Marcus Semien, the Quietest Star

Marcus Semien is as much as his typical methods. He’s eighth amongst all place gamers in WAR, comfortably the perfect on a first-place Rangers squad. For the third straight yr and the fourth out of 5, he’s on monitor to rack up four-plus WAR as one of many two finest gamers on his staff. For somebody who didn’t put up an above-average batting line till his seventh main league season, it’s a powerful accomplishment.

Perhaps extra spectacular to me: he’s doing it proper below our noses, and nobody appears to note. Semien is nice at every part however not in a means that provides as much as an amazing offensive line. His finest ability could be sturdiness. He’s clearly an excellent participant, however his explicit set of abilities are highlighted by the framework we grade him below. I’m keen on Semien as a participant, and I’m additionally keen on why he’s the poster boy for each what WAR will get proper and the place it has limits.

Let’s begin with how Semien does it. It’s pretty simple: he’s above common at each part of the sport. It begins along with his plate self-discipline. To put it merely, he doesn’t make dangerous choices about when to swing. In every of the previous 5 years, he’s achieved a powerful double: chasing fewer pitches than league common and concurrently swinging at extra in-zone pitches than league common. To state the plain, that’s an effective way to each rack up a pile of walks and keep away from strikeouts.

If you zoom in on Semien’s choices, they get even higher. He doesn’t have large uncooked energy; he’s roughly common with regards to any measure of prime exit velocity you care to select. He delivers additional base hits most regularly when he swings at one thing over the guts of the plate, extra so than whichever slugger you care to match him to. Guess what? He’s among the best within the enterprise at doing simply that. When pitchers throw him one thing over the guts of the plate, he swings a whopping 85% of the time. That’s the sixth-best fee in baseball this yr, up there with aggressive hitters like Corey Seager and Freddie Freeman.

That won’t sound spectacular by itself. After all, just a few weak hitters dot the highest of this checklist, too. Ezequiel Tovar is third, and he’s far too aggressive for his personal good. Joey Gallo and Christian Bethancourt function prominently on the prime of the desk. Merely swinging at loads of pitches down the center doesn’t imply you have got it discovered. But Semien has the opposite aspect of the equation below management, too. When pitchers throw him one thing within the chase zone (not proper on the fringes of the zone, however not an computerized take both), he doesn’t swing. Of the 297 hitters who’ve seen a minimum of 100 chase pitches this yr, 243 of them have swung extra regularly than Semien. He’s an outlier in each instructions.

He must be, as a result of as we’ve already coated, his uncooked energy is pedestrian. With middle-of-the-pack exit velocity, you may count on middle-of-the-pack energy manufacturing. You’d be incorrect, as a result of Semien squeezes each final drop out of his contact high quality. His park-adjusted remoted energy is 16% greater than MLB common to date this yr. It was 21% greater than common final yr, 61% above common in 2021. By swinging at good pitches, getting the ball within the air, and usually maxing out his batted ball alternatives, he places up solidly above-average hitting numbers with nice regularity.

“Solidly above average” does a great job of describing Semien’s different contributions as properly. He’s a plus baserunner — not among the best within the league however inarguably above common. He’s a stable defender at an up-the-middle place. He’s a scratch defender at shortstop, which makes him a plus defender at second base. No matter the part of the sport, Semien is best than most main leaguers at it.

Exactly how priceless is that skillset? That’s a query sabermetricians nonetheless wrestle with. By wins above substitute, Semien has been the tenth-best place participant in baseball from 2019 to now. But that assertion lacks context. WAR lacks context by its very nature. It’s an try and boil down all of baseball right into a single quantity, a aim that inherently removes nuance. Take a take a look at these aforementioned prime ten gamers, with just a few statistics appended:

Semien’s standout ability jumps out: he simply performs greater than the remainder of these guys. His offensive manufacturing is above common however not otherworldly. He’s not among the best shortstop defenders of our era like Lindor. But he’s on the market each single day; he has a whopping 1,000 extra plate appearances than Trout, for instance. In truth, Semien leads the majors in plate appearances over that span. Freeman is the one different participant inside 100, and José Abreu is the one different participant inside even 200.

Why does that matter? Because WAR is a counting statistic, which implies that gamers above substitute degree rack up worth each time they play (on common). An common participant is value slightly below two wins over 600 plate appearances — round 1.85 to be extra exact. Give that participant an additional 130 plate appearances (Semien has averaged 732 within the final three non-COVID seasons), and so they’d be value extra like 2.3 wins above substitute.

If you’re just a little bit higher than common, these additional plate appearances add much more juice. Consider a participant who produces 4 WAR per 600 plate appearances. That’s a fringe All Star, kind of — Matt Chapman or Eugenio Suárez in 2022. Turn that as much as 730 plate appearances, and that’d be extra like a 5 WAR efficiency. Likewise, Semien completed final yr with 4.2 WAR, proper in step with Chapman and Suárez. If he’d solely been capable of play for 600 plate appearances value of time, although, he’d have completed the yr with 3.5 WAR, comfortably behind them.

Should we be giving Semien credit score for that additional taking part in time? It is dependent upon the way you view the idea of substitute degree. The central idea of substitute degree is undeniably intelligent: If you’re batting in your staff, another person can’t be batting, naturally sufficient. Value is dependent upon the distinction between what you probably did and what another person would have executed in your house. That idea will get prolonged to fielding, baserunning, and every part else on a baseball diamond. It’s a sublime means of assigning worth, and the final idea of worth relative to substitute is pervasive not simply in sports but in addition in just about each analytical area you may think about right this moment. But as Bill James usually factors out, the true sticking level is in that definition of substitute degree.

WAR handles this query kind of by fiat. Or, properly, fiat isn’t fairly proper. In 2013, FanGraphs and Baseball Reference agreed to make use of the identical substitute degree worth of their calculations of WAR. That worth works out to 1,000 wins above substitute per yr, break up throughout your complete main leagues. That’s primarily based on quite a lot of research that estimate manufacturing by freely accessible gamers, but it surely’s simply that: an estimate.

For probably the most half, WAR being barely off simply isn’t that massive of a deal for single-season functions. If you calculate substitute degree incorrect, so what? Most full-time starters get 600–650 plate appearances a yr, so the gamers we’re evaluating after we take a look at WAR leaderboards are placing up their statistics over related workloads. One participant is normally means out in entrance, anyway; Semien might have batted 1,500 instances final yr with out placing up as a lot worth as Aaron Judge.

Semien is true on the borderline of constructing me rethink the argument, although. He performs a lot that the taking part in time variations actually do matter. He’s worse on a per-plate-appearance foundation than everybody in his basic neighborhood on the WAR leaderboards. It’s completely true that one of the simplest ways to calculate worth is relative to what you’d be getting from a substitute. The definition of substitute merely issues extra for Semien.

Consider this: if we take a look at wins above common as a substitute of above substitute, Semien drops to fifteenth as a substitute of tenth. Notably, he’s behind Fernando Tatis Jr. regardless of having batted greater than 1,000 instances extra usually over that window. Instead of being a rounding error behind Trout, he’s 5.5 wins behind. Change the baseline, and worth modifications proper alongside it.

Which baseline is right is a trickier query, and in my view, worth is in the end closely depending on staff context. Good groups have higher replacements than dangerous groups basically. Last yr, for instance, the Dodgers needed to dip into their replacements once they confronted a wave of accidents. Their replacements had been nice, although, producing 2.5 WAR in 528 plate appearances as a result of Trayce Thompson, who they acquired for nothing in the course of the yr, put up 2.8 WAR. The Astros, alternatively, received 0.3 WAR out of substitute degree gamers over 708 plate appearances.

Who your direct substitute is issues so much, in different phrases. The drawback with calculating that for Semien is that he largely hasn’t had a substitute. He performed in 161 video games final yr. The yr earlier than that, he performed in all 162. He performed in all 162 in 2019 as properly. My finest guess is that Josh H. Smith would get additional reps if Semien performed much less, but it surely’s actually only a guess.

Smith seems to be like a roughly common participant to me. Our projections assume he’ll be value 0.6 WAR in 175 plate appearances the remainder of the best way this yr, which works out to round 2 WAR per 600 plate appearances. But if it’s not Smith as a substitute, it could be Travis Jankowski (through some infield/outfield switches), and we expect he’s a lot nearer to substitute degree. In different phrases, the context of substitute degree isn’t even clear after we choose a selected staff and a selected yr.

Where does that go away me in eager about Semien’s worth? I’m inclined to aspect with our calculation of WAR quite than attempting to recalculate some greater substitute degree, even after presenting the argument in opposition to it right here. The reality is that sturdiness is effective. Semien’s additional taking part in time lets the staff give different gamers relaxation and use situationally helpful guys once they’re at their finest quite than overexposing them. His sturdiness is actually spectacular, too, which makes me extra inclined to offer him credit score for it. Excluding 2023, he has eight items of black ink on his Baseball Reference web page — video games in 2019, plate appearances in 2019, video games in 2021, plate appearances in 2021, video games in 2022, plate appearances in 2022, at-bats in 2022, and sacrifice flies in 2022. In different phrases, he’s the perfect within the league at being on the market day by day, and offering an above-average fee whereas doing so.

Could you argue that WAR barely overstates Semien’s worth? Sure. But I guess you his teammates would inform you in any other case, and I guess you groups would as properly. The plate appearances we don’t see from his substitute could be impossibly difficult to worth, however that doesn’t imply they’re nugatory. It simply means our instruments aren’t good, and whereas I believe we’re fairly good at valuing manufacturing nowadays, I don’t assume we’ll ever get all the best way to perfection.

Statistics on this article are present via video games of Saturday, June 17.