Cleveland Indians: Tyler Naquin Has Had an Incredible Ability to Sustain Unsustainable Results

Tyler Naquin has posted mind-boggling results for the Cleveland Indians so far, and they have somehow stayed despite many red flags

Before the season started for the Cleveland Indians, fans and experts had rather low expectations for Tyler Naquin. Steamer, a popular projection algorithm, figured that he would go on to be a little better than a replacement level player, and our own Matt Bretz ranked him as the 11^th overall prospect in the Cleveland Indians system before the season. He noted that he would definitely get a chance at the big league level, and his skills would make him a valuable bench asset at the very least. 

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Several months later, we now find ourselves wondering if he could win the American League Rookie of the Year Award. He is nearly an entire win ahead of the next best rookie by FanGraphs’ Wins Above Replacement measure, and he places in the top two batters in batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Combining this with roughly average defense and base running makes him a strong candidate to take home the award, especially since this year lacks a Carlos Correa or Francisco Lindor.

The only problem with his success is that it does not appear to be very sustainable. His .328 batting average is elite, but his .437 batting average on balls in play is entirely unbelievable. Sure, some great batters can sustain high batting averages on balls in play, but having a 100-point gap between that figure and one’s batting average is nearly unprecedented. These levels of unsustainability almost always balance out.

Still, let’s give Naquin the benefit of the doubt for a few moments, and do our best to estimate what his batting average should be using his batted ball profile. It is relatively simple to take the number of groundballs, fly balls, line drives, pop outs, and home runs and use those numbers to calculate and expected batting average. We simply multiply each statistic by the league batting average of that batted ball type, then sum up the results and divide by the total number of plate appearances. Do not worry if this appears to be confusing, because I promise that it is a simple and legitimate operation.

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What are the benefits of using a player’s expected batting average to analyze his performance? For one, batting average takes a long time to stabilize, meaning that we can draw reliable conclusions about a player’s batting average from the sample size only after 910 at bats. Clearly, this is highly inconvenient, so most people simply draw conclusions from a significantly smaller sample size. This stabilization point is one of the reasons why it is often better to use on-base percentage or slugging percentage to evaluate players, since they stabilize in 460 and 320 plate appearances, respectively.

Now, what is Tyler Naquin’s expected batting average? Well, it is a lot lower than one would hope at .268. By no means is this unequivocal proof that he will get worse. After all, a handful of players manages to beat their expected batting average by that wide of a margin every year. It is entirely possible that the Indians’ outfielder is one of those players.

To add more mystery to the subject, he has been posting these same unsustainable results for almost the entire season. Still, he has managed to increase his batting average as the season has continued. Not only has Naquin been able to defy all statistical reason, he has been able to act contrary to all logic.

One factor in his favor is that he hits the ball hard, very hard. Brooks Baseball reports that he has had average power against fastballs and off-speed pitches, but he has absolutely obliterated breaking pitches. In fact, eight of his twelve home runs have come off breaking balls. Another helpful quirk has been his ability to have a roughly even spray profile. He has managed to avoid becoming too pull-happy, and he sends more balls the opposite way or up the middle than the average batter.

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This said, it is still hard to believe that Tyler Naquin will continue to produce results that are this unsustainable. Maybe he has found some sort of magical approach that can beat the defense, but this is highly unlikely. The most logical explanation is still that we are dealing with too small of a sample size for things to stabilize. At the end of the day, he has only received 228 plate appearances since he does not start most games against a lefty. Whether this trend can continue for the rest of the season remains to be seen, so I suppose it is best that we sit back and enjoy the magic while it lasts.