FanPost

J.J. Hardy: The Goose Egg or the Golden Goose?

H. Darr Beiser-USA TODAY Sports

JJ Hardy, What happened?

In 2014 JJ Hardy was a horrible fantasy player. You probably knew that already, but sometimes when looking forward you need not ask what he was, but why he was it.

So when everyone who drafted JJ Hardy last year picked him, they were making a conscious decision to get a SS who would hit 20+ HR and steal maybe 1 base. After that you were hoping for a 260's BA and throwing the cards in the air and letting them lie as they may with R and RBI. Only a few moments after JJ Hardy was drafted by said owner, JJ Hardy promptly took a fat turd on your projection and gave you 9 homers and 0 steals, and a down year in R and RBI as well. But as I said before it's not what the turd was, but why was the turd taken, that you should be asking yourself when thinking about Mr Hardy for 2015. So will he be a turd again, or a golden nugget?

So while Ks and BBs aren't going to be the be all end all of why a power hitter isn't hitting for power, it's a basic way to see if there was a change in approach. In the 3 years prior with the O's, Hardy had a 5.5, 5.3, and 5.9 BB rate and put up a 5.1% last year, worse, but not that much worse. His strike out rates were 16.2, 14.9, 11.3 and he put up an 18.3 last year, a jump up but not significant. At this point he was just slightly worse than expected, but he also had a career high in Babip at 317, when in the past 3 years with the O's he hadn't gone higher than 273. Something to take into account is that home runs don't count towards or against your babip, so when balls were flying over the wall in the past he wasn't getting helped, but that's not going to account for this big jump in babip.

So if we delve a little deeper, we can check out if his batted ball profile and the first thing that stands out is that he hasn't hit higher than 17% line drives since 2007, but he had 19.2% last year, generally a good thing to be improving in. He also posted his lowest (not by much) GB % since 2011, and his lowest FB% since 2010, back with the Twins. He also hit 14.9% IFFB, and had a miniscule 5.6% home run to fly ball ratio, his lowest ever. So from all of these ratios, we can see that he was hitting fewer balls, but somehow hitting more balls on a line, which doesn't make much sense to me, but it happened in his case. So lets look at how far he was hitting the balls he put in play over the years:

Year

HR

Distance

MLB Rank

2014

9

278.9

144

2013

25

283.04

133

2012

22

280.22

154

2011

30

289.27

60

The rank doesn't tell much, but since I like to reference distance and rank, I thought they'd be good to have in the back of your mind, since we are all obviously trying to rank the players. So here you can see there is an obvious correlation between the distance you hit the ball, and how many home runs you'll hit in a year. For perspective, in my last piece about Chris Carter, he averaged 288ft, which was 68th. It is possible that Hardy is getting older, and just won't the ball like he used to, but he played the last month with back ailments, and I think that could have been enough to knock down his average. Distance a few feet.

Now his plate discipline makes this a little bit more of a tricky situation. For the sake of not posting a massive unreadable chart, here is what he did the past 2 years, and the years prior weren't very different from 2013.

O Swing%

Z Swing %

Swing %

O Contact%

Z Contact %

Contact %

Zone %

2013

Orioles

30.10%

54.80%

42.10%

79.00%

92.90%

87.80%

48.70%

2013

Average

31.00%

65.50%

46.40%

66.60%

87.00%

79.50%

44.70%

2014

Orioles

29.10%

52.00%

40.40%

63.60%

91.80%

81.50%

49.40%

2014

Average

31.30%

65.60%

46.70%

65.90%

87.30%

79.40%

44.90%

It seems to me that only a few noticeable things changed. He saw more strikes, continued to be a patient hitter, but when he swung at balls, he saw a huge drop in his contact numbers. But still, he made a good amount of contact when he swung the bat. if you are a visual person, the two links below give you a good idea of what a solid approach at the plate looks like.

JJ Hardy Swing Rate

JJ Hardy Whiff Rate

I could keep breaking this further and further down, but I think we are starting to get the picture. 2014 just wasn't JJ Hardy's year. A guy that puts a lot of balls in play, hits his fair share of liners, doesn't strike out much, and doesn't whiff a lot shouldn't have had the year he had, but he had it, hey I guess that's baseball. The slight dip in distance the balls were hit, could be a sign of things to come, and he is entering his age 33 season, but Hardy also had back issues towards the end of this year, so he may have been playing through something. I couldn't find anything that said when he was injured or the severity during the year. I'm ok with saying the dip may have been due to the bad last month of the season, and chalk this one up to bad luck.

Lastly, I love checking out other people's rankings, and the only one that I take seriously for next year right now is Tristan Cockcrofts top 250 for 2015. He currently has Hardy at 227, in-between Phil Hughes, Rusney Castillo, and Michael Pineada. Kind of a weird group, but I 227 seems incredibly cheap for a guy that was considered old reliable at SS for SS power for the past few years now.

So while I'm not screaming buy, buy, buy on a stock floor for this guy, I think there is a good opportunity to easily get back what you paid for in his case. Hell, for all I know next year he may have the luck on his side and go right back to old Hardy numbers, on the Orioles that had the 6th best OPS in the MLB last year, playing in the AL East, that's filled with pitchers parks. So you get the picture, he takes balls, and hits the strikes, he's not the best, but he's definitely not an undraftable loser. If you want to take your chances, I'd say Hardy is looking like a nice buy low for next year, because hey every once in a while a golden goose has to take a turd.

Works Cited

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=3797&position=SS

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hardyjj01.shtml?redir

http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/distanceleader.php

Brooks baseball charts (linked above)