What Is Teoscar Hernandez?
Teoscar Hernandez spent last September tearing the cover off the ball and his power surge has continued this spring. It's easy to see why Blue Jays fans are excited about the young slugger. He has been hitting so well in spring training that there is starting to be a large group of fans who are ready to break out the pitchforks if he doesn't make the team out of spring training. I too am excited about Hernandez's future, but it's a much more cautious excitement.
Yes, Hernandez's numbers last September were impressive, but I've also seen this sort of thing before. Remember Randy Ruiz? In September 2004 Russ Adams made it look like that first round pick might not have been wasted after all. Remember September 2013 Moises Sierra? Josh Phelps? Brett Lawrie, anyone? Heck, even Darwin Barney's 120 wrc+ last September was only a bit lower than Hernandez's 132. Then again, there was also some guy named Bautista who had quite a September and went on to be a pretty ok hitter.
Teoscar's spring training numbers are certainly encouraging. He is hitting .375/.400/.719 with 3 home runs. Baseball Reference tracks the quality of opponents, with 10 being major league quality. Teoscar's quality of opposition is quite low at 6.5. Yes, it's encouraging that Hernandez is hitting well this spring, but a lot of it has come against a very low level of pitching.
Pretty much the only stats we can get any real idea of whether a player has made improvements is their strikeout and walk numbers. Those stats tend to stabilize much quicker than others. For Hernandez, those numbers aren't promising. He has struck out in 31.4% of his plate appearances and walked in just 5.7%. It's difficult for a player to succeed with a k/bb ratio like that.
In the past 50 years there have been 18 players who qualified for the batting title while striking out more than 28% of the time and walking less than 8%. Of those 18 seasons, 8 of them had a batting line above league average. The best wrc+ of that group was 121 by Bo Jackson and Chris Davis. That 8 of 18 being above average is also a little misleading because of survivorship bias. That group of 18 got enough playing time to qualify for the batting title because they performed well. Loosen the requirements to 200 plate appearances and only 30 of 160 players had an above average batting line. Interestingly, the highest wrc+ in that group belonged to Josh Phelps, another Blue Jays player that fans once had high hopes for.
The other question I have about Hernandez is whether his recent power surge is sustainable. If he is an elite power hitter he can get away with having an ugly strikeout rate. He had a .341 Isolated Slugging Percentage during his time in the majors last season. That number was topped by only Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton among qualified hitters. Is Hernandez suddenly among the game's best power hitters? He is an extreme flyball hitter which certainly helps with the power numbers. His 49.1% flyball rate would have ranked 4th among all hitters last season if he had enough plate appearances to qualify. His HR/FB rate of 30.8% would have ranked 5th, behind Judge, Stanton, Domingo Santana, and Joey Gallo. He also ranked 7th in barrels per plate appearance according to Statcast. These are all promising signs that his power is legitimate.
However, there are also some warning signs that his power numbers last season were a bit of a mirage. His average exit velocity of 87 MPH comes in quite a bit lower than the other players with a 30%+ HR/FB ratio and ranks 247th in baseball. His 28.3% hard hit rate was actually below the league average of 31.8%. Baseball Savant has his expected slugging percentage at .479, down significantly from his actual .602. He's an above average power hitter, no doubt, but whether he's elite is still an open question.
Hernandez had a 132 wrc+ last season, but there are plenty of reasons to think a lot of that was driven by luck. His xwOBA was .317, way down from the .377 that Baseball Savant had him at. He had a .333 BABIP, which isn't unusually high per se, but for an extreme flyball hitter like Hernandez it is quite high. Only 5 players with more than 45% flyballs had a BABIP above .320 and Hernandez's .333 was the second highest of that group. Hernandez ranked 12th in flyball rate for players with at least as many plate appearances as him and you have to go all the way down to 44th most flyballs before you find someone with a higher BABIP. The 20 players closest to him in flyball rate averaged a .266 BABIP.
I did a search for players with comparable hitting profiles to Hernandez and some of the names I came up with were Bo Jackson, Pedro Alvarez, Mark Trumbo, Pete Incaviglia, and Henry Rodriguez. These are all good, but not great hitters. They all had solid power, struck out often and walked a decent amount, but not a lot. Hernandez adds more value with his speed and defence than these players did, so it's actually a fairly promising group of comps.
Many think Hernandez should break camp with the team and could be used as the right handed part of a left field platoon with Curtis Granderson. This would likely be a mistake. Hernandez does not have a platoon split in his minor league career, so he wouldn't dominate left handed pitching the same way Steve Pearce has proven capable of. Also, having Hernandez as the short end of a platoon would hinder his development and would make it difficult for him to work on his strikeout issues if he isn't playing everyday. Whenever the Blue Jays decide to bring Hernandez up it should be with a clear path to playing time.
None of this is to say Teoscar Hernandez is a bad player. He's a good player and should have a solid big league career ahead of him. There are even some things that point to him being potentially very good. I just want to point out some of the red flags and that history has shown us that players of his skillset aren't usually destined for superstar status. I will gladly take a player with Pedro Alvarez's bat and better defence and speed. That's a solid 3 fWAR player. I just think Blue Jays fans should cool their jets on Hernandez. He'll make his way to Toronto soon enough, but there's nothing wrong with keeping him in the minors a little longer to see if he can work on that strikeout rate. If he brings the strikeouts down he could be a scary hitter. That would be worth waiting for.
