Masyn Winn can sure jump high
Baseball has a weird ability to affect my mood, despite being a long season where fortunes could change quickly. It affects the mood of the fanbase similarly it seems. When the Cardinals win, spirits are relatively high and there is at least a modicum of optimism in the air. When the Cardinals lose, especially in a dispiriting fashion, the season is over. Declaratively, there is no chance the Cardinals can possibly make up 5 games with 130 games left to go. Pretty strange.
The Cardinals have not played well overall, worse than their record frankly, so naturally the bright spots have been few and far between. One of them is unquestionably the bullpen and an elite bullpen is the kind of thing that can make a team play better than they actually are. Another, and the subject of today’s post, is Masyn Winn.
Before we talk about the positives, let’s talk about the negatives. He has not graded out well as a fielder, to this point. He has already committed four errors and his range ranks in the 8th percentile according to Statcast. No doubt those two things are related. I’d actually be more concerned about his range if he had no errors, weird as that sounds. He has also not barreled a single ball and doesn’t seem to hit the ball particularly hard.
While he is off to a blazing hot start, it clearly isn’t sustainable. Yesterday’s game is not factored in the stats and I didn’t watch 80 percent of that game, so I can’t say how that game would affect the stats, but I can’t imagine 4 plate appearances makes a huge difference. His xwOBA is at least 30 points worse than his actual wOBA, and his hard hit percentage is in just the 5th percentile of hitters.
That out of the way, I don’t see how you can be anything but optimistic about Masyn Winn’s future. After a frankly dreadful opening to his MLB career – not necessarily unexpected, also not as bad as Victor Scott – there were genuine concerns about his bat. And maybe there still are concerns, but it seems like he at least passes the basic competency test: he won’t be an automatic out and pitchers will have to work to get him out. That’s not a small thing for a 22-year-old.
There’s more reason for optimism than just “looking” at how he handles himself in a plate appearance though. We have some stats that leave me VERY optimistic. It’s not just the eye test that says Winn has had a good plate approach. Winn doesn’t chase much, swings and misses even less, and makes ideal contact. This not only makes his low K, high walk profile look sustainable, it suggests hard hits will come. In my opinion anyway.
I’ll share the specific stats. Winn chases pitches 23.6% of the time, which is in the 70th percentile of hitters according to Statcast. He whiffs just 15.4% of the time, which is 90th percentile. And when he makes contact, he reaches an ideal launch angle (between 8 and 32 degrees) 43.4% of the time, which is also 90th percentile.
I’m going to be honest. I don’t really know how the hell he never hits the ball hard if he’s always hitting it how it should be hit. Last year, for example, he had a sweet spot% of just 26.7%, and yet he hit it hard 36.6% of the time. This year, he has a sweet spot% of 43.4% of the time and yet just 24.5% of balls are hit hard. He also does not have a barrel this season, and he had two last season.
Now, to me, it would seem that sweet spot% and hard hit% would be correlated. We do know he’s capable of hitting the ball hard. And to be clear, despite the lack of hard hits, his xwOBA is better than last year. He was clearly a worse hitter last year. But the way I’m interpreting these two seemingly contradictory stats is that hard hits will come. Barrels will come. I mean if you keep hitting it the way you’re supposed to hit it, eventually the ball will be crushed, no?
Another situation where I imagine there is a natural correlation is both chase% and whiff% with BB% and K%. You don’t chase pitches, you don’t strike out. You don’t chase pitches, you walk. You don’t swing and miss, you don’t strike out. The underlying stats, though not necessarily at a sample where we can make such a declaration, suggest his BB% and K% could be better.
With how he’s actually played today, there is not a single unsustainable thing about either his BB% or K%. That’s the takeway. The results have followed a great plate approach. But as I said, it technically could mean we could see even better numbers. Despite a chase% in the 70th percentile and a whiff% in the 90th percentile, his K% is “just” 61st percentile. His BB% is a little better, but still just 65th percentile.
As I said though, the sample sizes can lead to some wonkier numbers, so the lesson here isn’t actually “expect it to get better.” There are still called strikes and you can be very good at not whiffing, but if you whiff on pitch #10, you didn’t whiff on many pitches but still struck out. I do think that the underlying stuff supporting the plate discipline is extremely encouraging.
And fun fact, Winn has already reached the “meaningful” amount of plate appearances to somewhat trust his K%. Way back in the day, Russell Carleton wanted to figure out when each stat reached a point of “stabilization.” To try to simplify what that means, basically you can take any x PA sample from a hitter and find a correlation of 0.7 with any other random sample. So for example, strikeout rate stabilizes at 60 PAs. The more plate appearances, the better though. But we don’t have to simply say “small sample size” for Winn’s K%.
BB% is coming soon as well. That stabilizes at 120 PAs. Most of the other stats take considerably longer, which is fine, because I largely expect him to keep improving, so by the time we reach those points, it’s not going to be as useful. But a 0.7 correlation is reliable, not gospel.
And just a small note on his defense, I hate to revert to the eye test on this one, but well, he has the typical makings of a young player who will become a good to great defender. Kolten Wong did not become an elite defender on Day 1. He didn’t become an elite defender for a few seasons. But the things that prevented him from being an elite are the same kind of things happening to Winn. I suspect it’ll get sorted out with time and experience. I am not concerned about his defense.
Masyn Winn has had about as encouraging a first month as one could have about a player who was something of an unknown. Yeah his projections were good. But projections are projections. Succeeding at the MLB level is a big, big deal, especially at 22-years-old. I think the Cardinals have their SS of the present and future in Masyn Winn.