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“When are we going to get a 'Chase Headley is awesome' article at BP? Or did I miss it?” These were the exact words, and this is the exact article. And I don't know if you missed it.

What you may have missed, particularly if you are in or not in San Diego, is that Headley has been on a rampage since being omitted from the National League All-Star team. As of this writing, he leads the majors—along with the Tigers' Miguel Cabrera—with 20 homers in the second half. As in, more than everyone else. As in, more than the 15 he hit over the previous two seasons combined. This helps explain why the Padres are tied with San Francisco for the third-best record in the NL since the break.

Headley's season total sits at 28, which is more than he hit over the previous three seasons combined. He leads the NL in RBI with 104, which is more than he had in 2010 and 2011. The weird thing is that, except for his homers and RBI, this looks like a typical Chase Headley season. Can you spot the monster year without those stats (and his sexy .487 SLG, which gives it away)?

Year

Age

PA

BA

OBP

2B

BB%

K%

2008

24

368

.269

.337

19

8.2

28.3

2009

25

612

.262

.342

31

10.1

21.7

2010

26

674

.264

.327

29

8.3

20.6

2011

27

439

.289

.374

28

11.9

21.0

2012

28

634

.284

.371

26

11.8

22.9

Of course you can, because I told you he's having a monster 2012, but those all look like the same guy. There's probably a point to be made here about choosing which stats to reveal and which to withhold. Perhaps some other time.

Speaking of which, I included age in the above table because that is a potential narrative. “Well, he clearly just needed time to develop and we can see that…” Age and experience are important, but it's overly simplistic to attribute all of his improvement to those factors.

To our original point, Headley is hitting in the .260-.290 range with 25-30 doubles and the usual number of walks and strikeouts. For fun, let's examine a different set of stats from those seasons:

Year

Age

PA

HR

RBI

SLG

2008

24

368

9

38

.420

2009

25

612

12

64

.392

2010

26

674

11

58

.375

2011

27

439

4

44

.399

2012

28

634

28

104

.487

That doesn't look like the same guy, does it? And oh, hey, there's the point about choosing which stats to reveal and which to withhold. We didn't have to wait long after all.

This is also a good time to remind you that Headley plays half his games at Petco Park: Destroyer of Offense, Humbler of Men. Hold that thought; we'll return to it in a moment.

* * *

So I looked at Headley's list of similar players through age 27 at Baseball-Reference. This is a technique that, while far from perfect, often makes for a good starting point. In Headley's case, it is almost completely useless. I can see Scott Cooper, but Franklin Gutierrez, Milton Bradley, Kevin Bass, and Johnny Grubb? Beyond the fact that Bradley and Grubb once played for the Padres, I'm not seeing those comps at all.

For one thing, those guys were outfielders. Which brings me to my next point: You may or may not remember that Headley “played” left field on first arriving in the big leagues. He was blocked at third base by—and I'm dead serious—Kevin Kouzmanoff. So Headley shifted to the outfield, with poor results in the field and at the plate. Without attempting to quantify how bad he was, here's the distribution of his innings in the field, expressed as percentages for easier digestion:

Years

Innings

Total

LF

3B

1B

2007-2009

2015.1

84.1%

15.8%

Trace

2010-2012

3573.0

0.0%

99.9%

Trace

This includes his eight-game cameo in 2007, when he served as a short-term replacement for the injured Kouzmanoff at third base. The following season, after a huge .330/.437/.580 campaign in an extreme pitchers' park at Double-A San Antonio, Headley was shifted to left field in an attempt to get his and Kouzmanoff's bat (I know, I'm just explaining the thought process) into the big-league lineup at the same time.

To that point in his career, Headley had played 315 games in the field in the minor leagues. All of those came at third base. In 2008, while advancing to Triple-A Portland, Headley moved to left field and played 56 games there. Then he was recalled to do the same in San Diego.

This is a long way of saying that for the first 1,001 plate appearances of his big-league career, Headley wasn't even playing the right position. So his list of comps is ridiculous, and also it is perhaps less surprising to learn that he struggled at the plate while trying to figure out how to play left field at the highest level.

To fix this, I created a list of comps through Headley's age-27 season based on different criteria. It is also somewhat ridiculous, but what the heck:

Player

PA

BA

OBP

SLG

HR

BB

K

Todd Zeile

2462

.265

.347

.402

51

276

331

D'Angelo Jimenez

2264

.267

.350

.382

33

254

356

Chase Headley

2114

.269

.343

.392

36

202

472

Entering 2012, Headley was a cross between Todd Zeile and D'Angelo Jimenez. Because that makes sense in this or any other universe.

Still, if you discount the fact that Headley bears no resemblance to either of those guys as a player and focus solely on statistical output, this isn't a horrible fit. The point is, we're looking at a marginally useful player who may (in the case of Zeile) or may not (in the case of Jimenez) go on to enjoy a long and successful career.

As I mentioned several paragraphs ago, one of the issues with Headley is his home ballpark. I ran numbers before the 2011 season, noting of Headley that “for his career, he’s Johnny Damon on the road and Alex Cora at home.” Because of this and his general stagnation at the big-league level, our comments in BP2012 were conservative:

Headley plays capable defense at third base, runs well, and is a smart player. As long as he calls San Diego home (career .229/.319/.336 there versus .303/.364/.441 on the road), the best he can hope for is to duplicate 2011's success. PECOTA doesn't like his chances to do that, but if Headley sticks with last year's approach, he should beat the projection.

These comments were written in December, a couple of months after the Padres hired Phil Plantier as their hitting coach but before Plantier worked with Headley in spring training. As Padres beat reporter for MLB.com Corey Brock observed on Twitter not long ago:

Important to note on Headley (and in general): Career paths are not linear. Tweaked mechanics to generate more pull-side loft. It happens.

Yeah, you could write a dissertation or three on the non-linearity of career paths. Steve Finley didn't really get started until he reached his 30s, but I digress. The point is that our comments about Headley made perfect sense before we knew that a) he would tweak his mechanics and b) doing so would make a difference. How many times has Will Venable, to use one example, changed his approach and gotten the same results? It's like anything else in life: Try stuff and hope it works.

Returning to Headley's home/road splits, it is easy to dream on what he might accomplish away from the cavernous Petco Park. As we discussed earlier this year, people do that with Venable all the time. Heck, they did it with Adrian Gonzalez. Remember when his already-prodigious power was supposed to improve after he left San Diego? Remember when the opposite happened?

The thing about park factors is that they make sweeping generalizations. Left-handed hitters are hurt by Petco Park, but right-handers do okay. But are we measuring the park's effect on players or vice versa? For example, among lefties, Gonzalez was penalized by his home venue more than Venable is. On the flip side, Scott Hairston and Nick Hundley “prove” that righties can handle Petco Park, while Khalil Greene and Ryan Ludwick “prove” that they cannot.

Which lefties? Which righties? Why? These are questions for another day, but they are worth asking.

For the record, here's how Headley has fared at home and on the road throughout his career (omitting his 2007 cup of coffee):

Year

Home

Road

PA

BA

OBP

SLG

PA

BA

OBP

SLG

2008

166

.230

.307

.358

202

.301

.361

.470

2009

280

.208

.300

.351

332

.305

.377

.426

2010

332

.237

.319

.315

342

.289

.334

.432

2011

210

.243

.348

.326

229

.330

.399

.465

2012

320

.265

.350

.434

314

.303

.392

.542

He still doesn't have a great relationship with Petco Park, but at least they're on speaking terms. And on the road, he's hitting like Prince Fielder, which is nice. Whatever the case, this marks a departure from Headley's earlier approach, as conveyed to Jonah Keri back in April:

I did make an adjustment when I first came up. It doesn't play to hit a ton of flyballs there. So I did try to flatten out the trajectory a bit.

It looks like science because numbers are involved, but it's more art. Ludwick has admitted that he let Petco get into his head, but how do we quantify this when making translations? Solve for unknown F (“Freaked out by home ballpark”). Oh and by the way, he didn't reveal this issue until well after he'd left San Diego and returned to the cozy NL Central. So not only was this an unknown, it was—to use a phrase I've come to abhor—an unknown unknown.

Put that in your equation and smoke it.

* * *

I have created comps for Headley in the past, and it's fascinating to see where his career has taken him since then. We are snapping still photographs of a process that is constantly in motion.

Back when I was writing books about the Padres, I took my first shot. From the Ducksnorts 2008 Baseball Annual, on the heels of his Double-A breakout campaign:

Headley draws praise for his intelligence and makeup. His overall offensive game calls to mind Jeff Cirillo (the good version, not the guy who played for the Padres in '04), with a bit more home-run power.

(Cirillo is a favorite “template” of mine; I've taken to comparing Jedd Gyorko to him.) When I sought statistical comps for Headley three years ago at my old blog, I came up with Ken Caminiti, Jeff Conine, Michael Cuddyer, Kevin Millar, and Lyle Overbay. As I said at the time:

I could see Headley topping out in the 20-25 HR range, but… he’s more of a doubles guy. If he tightens up his strike zone a bit, I’m envisioning a Kevin Millar/Lyle Overbay type of hitter, which is pretty valuable at third base.

Aside from the fact that Headley already has exceeded 20-25 homers this year (thus surpassing my and everyone else's reasonable expectations), neither of these comps strikes me as outrageous. I'll restate another point from that 2009 article concerning the nature and limitations of player comps:

There can be tremendous value in developing and deploying complex algorithms that take massive amounts of data and consolidate it into something manageable and useful.

It is important, however, to recognize that such algorithms provide us with a starting point, not an ending point. We use these tools to help us better understand the world around us, to begin an inquiry into something that sparks our curiosity.

I then wax poetic about the importance of exercising judgment when attempting to interpret data provided by these algorithms, present a bunch of numbers, and reach the following conclusion:

Don’t become overly attached to these comps. Yeah, a lot of work went into deriving them, but this isn’t the type of exercise you do once and then let rest. What if Headley goes Aaron Hill [whose home run total jumped from 2 in 2008 to 36 in 2009] on us next year? Then we have to feed this new information back into the system and recheck our assumptions, possibly adjusting our expectations. (For example, at various times, I have compared Adrian Gonzalez to the likes of David Dellucci, Brad Fullmer, and Chad Tracy. Last I checked, none of them ever hit 40 homers in a season.)

Ask questions. Search for answers. Wash, rinse, repeat. If you feel like you’ve got something nailed, you don’t. Go back and dig deeper. Eventually you will come to understand that you don’t know squat.

This is a good sign. It means the real fun is about to begin.

My assessment of Headley has changed a little since then, but my process hasn't. The biggest change is that I now am ignorant of more things than I used to be. Or as I like to think of it, I have more to learn.

All of which is lovely, but what about Headley's future? Where do we see him going from here? Remember that bit where we said this stuff is more art than science? Thing is, he's already surpassed anyone's reasonable expectations. Headley has hit more home runs with a month remaining in his age-28 season than he did in his age 25-27 seasons combined. That really messes with a guy's algorithm.

The honest answer is that he's definitely better than Jimenez and probably better than Zeile. He might be better than Overbay, especially when you consider the difference in defensive position (and it's no accident that I've compared Headley's teammate Yonder Alonso to Overbay; after all, Alonso's offense bears strong resemblance to that of Headley at the same age). Ditto Millar, but it's hard to say because this is the first time Headley has abused opposing pitchers since 2007 at Double-A San Antonio.

Guys typically don't go from four homers to 28 in a season after having had 2,000 career plate appearances under their belt to that point. I mean, it happens. Hill exploded in 2009. His power has been intermittent since. Going back further, Bert Campaneris did it in 1970 and Davey Johnson did it three years later. Their power turned out to be a fluke, but Headley's is harder to dismiss. He showed it in the minor leagues (okay, so did Johnson) and now, he's doing it at the highest level.

Is Headley likely to hit 25-30 homers a year now that he's done it once? It could happen, but I look back to the first table in this article and focus on those other numbers. He'll hit .270-.280, he'll hit 25-30 doubles, and he'll walk about 11 percent of the time. The homers could go anywhere. I'm sticking with the 20-25 I cited as his ceiling in my 2009 article. If he does this again next year, then I'll re-evaluate. Because then maybe something has changed about Headley that we didn't know.

But if so, how long does that change benefit him? How long does it push against the drag of age, opposing pitchers making counter-adjustments, and who knows what other factors? Gonzalez seemed to get old in a hurry, and not a lot of people saw that coming. Career paths are not linear.

Yeah, that's probably a smart thing to remember. And irritating.

Thank you for reading

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dianagramr
9/18
Caption under front page picture: "Chase Headley's monster season has helped him tie for the most homers in the majors since the All-Star break."

======================

I may be nitpicking here, but this just sounds backwards.
formersd
9/18
Geoff,I'm wondering much of the bump in production in Petco is due to the unusual heat and humidity we've seen in San Diego over the past 5-6 weeks? I'll also be curious to see if the rumored park reconfiguration comes to pass as that would seem to aid LH hitters.
gyoung858
9/18
Great question. This is something I've been wondering myself for a while but haven't had a chance to study. My guess is that these factors do make a difference, but I have no data to support that guess.
alangreene
9/18
Sweet! I didn't miss it.

I had completely forgotten the Padres tried Chase in left field for those seasons, both wasting his strong defense and putting him in a situation where he was a) obviously uncomfortable and b) had to focus on things other than hitting.

I don't know if the position change made a material difference to his bat, but I remember it wasn't an overly easy one just from body language, etc.

It totally made sense at the time.

Formersd has a good point as well about the heat. He was crushing it before the really strong heat wave, but the day/night splits at Petco are pretty differentiated and the marine layer is as important as the size of the OF in terms of crushing power, IMO.
alangreene
9/18
Also: is there a player you would have thought to be less likely than Phil Plantier to be a hitting coach?

"See, what you do is have an incredibly uppercut -- like sixty degrees -- and then swing so hard you can barely keep your eye on the ball."

Not saying it didn't work for Phil, but...
gyoung858
9/18
I would have thought Charlie Lau and Walt Hriniak less likely than Phil Plantier. :-)
gjhardy
9/18
There have been hundreds of players who have "made changes" in the offseason but there doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason as to what makes them successful this year after they were just mediocre or poor in previous seasons. I think about Ben Zobrist and Justin Ruggiano, who both apparently benefited from "the Swing Mechanic" Jaime Cevallos. Jose Bautista worked with Dwayne Murphy on a relatively minor tweak -- getting his front foot down earlier -- and became a monster. I wonder if the old "Player X showed up in camp in the best shape of his life" should be read as "he's going to do the same thing this year, just better, hopefully."
matthewverygood
9/18
It's probably too small a sample, but I'm curious if there's a any difference in his numbers when he has Quentin offering protection behind him
gyoung858
9/19
Sorry, I missed your question earlier. There are a couple of answers to this, and yes, sample size is an issue.

First, the conclusion to a detailed study in Baseball Between the Numbers states that:

"Protection is overrated. There's no evidence that having a superior batter behind another batter provides the initial batter with better pitches to hit; if it does, those batters see no improvement in performance as a result."

Second, in the case of Headley this year, he has performed better with Quentin in the lineup (.304/.369/.528 in 355 PA) than without him there (.257/.357/.435 in 283 PA). However, Quentin didn't make his season debut until May 28, before Headley went on his rampage.

When Quentin returned, Headley hit very well (.333/.422/.487) over the first 20 games, then cooled off (.261/.323/.417) over the next 30 before hitting .314/.392/.613 over the last 49.

Or if you want to split Headley's season into three roughly equal groups:

Quentin 0 (4/5 -5/27): 201 PA, .243/.358/.396, 5 HR
Quentin 1 (5/28-7/24): 220 PA, .290/.364/.446, 6 HR
Quentin 2 (7/25-9/18): 217 PA, .314/.392/.613, 17 HR

Seems to me any "Quentin effect" should have manifested itself a little sooner.
Oleoay
9/18
A good half season doesn't automatically make him better than Todd Zeile.
alangreene
9/18
Well, Zeile had 11 seasons where he was somewhere between 2.9 fWAR and 1.4 fWAR, but usually over 2. That's a nice player.

But Headley's already had two seasons that were significantly better than Zeile's best and a third that would be up there for Zeile.

Headley's three best seasons comprise 14.1 to date. Zeile's best three were a total of 8.6. Todd's best 5 seasons only total to 13.9 fWAR. (The bWAR numbers are lower for both, but still mostly in line with each other).

Yes, Zeile had another six useful seasons and Headley could fall off a cliff, but this isn't his first good year, and it's been twice as valuables as Zeile's best year.

It's been more than a good half season (2010 was also very strong), and I think a vast majority of people would bet on Headley having a better career than Zeile.
Oleoay
9/19
I'll be honest and say I don't know what fWAR is.

2010 was a good year from an OBP perspective. He drew walks at a slightly higher rate but he also increased his batting average. He appears to have kept that same pattern going into this year but if drops from a .280 hitter to a .260 hitter and loses his power, he'll be pretty generic. According to FRAA (FWIW), his glove isn't keeping him in the lineup either.

What I don't get is no one really know why he's doing better. If it's due to offseason changes, why wasn't he hitting for power in the first half of the year? How do we know this isn't some kind of fluke?

And Headley doesn't have to fall off a cliff to be worse than Zeile.. just revert to , you know, being pre-2010 Headley.
Drakos
9/19
fWAR is the Fangraphs version of WAR.

As for power, he has hit for much more power in the second half of the year, but he was hitting HRs at a rate above his career average in the first half. Through June he had 8 homeruns when his previous season high was only 12.

And 2008-2009 Headley had a higher iso than 2010-2011 Headley.
alangreene
9/19
Pre-2010 Headley? I'm not sure it's really valid to expect a regression to the levels of performance from three years ago, centering on the players' first 1.5 years in the majors.

And given the levels of performance over the last three years where he's average 3 WARP (if you are more comfortable with BP), falling to about 1 WARP a season is kinda cliff-like.

(Also, Chase is a very good defender. He had some error issues last year, but both my eyes and a lot of fielding metrics like his D. Not sure why FRAA is different).

I guess my point is that Zeile wasn't all that good, by anyone's metric, and that it's not unreasonable to view Chase as a better player and expect him to continue being better.
Oleoay
9/19
My apologies, I meant pre-2011 Headley.

As far as FRAA goes, it's bunk so I try to ignore it and also don't use WARP because of FRAA's effect on it.

Zeile wasn't bad. He pales to a lot of the players of that era who were hitting 40+ HR, but he wasn't a complete OBP or SLG sinkhole. Headley has a taste of OBP but it's the question of whether his power is sustainable. A few years ago, Mauer had a power spike and he wasn't able to keep it.
alangreene
9/20
And I doubt Chase will keep the power, at least if he stays in Petco and certainly not at this level anywhere.

That said, his 2010 was very strong and better than anything Zeile ever put out. Strong OBPs, good defense and if he stabilizes his power in the high teens (in Petco, 20 or so elsewhere), he's a valuable player.

The ballpark, San Diego and the lack of winning makes Chase run under the radar. But he was a big trade target for a reason.

Zeile wasn't bad, but I wouldn't be shocked to see Headley end up with three or four seasons better than his best.
Oleoay
9/20
Headley was also a trade target because there were some who thought Gyorko could be better for cheaper.
gyoung858
9/18
Correct. This is why I used the qualifier "probably."
aschauer
9/18
For a site that will never stop lecturing against small sample sizes, not ever, this article strikes me as kinda weird. Headley wasn't "omitted" from the ASG -- like he shoulda had a spot and got screwed out of it by some schmuck like David Wright -- he didn't get voted in or selected by coaches because he just wasn't very good. I read article after article about him before the trade deadline, and the unanimous opinion was Headley might be OK-I-guess for a contending team to pick up since the market for third basemen is/was very thin; writers were basically handing him the Not Juan Uribe Award for Infielder Least Likely To Make You Barf In Your Own Mouth.

This was like, eight weeks ago.

Not to say that Chase hasn't figured some stuff out and could actually have legit fixed some stuff, but it's at least as likely that BP publishes a September 2013 article called "Chase Headley Is Totally Not Awesome."
gyoung858
9/18
The choice wasn't between Headley and Wright, it was between Headley and Huston Street, the Padres' lone All-Star representative who had pitched 24 innings to that point.