Add new comment

1

His BABIP is .462 on the year. FOUR SIXTY TWO.  Edgar had a .335 BABIP for his career with .340-.380 in some prime years. Ichiro is running a .340 career BABIP but like Gar was routinely higher than that in his prime.  

If Ben Gamel is going to run a .330 BABIP for his career he'll be an OUTSTANDING hitter - but nobody runs .400+.  Everything he's hitting falls in, and he's not even reducing his chances for fielders to find those gapperss by hitting it out of that park occasionally.  I can't tell how good Gamel is because I have no idea what he's like as a normalized hitter.  There's no way for pitchers to attack him right now because he's knobbing singles and flaring doubles in every game.

I like his speed, but the utter absence of home run power even with his modified swing means he's going to have to have the spray-it-around-the-park skill to keep his value high.  His ISO is exactly in line with career norms, but his average is 80-ish points higher than I'd expected.

Right now his line drive percentage is 28.5% (league average is a tick over 20%).  He's continued to spray the field pretty evenly (30+% to each third of the field) meaning he can't be shifted against (unlike Seager, who is always at 40+% to his pull side and 25% oppo).  Those are patterns that are incredibly good for Gamel - but can he keep it up as those balls inevitably find gloves and his balls-in-play numbers come back to earth, or will he change his approach or his success areas?

Like you said, moe, hitting like this for a month gives him a chance to plant a flag on that low-homer-but-high-impact hill that all those players you listed staked their careers out on.  I still haven't bought in that he's that kind of player yet, but he can fall a long way and still be valuable at a glove position.  Of course right now he's not playing a glove position, being staked out in right field.  As long as he doesn't change his approach to justify a corner position like RF or even 1B in spot starts, maybe he really can last.

Just keep doing what you're doing, Ben - don't change anything.

Filtered HTML

  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

shout_filter

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.