Best thing about Xander Bogaerts’s remarkable season? There’s still room to improve
My pal and brother-in-prospecting Alex Speier has long has regaled us with Feats of Mookie, a term/hashtag he coined to … well, obviously, describe the many achievements and accomplishments of Mookie Betts as he ascended through the Red Sox farm system to his current status as one of the few beacons of hope for the losing and lost 2015 Red Sox.
Alex was on to the magnitude of Mookie before many (if not all) of us were. Hell, he might have even known him when he answered to Markus.
Somewhat facetiously Monday, I tweeted a couple of Xander Facts. They were derivative and decidedly less-catchy cousins of Speier’s Feats of Mookie to be sure, if not quite a direct trademark violation. I figure any opportunity to salute what the Red Sox’ other 22-year-old stalwart is accomplishing in his second full season is one worth seizing.
So how about this? Here’s a short list – let’s keep to five — of Xander Bogaerts’s feats (er, facts) so far this season.
•He’s hitting .349 at Fenway Park this season.
•He’s batting .386 in the second half.
•He’s hitting .391 with runners in scoring position.
•Since his low batting-average point of .250 on May 11, he’s hitting .344.
•He’s had a higher batting average in each successive month of the season: .274 (April), .275 (May), .312 (June), .375 (July), .625 (August, which is totally sustainable).
But his most impressive feats/facts come when you begin pondering what he’s accomplishing relative to his defensive position and his age.
He entered Tuesday night’s game against the Yankees hitting .319 with a .761 OPS this season. The list of shortstops who have hit .310 with a .750 OPS (rounding down there) with a minimum of 400 plate appearances at age 22 or younger is essentially a Cooperstown roll call.
There’s Alex Rodriguez in 1996 and ’98, and Derek Jeter ’96, and Cal Ripken Jr. ’83, and few old timers like Arky Vaughan ’33-’34, Rogers Hornsby ’17 and Travis Jackson ’25 … and there’s also Garry Templeton ‘77, who ultimately didn’t get near Cooperstown but was so electrifying so young that he was traded straight up for a shortstop who did make the Hall of Fame, Ozzie Smith.
If Bogaerts keeps this up over the course of the season, he’ll finish in some exclusive and encouraging company. Yet what he’s doing – and we also must mention that his remarkable metamorphosis into a dependable defensive shortstop might be the most reassuring indication that he’s putting in the effort to reach all of his immense potential – is a weird and incomplete kind of success.
Because for all that he’s improved – remember, at this point last summer he was wallowing in a 61-game stretch from June 7-August 30 in which he slashed .149/.192/.212 – there’s still a lot more room to grow.
A few facts, not feats.
• He doesn’t have a walk in 73 second-half plate appearances. Actually, he doesn’t have a walk since July 4, a span of 99 plate appearances.
• He doesn’t have a home run since June 15 a span of 40 games. He’s hit .357 in that stretch, but with just a .435 slugging percentage.
• That .386 batting average since the break is actually higher than his on-base percentage (.384) due to two sacrifice flies and no walks.
• I’ll probably regret pointing this out given that I still can’t believe Jose Iglesias is a useful offensive player (Stephen Drew 4-evah!), but the slick-fielding Tigers shortstop has a higher OPS (.763 to .761) than Bogaerts with just one fewer homer.
It’s a bit of a mystery why his plate discipline has seemingly regressed, and you’d think he’d have accumulated more home runs given that he managed a respectable 11 last year amid his summer-long frustration.
Matt Collins at Over The Monster did his usual fine work pointing out some of the reasons for Bogaerts’s lack of walks and dingers – he’s not using the wall to his advantage, he’s expanding the strike zone, he’s hitting a lot of grounders with a high batting average on balls in play, which makes one wonder whether his batting average is sustainable.
But the conclusion he comes to jibes with mine, and hopefully that of anyone who has observed his performance this season: If there’s a problem, yo, he’ll solve it. He’s a young player who’s growing, but with far fewer pains than a year ago. Given his work ethic, ability and progress so far, I cannot wait to see what he is at, say, age 25.
I’m not pointing this stuff out to emphasize Bogaerts’s flaws or to turn one of the few positives of this lousy season into a negative or to suggest we should tap the brakes regarding the expectations of what he will become.
In a way, what’s happening is rather remarkable, a tribute to his true talent. Bogaerts is not walking, he’s not hitting homers, and yet he’s putting together a season that rates with the best ever among shortstops his age.
It’s a heck of feat, with the promise of many more feats to come. And that’s a fact.
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