Evaluating Nick Castellanos' Rookie Year

If all you look at is WAR, you'd see that Nick Castellanos had a disappointing season.  According to FanGraphs, Casty was worth negative 0.5 wins while Baseball-reference says he was worth negative 1.5 wins.  Nothing is worse than being worth negative wins.  It means, "you are not good enough to be on a Major League roster."  WAR is made up of both offense and defense, so let's look at each one separately.  

Nick Castellanos hit .259/.306/.394 with 11 HR and 66 RBI.  He had a 93 OPS+ and a 94 wRC+, which shows he was slightly below league average.  Among 53 positional rookies, Casty was 18th in wRC+.  Not great, but not horrible either.  

Looking at batted ball data, one number jumps out.  His line drive rate of 28.5% was the 2nd highest in all of baseball and the highest in the American League.  Having a high line drive rate is important because line drives fall in for base hits more often then any other type of batted ball, 69% of the time in 2014 according to FanGraphs.  Players with high line drive rates typically have high batting averages (a great example is former Tiger Austin Jackson).  However, Castellanos' .259 average isn't particularly high.  Why is that?  

Batted Ball	Batted Ball Rate	Casty AVG	League AVG	Differnce
Line Drives	28.5%	71.7%	69%	2.7%
Ground Balls	35.0%	20.7%	23.9%	-3.2%
Fly Balls	36.5%	20.0%	21.2%	-1.2%

Nick Casteallos' hit rate for ground balls and fly balls were lower than league average.  If those types of batted balls fell for hits for closer to league average, Casty's overall batting average would have been closer to .270.  It could be chalked up to a little bit of bad luck.  But also, a lot of it had to do with his high strikeout rate, which ranked T-18th in all of baseball.  This is one area of his offense where he needs to improve.  

According to Brooks Baseball, Nick Castellanos had hit the fastball really well in 2014 but needs to improve on hitting breaking pitches and off-speed pitches better:

Pitch	PA	AVG	SLG
Hard	336	0.310	0.479
Breaking	133	0.188	0.278
Offspeed	74	0.122	0.189

However, looking deeper into the breaking pitches, he really wasn't that bad against curveballs:

Pitch	PA	AVG	SLG
Slider	90	0.133	0.200
Curve	38	0.316	0.474
Knuckler	4	0.250	0.250
Slow Curve	1	0.000	0.000

But now we're getting into small sample territory.  Nonetheless, an improvement on off-speed and breaking balls is a must if Castellanos is going to get to the next level.  At age 23 to start the 2015 season, he has plenty of time to get there.   

According to baseball-reference, Nick Castellanos had a positive 1.6 oWAR, which means all of his negative WAR came from defense and positional value.

Nick Castellanos was worth -30 runs on defense according to DRS and -18.4 runs according to UZR, both league worsts in 2014.  With a minimum of 400 innings at 3B, Castellanos was also the worst in RZR at .587 and the only one below .600.  Overall, Miguel Cabrera showed better defense numbers just one season ago:

Player	DRS	UZR	RZR
Nick Castellanos (2014)	-30	-18.4	0.587
Miguel Cabrera (2013)	-18	-16.8	0.656

No, I'm not advocating Miguel Cabrera moving back to 3B.  In fact, with Miggy's injury concerns, he'd probably be on par with Casty right now.  To put it in better perspective, though, Nick Castellanos had shown historically bad stats at 3B.  DRS has only been around since 2003, but Casty is only the 2nd third baseman to put up negative 30 runs.  With a minimum of 400 innings, Casty is only the 4th third baseman to put up an RZR of less than .600:

Year	Player	RZR
2007	Ryan Braun	0.564
2004	Wes Helms	0.586
2014	Nick Castellanos	0.587
2003	Troy Glaus	0.592

Of course there's a chance that these numbers are skewed as it typically takes 3 years for fielding stats to stabilize.  However, looking at these stats, there's only one other player who had a season of -30 DRS and under .600 RZR, Ryan Braun in 2007.  Braun only lasted one year at 3B before moving to LF.  A similar move might need to be made with Nick Castellanos.  With Victor Martinez potentially leaving as a Free Agent, there is an opening in the line up to possibly shift Nick to either 1B or DH (or split time between both positions with Miggy) and acquire a better defensive 3B.  Looking at the Free Agent market, one name jumps out as a great defender with an above average bat, Chase Headley.  Against most fans disapproval, it might be in the Tigers best interest to not resign V-Mart and instead go with Headley at 3B and get the disastrous defending Castellanos away from 3B.  

Just How Rare Was V-Mart's Season?

Victor Martinez hit .335/.409/.565 with 32 HR and a 166 wRC+ in 2014.  He hit career highs in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, ISO, wOBA, wRC+ and probably a few more categories that I'm missing.  It was the first time he hit at least 30 HR, had a .400 OBP and at least a .400 wOBA and a 140 wRC+.  It was only the 2nd time he reached a .500 SLG and the 3rd time he reached a .200 ISO.  No question about it, it was definitely a career year for Victor Martinez.  At the age of 35.  How rare is that?  

Using an arbitrary 165 wRC+ cutoff, here is a list of players since 1901 who reached that mark at age 35 or higher.  Several have done it more than once, so only the highest wRC+ season is listed.  

Year	Player	Age	wRC+
2002	Barry Bonds	37	244
1957	Ted Williams	38	223
1931	Babe Ruth	36	206
1910	Nap Lajoie	35	194
1971	Hank Aaron	37	191
1923	Tris Speaker	35	178
2008	Chipper Jones	36	174
1909	Honus Wagner	35	174
1944	Bob Johnson	38	169
1999	Mark McGwire	35	168
1922	Ty Cobb	35	167
1957	Stan Musial	36	167
1944	Mel Ott	35	167
2014	Victor Martinez	35	166
1924	Zack Wheat	36	166
2008	Manny Ramirez	36	165

That's a pretty impressive group of players.  Several all-stars and hall of famers.  Only one or two non-immediately recognized players.  16 players in all and V-Mart is the first to do so since 2008 when Chipper Jones and Manny Ramirez did it.  

So how many of these players were like V-Mart and had their career year at age 35 or higher?  Well, all of these players had at least 1 season of at least 150+ wRC+ prior to their age-35 season.  However, 6 of these players were like V-Mart and had their highest wRC+ at age 35 or higher.  

Player	Highest wRC+	2nd Highest wRC+	Difference
Victor Martinez	166	130	36
Bob Johnson	169	150	19
Zack Wheat	166	151	15
Hank Aaron	191	178	13
Barry Bonds	244	235	9
Chipper Jones	174	165	9
Ted Williams	223	221	2

And here we see the biggest difference between Victor Martinez and everyone else on this list.  The difference between V-Mart's best wRC+ season and his 2nd highest wRC+ season was bigger than the other 6.  Almost twice as much as the 2nd biggest difference, in fact.

Yep, I would say that puts V-Mart's season in very rare company.