Lorenzo Cain burst into public consciousness with his strong play last post-season. An intriguing talent who never could never seem to put it all together, the soon to be 29 year old (April 13th) is an intriguing blend of athleticism, talent and excitement. Can Cain improve upon the solid but just under the radar of true fantasy stardom effort he posted in 2014?
THE MINORS
2004: Drafted in the 17th round by the Brewers out of community college.
Cain has a long track record of work in the minors appearing in games from 2005-12 and then again in 2014 for a few games.
TOTALS: .290/.363/.425 with 56 homers, 366 RBIs, 496 runs and 165 steals in 801 games
THE MAJORS
2010: Appeared in 43 games with the Brewers batting .306 with a homer and seven steals. Sprained his knee in April and missed three months of action. December 19, 2010 he was traded by the Milwaukee Brewers with Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi to the Kansas City Royals for Yuniesky Betancourt, Zack Greinke and cash.
2011: Appeared in six games in the big leagues after 128 games at Triple-A. Hit .273 over 22 at-bats.
2012: Injured his groin in April and missed three months of action. He also strained his hamstring later in the year and missed an additional three weeks. In between he hit .266 with seven homers and 10 steals over 61 games.
2013: Missed a month with an oblique strain. Accrued 399 at-bats on the year batting .251 with four homers, 54 runs scored and 14 steals.
2014: Career bests everywhere as he went .301-5-53-55-28 over 471 at-bats. Had a DL stint that cost him 18 days (groin strain).
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THE SKILLS
Lo Cain didn't play baseball until the 10th grade and he only played cause he was cut from the basketball team. Crazy right? It took Cain nearly a decade of big league ball before he truly established himself. Just what type of player are we looking at with Cain?
A strong athlete, Cain's been hurt a ton in his professional career, so much so that he worked on on his running stride after the 2013 season to combat the injuries. "I told our trainers and Dayton (Moore, Royals general manager) I was willing to do whatever it took to stay healthy," Cain says. "I ended up coming to K.C. during the offseason, a week or two every month. I was waking up at 5, 6 in the morning, having two-a-day workouts." Did it work? Well he did steal a career best 28 bags last season with a big league best 133 games, but he still spent time on the DL with a groin issue and missed nearly a month of games. If you recall from above, he also missed a month in 2013 with an oblique issue that helped to limit him to 115 games played. Don't know about how you view it - probably differently than me - but when a guy is nearly 29 years old and he's yet to play 135 games in a big league season I get nervous. In fact, there's little in his background to suggest he's much different than a Carlos Gonzalez type - a player who is very effective when healthy but one that you have to pretty much build in at least one DL stint into your projections.
As for the actual skills... we've got 1,369 plate appearances spread out over five seasons to break down.
For his career Cain has a 0.29 BB/K ratio. Not remotely good (average is about 0.39). It should also be noted that the mark in 2014 was well below both those totals at 0.22 which is terrible. The guy walked 24 times last season. Folks, there are 26 weeks in a big league season. You mean to tell me that he couldn't walk once a week? Yikes. I say it all the time, and write about it every year, but when you have a BB/K that is as poor as Cain's is it's nearly impossible to consistently hit .300. Just can't do it.
But there's more to worry about with Cain than just his walks and strikeouts. Try on for size a .380 BABIP. I could get all analytical with that number but since I was out late last night trying to meet my future wife let's just say it simply. The odds Cain repeats that number in 2015 are about the same as the chance that I meet the future Mrs. Flowers last night. No player in baseball with 500 plate appearances had a higher BABIP mark than Cain. Now you might say - 'but Ray Starling Marte has posted a mark of .363 and .373 the last two years so why can't Cain?' You could say that. My response would be - you picked the one guy in baseball in Marte that you could say that about. Is Cain the second? I'm betting no. Cain does own a .345 career BABIP, a still elite mark that is obviously bolstered by his speed, but let's not get stupid here expecting a repeat of last season (note that the mark was just .309 in 2013). Cain does own a 22.1 percent line drive rate for his career, and that's a strong number. The mark has been at least 21.8 percent in each of the last four seasons as well. But still, you shouldn't expect another .301 season from a guy who has hit .279 for his career.
Cain has no power, at least nothing to get excited about at all. In his career he's hit 17 big flies and the last two seasons he's gone deep nine times. It's just not his game. He hits the ball on the ground and runs really fast. For his career he has a 49 percent ground ball rate and 29 percent fly ball rate leading to a 1.67 GB/FB ratio (the league average for grounders is 44 percent and fly balls is 35 percent). He hits the ball on the ground and runs. Since fly balls result in more outs than the other type of batted balls that's a good thing. He also doesn't have success when he lifts the ball with a mere 5.9 percent HR/F ratio for his career.
Cain is fast and will run. At the same time, last seasons effort may not inch upward. Why? The guy just doesn't get on base much. For his career his .326 OBP is barely league average and three of the last four seasons the mark hasn't even hit .317. Add in his spot in the batting order (see below), and you would be wise to set your top end steal total for Cain at 30.
PLAYING TIME CONSIDERATIONS
According to Jeffery Flanagan of MLB.com the Royals current plan - inexplicably in my mind - is to have Alcides Escobar bat leadoff. He would then be follow up by Alex Rios, Lorenzo Cain, Alex Gordon, Kendrys Morales, Eric Hosmer, Salvador Perez, Omar Infante and Mike Moustakas. That looks pretty dang wonky to this author, but if Cain does indeed hit third then his owners should be feeling pretty good about his counting number production (RBI, runs).
CONCLUSION
Catch Cain on the right day and you'll see a guy streaking around the bases on ball hit in the gap while robbing a batter of a hit in the gap with a diving catch defensively. The guy is an elite athlete. No doubt. But there's more to being a baseball player than simply looking good in spandex (this isn't the NFL where the Combine means so much). Despite his skills, a consolidation of his talents into production took Cain nearly a decade of professional baseball. There were some solid efforts along the way, but there were also a myriad of injuries and maddening inconsistency. And that leaves us in a quandary when judging his 2015 outlook. Love the talent, but the inconsistency and the continual health woes hold me back from a full endorsement.
10 team lg: With a likely decline in batting average, no power, and general health woes always cropping up, Cain is no more than a 5th outfield option. Don't believe the Sportscenter/World Series hype.
12 team lg: Still want him as my 5th outfielder in this format. He's in the mix with guys like Jayson Werth and Carl Crawford.
15 team lg: His skills play better here. Still, I'm only adding him as my third outfielder if I have two top-15 guys at the spot, and let's be honest, I'm not reaching on him so he's still likely to be nothing more than the fourth outfielder if it was my team.
AL-only: Great talent to invest in, but the issues with his health make stopping short of breaking the bank a good idea. If he can't play a full season of games, and is going to miss a month of time, you have to be very careful because even back-filling 30 games in a five outfielder AL-only league is extremely difficult to do.