What To Make Of Kendrys Morales After Year 1
Kendrys Morales had some big shoes to fill when the Blue Jays signed him to a 3 year deal last offseason. Edwin Encarnacion wasn't just one of the best designated hitters in baseball when he left Toronto, he was also a playoff hero. Morales has never had trouble filling a pair of pants, but those shoes are a different story.
After being treated to a half decade of monster seasons from Encarnacion, it's safe to say Morales' first season in Toronto was a disappointment. Morales' .250/.308/.445 was a massive drop-off from the .272/.367/.544 that Edwin averaged from 2012-2016. The 28 home runs and 85 runs driven in by Morales were nice, but not enough to overcome his significant deficiencies elsewhere. All told, he was worth -0.6 fWAR.
Those numbers are not what you would normally expect from your DH. However, last season the Blue Jays weren't the only team to be disappointed at DH. There were 11 players who received at least 300 plate appearances as a Designated Hitter and Morales' 100 wrc+ at the position ranked 3rd. The average DH had a 95 wrc+. 2017 was an outlier year. The average DH had a 108 wrc+ in 2016, 109 in 2015, 107 in 2014, etc.
When comparing Morales against his DH peers his season doesn't look as bad. He wasn't great by any means, but very few designated hitters were. Also, among the 11 regular designated hitters who had at least 300 plate appearances at the position, Morales' $11MM salary ranked 9th. A 100 wrc+ at DH isn't something worth celebrating, but at least the rest of the league underperformed enough to make it bearable.
We also can't write off the 49 plate appearances Morales spent as a first baseman. When asked to play in the field his bat took a step backwards and was worth only 76 wrc+. Granted, a lot of that was small sample size luck. He had just a .143 BABIP that obviously isn't a true representation of his hitting skills. His defence wasn't any better. He is strictly a designated hitter at this point.
Morales has developed a fairly significant platoon split over the past two seasons and unfortunately it is left handed pitching that he has excelled against. If his new platoon split is here to stay, it's a bad thing to have a DH-only player who is the short end of a platoon. If Morales is going to provide any value he's going to have to start hitting right handers again.
The drop in overall offensive production is not a good sign, but Statcast data paints a rosier picture. According to data found at Baseball Savant his xwOBA was .360, compared to his actual wOBA of .326. The .034 gap was the 3rd largest discrepancy among players with at least 400 at bats. Slow players tend to underperform their xwOBA more than fast players, but Morales likely had worse results than his quality of contact suggests.
Morales' contract didn't look good when it was signed and it doesn't look much better a year in. His 2017 season was better than it seemed at first glance once you factor in the league-wide lack of offence from Designated Hitters. Looking forward, we shouldn't expect designated hitters to hit so poorly. Morales has a long track record of being an above average hitting DH so it's still too early to write him off, but his outlook is mixed.
