SABR-Toothed Triber: Travis Hafner’s “Resurgence”

I have a confession to make: I really like Travis Hafner.  Sure, the affection may stem from his 2006 season, when he was the best hitter in baseball, but I like to think that my passions for players are less pedestrian than just: “he was good once, so I like him.”  I like to think that I’m a fan because he’s a good guy, or because he was a late bloomer, or because he has a silly nickname, or because he’s currently the longest-tenured Cleveland Indian Tribe hitter.  Maybe I like to think of myself as loyal, and turning my back on Hafner would make me feel otherwise.

But none of that is really true either.  I like Travis Hafner because his swing is beautiful to watch—I’m a sucker for power and quick hands from the left side of the plate.  When I was a kid, I tried to switch hit because I wanted to look like Barry Bonds or Stan Musial. Nothing against DiMaggio or Pujols—it just wasn’t where my heart was.

Sure, you might say that I fell in love with Hafner’s swing when he was crushing home runs at an alarming rate, so that made it a bit prettier, and that’s true.  But even during his struggles over the past several years, I’d still grab him up off the waiver wire in fantasy leagues, just hoping on a return to the old Pronk.

Now that I’m older and wiser—or perhaps just older—I don’t stash him on my fantasy roster any longer.  Pronk-Free since 2009! I’ve come to the conclusion that Pronk is never coming back—things like that just don’t happen to 33 year old DHs.  They get older, they get less effective, then they become utterly useless.  It’s a sad downward spiral to watch: Boston fans are going through it with David Ortiz; Seattle fans watched Junior Griffey hang ‘em up this season after a year and a half of embarrassing baseball; and Gary Sheffield left the game last season, believing—in spite of all evidence to the contrary—that he wasn’t a washed up platoon DH.

So it gives me some pleasure to see, in 2010, Hafner is posting his best season since 2007.  After two atrocious and injury-riddled seasons, Hafner is quietly performing rather well this season.  Let’s check out the numbers*:

*You’ll notice I didn’t include batting average in the chart.  Why?  Two reasons.  First, it’s .255 which, admittedly, sort of defeats my point about Hafner having a good season.  But secondly, what we really care about when assessing hitters are two things: how often they make outs and how many bases they get when they don’t.  On-base percentage and slugging take care of those concerns rather nicely, so unless you want to convince me that batting average is more important than on-base percentage, we’ll stick with what I’ve got.

Did you know Hafner’s OPS was above .800?  I sure didn’t, and it surprised me.  Is it a long way from 2006 when he OPS’d 1.097?  Yeah, it is.  But is it a useful number?  Yeah.  It actually is.  The only regulars he trails are Choo and Kearns.

Anyone who’s read my stuff knows that my favorite stat to measure offense is weighted on-base average, or wOBA.  If you need a primer, I wrote one here, but wOBA takes into account everything a batter can do, and assigns run values to those events.  Then it scales the numbers to look like on-base percentage, so .300 is crummy, .330 is average, .360 is good, and .400 is great.  In 2006, Hafner had a wOBA of .449, and led the majors.  This season, it’s .357.  Yeah, Pronk ain’t coming back, but I can live with a .357 wOBA.  There’s plenty of value to that.

In fact, the value of a .357 wOBA is represented in that final column.  Weighted Runs Created (wRC) translates a player’s wOBA—based on how many plate appearances he’s had—into the number of runs he’s added to his team over the course of the season.  The reason it’s not just runs scored plus RBI is that it’s trying to evaluate the player, rather than his teammates and the different contexts they provide him.  So since a single with no one on adds to a team’s likelihood of scoring, it’s counted in wRC (just not counted very much).

So Hafner’s 33.0 wRC ain’t too shabby.  Is it the best on the team?  No.  That spot’s taken by a certain South Korean right fielder who has 43.8 wRC on the season.  Is Hafner second?  No again.  Austin Kearns’ strong season has him just ahead of Hafner, at 35.4 wRC.  But if I told you going into the season that Hafner would be playing everyday and would be our third most productive hitter, you would have said one of two things to me: (1) Wow.  That’s really surprising! Or (2): We must be in last place.

So you’re both right.

Travis isn’t going to live up to his contract.  He just isn’t: that contract will be an albatross for this club until we buy him out before the 2013 season.  The best we can hope for is above-average, consistent production.  And we’re seeing that this year for the first time since 2007.  So take joy in the small things, Tribe Fans.  Even if the man known as Pronk is no more, there’s still some baseball left in there.  Except, of course, during interleague play in NL parks.  Then, there’s no baseball in there.

For reference, here are the current wOBA, wRC, and OPS leaderboards for the Indians.  Remember, the average wOBA is .330—anything above that is good, anything below, varying degrees of execrable: