There’s been much talk on the Cardinal broadcasts and radio about Brendan Ryan and the infusion of youth into the ballclub. While I don’t put much stock into the idea that youth alone makes a difference on a team, an infusion of talent does. At 25, Ryan is in the middle of a back and forth transition year during with the Cardinals have seen David Eckstein spend time on the DL while the offensive blackholes that are Aaron Miles and Adam Kennedy have wasted at bats. With Kennedy done for the season (most likely), what can we make of Brendan Ryan’s performance in the minors/majors?
I’m going to look at Ryan’s performance this year because he has a limited number of at bats in the high minors prior to this season. The problem is that a) he has a limited number of major league at bats as well and b) evaluating a player based on a single season ignores the concept of Marcels and regression. What those caveats mean is that the certainty of the statistics as indicators of Ryan’s true talent level aren’t that high. Anyway, here are Ryan’s stats for this season at AAA:
| PAs | AVG | OBP | SLG | ISO | BB% | K% | GB% | LD% | BABIP |
| 353 | .272 | .346 | .341 | .069 | 7.1 | 11.0 | 56 | 12 | .307 |
The average BABIP for the PCL is around .322 so Ryan seems to be a tick low but the 12% LD indicates that his BABIP is probably right around what it should be. Ryan is a contact hitter with little power and little inclination for taking a base on balls. In fact, he’s not that dissimilar from David Eckstein. His wOBA for AAA was .301 (wOBA is scaled to OBP with ~340 being average), which isn’t very good. The complete absence of power — it’s rarely a good thing when your OBP is greater than your SLG — is more detrimental given it’s extreme deficiency than the mediocre walk rate. These are the numbers of a utility infielder (Aaron Miles has a .303 wOBA at the bigs) but not an everyday player I’d want on my team.
Brendan Ryan has been a different beast at the majors posting these numbers:
| PAs | AVG | OBP | SLG | ISO | BB% | K% | GB% | LD% | BABIP |
| 73 | .343 | .397 | .507 | .164 | 8.2 | 9.6 | 50 | 21 | .351 |
I think it’s a mistake to dismiss these outright — Ryan is only 25 so there’s still room on that aging curve for his skillset to improve. The question is has his skillset improved? His BB% is a tick higher and his K% is a tick lower than what we saw at AAA. The most glaring points are his LD%, ISO and his BABIP. Ryan has dramatically increased the number of line drives he is hitting which is a good way to improve your batting average and slugging percentage. It usually indicates hitting the ball with increased authority rather than tapping weak grounders for outs. The ISO and BABIP increases are both related, in part, to the increased LD%. Line drives are much more likely (almost 3x) to fall for hits than groundballs. His LD% isn’t particularly high (NL average = 19%) so the BABIP still looks out of whack. Ryan has definitely been better at the majors but he’s also been lucky.
What does this mean? Well, it means that I’m still not sure what the heck the team has in Brendan Ryan. They need to find out though and that entails playing him on a daily basis in favor of Miles at 2B or Eckstein and Rolen when they need time off. Additionally, I’m not accounting for the fact that Ryan appears to be an above average defender at short (something that Miles is not) and a good base-runner (something that Miles and Eckstein are not). It’s hard to know for certain without the advanced defensive metrics (UZR, RZR, PMR) and the advanced base-running metrics that Dan Fox puts together at Baseball Prospectus, but I feel comfortable saying Ryan isn’t worse than either Eckstein or Miles in either area. My advice for the Cardinals is to play Ryan daily till the end of the season. In the offseason, don’t extend David Eckstein and trade for Ben Zobrist. At that point, I’d be willing to bet that one of Ryan or Zobrist pans out and that Adam Kennedy comes back from surgery able to play league average 2B.
Read LBoros’ post on Brendan Ryan ~ June 2nd.
(Stats via FirstInning include all games as of 8/12.)
Filed under: Brendan Ryan
erik
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roarke49
theredbaaron
I’m comfortable with giving Ryan a shot next year if he continues to look like he can hold his own at the plate for the rest of the season. Here is my question: if we save $5 million by going with Ryan at short, and Slick Rick continues to mash enabling us to dump most of Juan’s $6.5 million next year, where are we going to spend? The 2B free agent list is uninspiring as usual so the only place I can really see us upgrading is at starting pitching, and spending big money on a free agent starting pitcher leaves visions of Barry Zito dancing in my head.
I gotta agree with you MikeJ. The addition of Ank (maybe with some help from Schumaker) makes En’cion superfluous. What do we do with the cash? Hell if I know man.
The most obvious way to use the cash is to upgrade the SP like MikeJ said. With Ryan at SS and Ankiel in RF our lineup is pretty much set. Our SP for next year is not however. We have Wainwright, Reyes, and Mulder…then we could fill in guys like Thompson, Looper, Maroth, Piniero, or even Wellemeyer. However, I’d much rather sign a guy that is better than that sorry bunch. Zambrano will probably cost wayyyy to much, so who is the next best guy on the market. What about Curt Schilling? He is a FA after the year. I haven’t heard much about his status if he will be retiring or wants to go back to the BoSox, but I think he would be a good pickup. He was good last year and has been pretty good this year. I think a return to the NL would be good for him and he is a prooven post-season hero. Also because he is so close to retiring we wouldn’t have to lock him up long-term. I think maybe a 2 year $30 mil would do it. I suppose because of his age and potential injury risk the ownership might not want to even invest that much in him though. I think signing him to a 2 year deal is perfect, however, because next year he essentially replaces Carp in the rotation and then the year after he replaces Mulder. After is contract is up hopefully one of the young arms from the minors (Garcia, Ottavino, Herron, Mortenson) will be ready to step in.
DJ–I don’t see anyone giving Schilling 15/yr, but I would also love to have him. Waino, Schilling, Mulder, Reyes, Looper looks like a sturdy rotation to me.
my thoughts have always been he’s a UTIL man, but I’d rather take the draft pick for Eck (assuming he declines arbi) and let ryan play. if he bombs, then someone could shake loose from another team and he could be shifted to the UTIL role. his numbers say he’s destined for that role, but most people who have watched him play really like him as an everyday player. goold ranked him higher then tyler greene, something i would not have done, because of what is said internally about him. the org really likes him.
There are some options that could be had for cheap—Angel Berroa (former ROY), Clint Barmes (also former ROY??), Jack Wilson (not much offense)
The moral–we don’t need to throw 5-7 million at Eck
MikeJ - There is one starting pitcher I’m interested in this offseason: Curt Schilling. That’s it and not for more than a year + an option. This is not the year to throw big $$$ at pitchers (I’m not sure there’s ever a year for that but this definitely isn’t it).
Paul - Of those players two belong in the minors and one belongs on a bench for a non-contending baseball team. If that’s what the Cardinals use to fill in short, I will be very disgruntled. Brendan Ryan has an outside chance at being league-average-ish for 2-3 years in the majors. I don’t think he’s more than a utility player but I’m not ready to rule that out yet.
Just throwing names out AZ.
We need to improve the consistency of our offense and we only have one spot (SS) to do it. I would love to take a chance on Furcal or Tejada but don’t want to give up the prospects. Maybe Greene can shock the world next Spring, come healthy and win the spot on the big club. Then there is always one of my favorites—Jose Martinez.
There is always the big fish and probably a fantasy: ARod. At least if we signed him we wouldn’t waste money on the Juancion-type signings, it would force us into playing the kids instead of signing scrappy McVeterans, which is a policy that most of the visitors to this site agree with anyway. Granted he would cost a boatload, but he would probably post a higher VORP than whatever 2 starting pitchers you could get for $30 million a year. If Tony and Dave stick around they could dumpster-dive for starting pitchers, which is really their favorite activity anyway.
Paul - the real moral is - don’t win the ROY if your a shortstop
I’ll admit I don’t fully understand the implications of BABIP but if your LD% increases it seems your BABIPwould also. But is BABIP increase due to increased line drives luck? I can see where increased BABIP w/o an increase in LD% might be considered luck but not with it.
He’s increased his LD% to slightly above major league average but his BABIP is considerably above major league average. He’s getting an abnormal number of grounders and flyballs for hits. The average BABIP in the NL is .301.
In other words, the increase in BABIP is disproportionate to the increase in LD%.
I’ve been a fan of Ryan’s since I first saw him at NJ in 2003. I agree his numbers at AAA were not great but I did notice a significant improvement there after he bottomed out in early May. His numbers with the Cardinals have been exceptional and something that the stats don’t show is his hustle and enthusiasm that has seemed to really spark the Cardinals. The Cards are 18-8 in the games in which he has played and even better in the games he has started.(I believe they’re 12-4 in those games). Whether he can keep it up we’ll never know unless he gets a chance to play regularly for the rest of this season. Unfortunately I don’t think La Russa will do that unless the Cards fall out of race!
My only concern is what kind of fine he’ll face from MLB when he finally successfully eats his jersey during an at-bat.