An Idea for the Oakland A’s. Dumb or Stupid: You Decide
Sometimes an idea strikes you and you can’t decide which label, as consequential as those things are, is best suited for it. The weight of the indecision pulls on you like two plastic grocery bags full of melons drag down your arms. Such an idea, I currently possess, and the delineation that’s weighing me down is between two very important distinctions; is it dumb or stupid? Such a categorization may not be fruitful, quite possibly it’s entirely pointless. Surely a venn diagram would contain some overlap, and it would likely be to a generous degree at that. Anyways, we proceed with the mentally, and probably soon to be publicly, maligned idea.
The Athletics should reunite with free agent Jurickson Profar. Wait! Hear me out. Before your mind flashes back to mental highlight (or lowlight) reels of the former top prospect, hat askew atop his head, nailing the opposing dugout on a hop from his throw from second base, consider three things; positional fit, plate skills, and baserunning efficiency.
Ok, we’re not there yet, I admit. The man had the yips. He didn’t have small minor accuracy issues delivering the ball to first from the right side of the middle infield. He didn’t sometimes rely on his gold glove first baseman to bail him out with timely scoops. He didn’t have a few incidence of physical errors to which no infielders are immune. He had the yips! A condition mainly applied to golfers, defined by Merriam-Webesters as “a state of nervous tension affecting an athlete in the performance of a crucial action.” A batter racing to first after grounding to second would qualify as “crucial” in the baseball setting. Yea, that is something to which all A’s fans can surely attest. We’re talking about the yips! Some careers end as a consequence! They were nothing short of debilitating to Profar in the field. He looked like a weary shopper who can’t find their car in the mall parking lot.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, maybe with a tinge of bitterness in bringing it up, we proceed to the case of the reunion. Consider Profar’s primary positions and the A’s current positional uncertainty at those same positions (2B and LF). Obviously, second base appears less than ideal as an option but in 2020 the Padres simply played him less at second and had a better defense because of it. With the Friars in 2020, Profar logged 138 innings at 2nd and accumulated -2 Defensive Runs Saved, per Fangraphs. This is compared with a -15 DRS in Oakland across 1024 innings, accompanied with a -4 Outs Above Average (OAA) per Baseball Savant. In 2020 he predominantly manned a corner outfield spot with 304.1 innings total. In those frames he accumulated 4 DRS and no OOA(and no negative number). The A’s only deployed him for 46 outfield innings in 19 where he accumulated 2 DRS. Metric-wise he’s a passable outfielder, but that aside, catching a bit of Padres baseball here and there, Profar wasn’t immune to the outfield adventure, so to speak; he doesn’t grade out well with the eye test. Maybe I was just distracted by the ill fitting hat, or the huge (and awesome) sunglasses, or when I saw him rolling around in shallow depth after tripping and falling, the infielder racing out for the fallen ball beyond him. Ok, so the defense isn’t inspiring even with the versatility. It does seem though, that the player who was so afflicted in 2019 by the crippling psychological condition of the yips, is at least mostly past it. Second and Left field are large question marks for the club heading into this murky offseason. A platoon with Chad Pinder would be an affordable, and potentially effective, pairing.
The plate skills. Rooting around in the stats it’s hard to ignore the unluckiness which seemed to carry over from the field to the plate for Profar and plague him like a rain cloud in a cartoon in 2019. He slashed .218/.267/.533 with the A’s, accompanied by a horrendous BABIP of .218! Track that to 2020 in SD where he slashed .278/.343/.428, with a .293 BABIP. Also notable, Profar decreased his strikeout rate by over half a percent, hit for more power(increasing his slug and HR/FB rate by 0.9%), and obviously, got on base more with a batting average nearly .060 points higher(his walk rate, weirdly, fell by nearly 2%). A deeper dive may reveal some insight into a changed approach as he decreased his pull rate from 49.9% in 19 to 36.1% in 20, accompanied by an oppo% which increased by nearly 14% from 19 to 20. Profar is no standout bat but a swinging strike rate of 8.8% in 2020 and a K rate of 13.3%- which by the way was lower than other A’s infielders, Chapman, Olson, Semien (by far) in 2020- he would be a welcomed, different bat profile (less strikeouts!) for this team. Furthermore, at 27 years old, he still maintains his top prospect pedigree and if last year is any building block, he’s a better hitter utilizing the whole field than he was in 2019 where he was more pull happy (and unlucky).
The last point in the Profar case, aside from the bat to ball profile, and defensive versatility which fits perfectly into the roster, are the baserunning contributions. The free agent doesn’t turn any heads in terms of stolen base volume but that isn’t the whole story. The base running efficiency is what is impressive. Over the past two seasons Profar has tallied 16 steals while getting caught only twice. His sprint speed is only slightly above average, in the 56th percentile per Baseball Savant, but clearly he knows how to pick his spots.
The case isn’t fool proof and it probably won’t happen but hey, you have to admit, you can find more reasons that one to bring Jurickson Profar back into the green and gold. There is still upside, however hard you have to squint to still see it.
