How far has Xander Bogaerts come as a major leaguer so far? Photo courtesy of Kelly O’Connor.
Xander played 18 regular season games in 2013, filling in at short, third base, and on the bench, and while he certainly looked his age (20, at the time), there were plenty of flashes of potential; most notably, one enormous home run bomb against the Yankees in New York.
Excluding today’s game against Baltimore, we now have an 18 game sample of Bogaerts as a full-time shortstop this season. All small sample size disclaimers aside, the differences between Bogaerts’ 18 games in 2013 and 2014 – in addition to his 12 game postseason run – provide some interesting insights into his development.
Here are the stats:
2013 regular season: 18 games, .250/.320/.364, 10.0 BB%, 26.0 K%, .114 ISO, .304 wOBA, .323 BABIP
2014 regular season: 18 games, .270/.403/.349, 14.3 BB%, 22.1 K%, .079 ISO, .351 wOBA, .356 BABIP
From what we’ve seen so far, Bogaerts has derived most of his offensive value from his ability to get on base at a high rate. He has an established track record of above average plate discipline, with his lowest OBP at any minor league level the previous two seasons being a .351 mark in a 23 game cup of tea at AA Portland in 2012. His OBP may not remain around .400 for the season, but that doesn’t mean it’s an illusion either; he has both the contact skills and the ability to draw walks to be a high-OBP guy for a long time.
What makes Bogaerts one of the most exciting players among the currently rich crop of young shortstops, however, is his potential as a power hitter at a position where power comes at a premium, and this is also the biggest part of his game we’ve yet to really see thus far. His .079 ISO to date is more Elvis Andrus than Troy Tulowitzki, and it’s the fifth-lowest among qualified shortstops so far this season, above only Ruben Tejada, Derek Jeter, Erick Aybar, and Jean Segura. He finally picked up his first long ball of the season on the 17th against Chris Sale, and, well, it was a bomb.
This isn’t to say we haven’t seen him show off his prodigious power in the majors yet, of course, because we have. For your eyeballs: his 2013 postseason stats.
2013 postseason: 12 games, .296/.412/.481, 0 HR, 2 RBI, 0 SB, .185 ISO, .386 wOBA, .421 BABIP
Bogaerts’ huge postseason was in no doubt assisted by a sky-high .421 BABIP, but he also looked significantly more comfortable through that span of time. He didn’t clear the fences in those 12 games, but did smack three doubles and a triple in addition to six walks and only nine strikeouts.
An important note with Xander, as well, is that he developed a reputation as a bit of a slow starter through his time in the minors. Each call-up was accompanied by a roughly 100 at-bat adjustment period. In that 23 game AA sample I mentioned above, he posted a .351 OBP with only one walk drawn in 97 plate appearances. The next season at that same level? It became a .407 OBP with 35 walks in 259 appearances. So far, he’s sitting on 127 MLB plate appearances in the regular season, with 34 more in last year’s playoffs. It’s possible, then, that we could be on the cusp of his correction.
Thus far, Xander Bogaerts has had his ups and his downs. This is to be expected; he is 21 years old. He may not be giving us the complete package just yet, but he’s still providing plenty of offensive value regardless; his .351 wOBA outpaces Stephen Drew’s .337 from last year, and that’s without virtually any power stroke at all.
Again, this is all based on the smallest of sample sizes; 161 plate appearances can prove to be a deceptive amount. But what we do know is that he has been improving, and it may not be long before we start to see the total package come together, and that is an exciting possibility.