagerstrom took a look at recent seasons authored first of Mike Trout and then of Clayton Kershaw and compared them to the greatest peaks of all time. All he needs to do is stay healthy. If he took the same type of offensive step forward as Carlos Beltran and Reggie Smith, he might win an MVP. It was a true comfort level, not rattled at all. This season I am using FanGraphs Roster Resource Depth Charts * as the source of default lineups. Putting everything together, we still have not placed a value on those wins. by Handedness, 2007 June Amateur Draft - Round: 1, Pick: 14, Overall: 14, Team: Atlanta Braves. Meanwhile, the team is likely stuck with big contracts for the likes of B.J. Karl, a journalist living in Washington, D.C., learned about life's disappointments by following the Mets beginning at a young age. As teams expect to get the best production at the beginning of the contract, they understand that a contract will likely underpay the player in the early years and potentially overpay him as he ages with the surplus from the beginning ideally canceling out the loss at the end. Crossword; Sudoku; Crossword; Sudoku _____ About Us If you took Jason Heyward in your draft this year you almost certainly spent a pretty penny on him. May 23, 2011 Atlanta Braves placed RF Jason Heyward on the 15-day disabled list retroactive to May 22, 2011. My favorite minor story line this season is that the Cubs are paying about $40 million to replace Heyward with Bellinger, and the Dodgers are paying about $0 to replace Bellinger with Heyward. Heywards year wasnt in the same realm as Ott, Mantle or A-Rod, but he outdid Willie Mays, Hank Aaron (outside of the top 25 with a 103 OPS+) and Johnny Bench, among many others, and kept company with Junior Griffey. Hes forever been a work in progress, so maybe hed change his focus on a whim. Andrelton A. Simmons 198994 18888426 . But in the previous five years, he had bounced between eight different organizations, unable to find his footing in the majors before an opportunity arose with the Dodgers. All UZR (ultimate zone rating) calculations are provided courtesy of Mitchel Lichtman. Major League and Minor League Baseball data provided by Major League Baseball. Bill James ESPN rated the oufielder 11th in the system, Baseball America had him 12th, and The Athletic rated De Paula 18th. FanGraphs currently estimates the cost of a win at around $8 million. Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. Reported as the pre-2023 season number of waiver options remaining. Historically, Heyward has hit about 30% of his flies and liners toward left. Heaney added that, in the regular season, he probably wouldnt have thrown that pitch in that situation. Games, Puzzles, and Crossword. Heyward is not Trout-level amazing, but he has been incredibly productive through his age-25 season. Watch as both teams attempt to take one step closer to . For an awfully consistent hitter, Jason Heyward is considered an awfully frustrating hitter. While Fangraphs weighs his overall contribution at 4.7 WAR for 2013, his UZR/150 (23.9) and Defensive Runs Saved (41) paint a picture of a high-floor player. Adding in 23 steals on 26 attempts and the rest of his baserunning, Heywards 22 runs above average on offense placed him within the top quarter of qualified hitters. The Chicago Cubs outfielder hit a third of batted balls in play in the air in 2016, but saw his slugging percentage dip to a career-low (.325) due to his exit velocity . Players are always free to change their minds about anything. How much will he be worth? Others call it a slurve or even a whirlybird. Heywards defense and lack of power has the potential to confound, but stripping away the defense, we still see an incredibly valuable player with the potential to maintain or even improve his production. From BIS, Heyward had the highest range numbers in the business. He recently contributed an article on Mike Stanton's slugging to The Hardball Times Annual 2012. Greatest Careers Through Age 25 Since World War II, Jason Heyward WAR Comps, Age 26 to Age 30, Jason Heyward WAR Comps, Age 26 to Age 35, Jason Heyward Offense-Only Comps Through Age 25, Jason Heyward Offense-Only Comps, Age 26 Through Age 35, Jason Heyward Defense-Only Comps Through Age 26, Jason Heyward Defense-Only Comps, Age 26 Through Age 35.