The Case for Max Kepler, a Novel

[Aaron Weiland]

 

I wrote this up for Reddit and thought I would share it here as well:

 

The Intro

Yeah, I get it. He's not exactly a fan favorite right now with the subpar performance at the plate and the Toronto vaccination situation. There's been a lot of steam about a Max Kepler trade, and I've seen a lot of people express surprise that teams would even be interested in Kepler. But underneath the hood, there is reason to be optimistic if the Twins retain him for 2023. At the very least, this might give you some idea why Max Kepler still has good value on the trade market.

 

In 2022, Max Kepler slashed .227/.318/.348 for a .666 OPS and an OPS+ of 93. For those who don't know, OPS+ is league and park adjusted stat where 100 is league average and every number below or above 100 is a percentage point compared to the league average. For example, Aaron Judge had an OPS+ of 211 last year, meaning he was 111% better than the league average hitter. Max Kepler, on the hand, was 7% worse than the league average hitter. There is no way to sugar coat it, his outcomes at the plate were bad. I'm not here to say they weren't.

 

What I am here to highlight is what the underlying, projective metrics say about his performance at the plate in 2022. Stats like AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS+ and wRC+ are excellent ways to judge and grade past performances. However they are, by definition, worse at predicting future outcomes than Expected stats like xBA, xSLG etc.

 

Underneath the Hood

Simply put, the underlying metrics on Kepler look more like a potential all-star candidate than a frustrating hitter. Seriously, go look at his Savant Page. That's a lot of red.

Max Kepler's xBA and xSLG were .266 and .412, respectively. Had the actual outcomes of his at-bats mirrored these predictions that are based on his batted ball metrics, he would have slashed .266/.357/.412 for an OPS of .769 and an OPS+ of around 120. 20% better than the league average hitter. Combined with being literally the best right fielder in all of baseball defensively, I think I speak for everyone when I say that Max Kepler is one thicc bihh that we would all love to have on the team. So why the discrepancy? There are two main causes.

 

First, xBA and xSLG have no way to account for defensive alignment. In other words, the shift. Expected stats only take the batted ball metrics and compare how often that batted ball profile is a hit, and what type of hit it is based on the players sprint metrics etc. If you hit a 110 MPH EV line drive with a 13 degree launch angle through the hole in the right side of the infield, all Statcast can know is that is a hit, say, 83% of the time, so it gives it an xBA of .830. It can also know that in the case of Kepler he is in the top quarter of sprint speed, so it can assess how often 75th percentile sprinters turn that hit into a double, and that is taken into account in xSLG. But what it can't take into account is if there is a second baseman standing in the right center field gap that turns that .830 xBA hit into a one of the most routine looking outs of all time. Anecdotally, I remember many comments in the game threads about Max Kepler routine outs having .500 or higher xBAs. This is why.

 

The second major reason is actual outcomes will always still be influenced by BABIP randomness, even in traditional defensive alignments. Sometimes the defender just makes an insane play and takes a hit away from you. Sometimes you might hit .950 xBA steamer and the center fielder makes a highlight reel play. We should all be familiar with this because we watch Byron Buxton do it to opposing hitters on a near daily basis.

 

The Good News

So why the cause for optimism? Well, simply put, there is every reason to expect Max Kepler's actual outcomes to progress towards his expected stats. The main reason for this is, of course, the shift ban. If you're not familiar, in 2023 teams will be required to have 4 infielders with both feet on the infield dirt, two on each side of second base.

This is the part of this discussion that gets a little speculative because we just haven't seen how teams will work around the shifting rules for prime shifting targets like Max Kepler (and Joey Gallo, for that matter), so we have no substantive statistics to base these projections on. It very well could be that teams will still have their shortstop play practically dead even but just to the left side of 2nd, and have their 2nd baseman stand in the right center gap, but just on the edge of the infield. But even in this "worst case scenario" for Kepler, this new defensive alignment will certainly lead to more base hits, and more importantly extra base hits, than he had in 2022. While the ground balls would still usually result in outs in this scenario, the line drives would start to fall in far more frequently. And for hitters with the profile of Kepler, the line drives are of far more importance anyways. The line drives also result in higher quality hits like doubles far more often, especially when you run as well as Kepler does.

 

But, for the sake of fun, let's speculate. Let's say that the shift ban results in Kepler only splitting the difference between his 2022 outcomes and his expected stats, which I think is a very conservative estimate. He would own a slash line of .247/.338/.380, which is .718 OPS, and in 2022 that would equate to roughly an OPS+ of 107, or 7% better than league average at the plate. For those of you who may, at this point, be thinking "Didnt Gleeman and Bonnes say on their podcast that the shift ban would probably only result in only like, 8 more hits for Kepler?", this slash line just so happens to be exactly 8 additional hits. Well, it's 7.836 additional hits, but we round up around here. I didn't do the exact math on the SLG gain, but I believe this is also assuming roughly two of those 8 additional hits are doubles, which given his above average speed and high exit velo capability, I think is a very fair assumption.

 

An interesting player comp to this slash line is Cleveland's Amed Rosario. In 2022, Rosario slashed .283/.312/.403 for an OPS of .715 and an OPS+ of 106. This slash line combined with Cleveland's higher propensity to steal bags lead to Rosario accumulating 3.8 offensive WAR (oWAR) last season. Based on this, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that in this scenario, Max Kepler is a ~2.5-3 oWAR player and a ~3.5-4 WAR player overall this year when factoring in his elite defense.

 

The Bad News

For all you Kepler doomers out there, I wanted to mention there is still one cause for concern. In 2021, Max Kepler's ground ball rate was 37.1%. In 2022, his ground ball rate was 45.7%. Remember when I mentioned that that "worst case scenario" for defensive alignment probably wouldn't change the outcome on ground balls and that it really matters for line drives? Well, a 8.6% increase in ground ball rate is a bad sign for that. I chalked it up to Kepler playing injured for half his season, and I did note that his line drive % also went up. But, it's important enough to mention here. Is that enough to throw massive doubt on his chances of having a bounce back year in 2023? I'll leave that up to you guys to decide.

 

What do you guys think? Is a decent chance at having a 3-4 WAR Max Kepler worth the $8.5M he's due in 2023, or do you think it's still better to trade him now while the chance of him having this potential still gives him some value?

[Doctor Gast]

Thank you Aaron for those enlightening stats. IMO Kepler has tried to change his swing to try to beat the shift, with very little luck. Once the ban is on, Kepler will revert to his natural swing. I was totally against trading Kepler before the  deadline but with signing Gallo it's almost certain that'll happen.