Randy Winn's Struggles

Written by Josh W. | 16 May 2010

In his career, Randy Winn has posted a .334 wOBA and a 104 wRC+. This tells us that he has been a slightly above average hitter since his debut in 1998. When the Yankees signed him in the offseason, he was coming off a down year where he posted a sub-par 82 wRC+. Yet there were reasons to believe that he would return to previous offensive norms; he had a ridiculously low HR/FB rate of 1.4% (7.8% since 2002) and a lower than usual BABIP, despite hitting more line drives than ever. Unfortunately, Randy Winn has only performed worse this year. Not including today's game, he has posted a miserable 59 wRC+, meaning he has been 41% below average. Gross.

Of note is his contact rate of 70.7%. For his career, Winn has been an above average contact hitter; he has generally posted good strikeout and contact rates. Yet this year he is swinging through many more pitches, particularly the fastball. According to Trip Somers' pitch f/x tool, this year Winn has whiffed at 11.6% of four-seam fastballs. This is quite a paltry figure when compared to a league average of about 6%.

With the help of Joe Lefkowitz's pitch f/x tool we can see that Win has struggled in particular with fastballs up in the zone.

Yet it isn't all bad for Winn. He has walked in 13% of plate appearances this year (compared to a career average of 7.6%), which compensates nicely for his increase in strikeouts. He also has a very low BABIP of .207, which is very likely to increase. His poor luck is also evident in a .307 xBABIP.

Another thing going for Winn is that he's only had 39 at-bats so far (not including today's game). In this small of a sample size, almost anything can happen. In all likelihood, he'll regain some of his ability to hit high fastballs (or what we have seen so far is just a product of SSS) and he will regress to career norms. ZiPS agrees, and sees Winn ending this season with a .312 wOBA.

Over a full season, a .312ish wOBA combined with the excellent defense Winn provides creates about a 1.5 WAR player. Now Winn is probably not going to get more than 350 plate appearances, which means that he probably won't contribute more than 1 WAR for the season. Even so, he's getting paid 2 million this season, and if we assume the market value of 1 win above replacement to be about 4 million, Winn only has to produce half a WAR to justify his contract. This means that even with this early dismal performance, Winn will probably end up being a decent value.