Which Reds minor leaguers leg out extra hits?

If you’ve picked up your copy of the 2015 Reds Prospect Guide you have seen the spray charts for all of the guys in the Top 40 and if you were interested you could see how many infield hits each of those guys had. Today I chose to expand that from just the position prospects inside of the Top 40 to include 14 more guys that are considered to have speed within the system for a total of 35 guys to look at.

Speed is one of the five tools and while it’s often undersold (I’m guilty of it at times), it can come in handy. It helps players on defense, but it also comes into play on offense in several ways. Base running relies on speed and instincts, but it also shows up in terms of collecting extra bases when the hitter puts the ball in play.

Turning singles into doubles and doubles into triples is one effect that speed can have. Those extra bases boost slugging and improve the likelihood of scoring runs. What is the biggest asset of it all though is being able to turn outs into singles by legging out infield singles. The run differential by turning a single into a double has an added value of .180 runs (it varies based on how many outs there are when it happens). The run differential by turning a double into a triple has an added value of .278 (also varies based upon how many outs there are when it happens). Turning an out into a single though is worth half of a run. It’s twice as valuable as turning a double into a triple and two-and-a-half times as valuable as turning a single into a double.

Infield singles are about speed, but they are also about luck. Slow guys can rack up infield hits in a given year just because of how the ball bounces for them, likewise, fast runners may come up a little shorter than expected because they may just hit them slightly more “at a guy” that season. Looking at the Major Leagues top 10 infield hit rates for 2014 we see plenty of speedy guys on the list. Let’s take a look:

Eight of the players are considered to be quite fast. Two guys on the list though, no one will ever confuse with being fast. Jonny Gomes is a left fielder/DH type of runner. The same goes for Wil Myers. Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon both stole 50+ bases this season. They finished 23rd and 24th in baseball in this stat, behind Jonny Gomes. So there can be some luck that goes into it.

Let’s take a look at the Top 10 infield hit rates for the 2014 season (unless otherwise noted) among the 35 players that were either a Top 40 prospect that was a position player or one of the additional prospects who made the Prospect Guide and are considered to be fast.

Apparently the only thing to getting infield hits is having a first name that starts with a J. Jonny Gomes, Juan Silva, Jonathan Reynoso, Jose Siri and Junior Arias.

A few things stand out from this list. First is that most of the guys played at the lower levels where, generally speaking, the defenders aren’t as good. Juan Silva was the only player on the list who spent significant time above Low-A from this group and only two others saw any time above Low-A from the top 10. That’s not entirely surprising. Just about everyone on the list is also considered to be at least a slightly above-average speed guy, with one exception. Gavin LaValley is now a fast guy. He may run ok for a guy that is as big as he is, but in terms of his pure speed he sticks out on this list like a unicorn at a turtle race.

Of the 35 player sampling there were only three players above the 10% threshold who saw significant time above the Low-A level. That really speaks well for what Juan Silva was able to do in leading the group with an 18.4% rate of turning balls fielded on the infield into singles. Junior Arias performed very well too, though his injury led to him missing most of the season, so I don’t count him in the three noted players above. With that said, his rate from 2013 was nearly identical.

The Entire List

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Three catchers make up four of the bottom players on the list. That is not surprising. What is surprising is the guy that is down there with them. Reydel Medina is an above-average speed guy and even spent some time in center field, so finding him so far down the list, while also playing at a level that, again, generally speaking has the lowest quality fielders, is very surprising. He is left handed, and likely pulls the ball on the ground like most players do, making the throw shorter and in theory, giving lefties less time to get to first base, but it’s still surprising to see him so low.

Sebastian Elizalde being near the bottom of the list is also a bit of a surprise. When he was originally signed by the Reds he was referred to as an above-average runner who could play center field. I never saw that kind of speed out of him when he was in Dayton in 2014, not that he was a plodding runner, but he wasn’t fast. He’s a lefty like Medina, so that could come into play slightly here.

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