Player Profile: Wil Myers: Can He Overcome the Injuries?

Wil Myers was a top-10 minor league prospect after winning the 2012 Minor League Player of the Year award from Baseball America. He then had a strong half-season in the bigs in 2013 before injuries struck. Myers missed nearly three months in 2014 with a sprained right wrist and then missed just over 100 games in 2015 due to issues with his left wrist. With the injuries, his performance waned and at this point, his previously rising star has hit the terra firma with a thud. What will the 2016 campaign bring for the righty slugger?

YEAR BY YEAR REVIEW

2012: As a 21 year old he hit .314 with 37 homers, 109 RBI and a .987 OPS over 134 games at Double and Triple-A en route to being named Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year.

2013: Myers entered the year ranked as the fourth best prospect in baseball by Baseball America, fourth by MLB.com and seventh by Baseball Prospectus. He saw action in 64 minor league games and slashed .286/.356/.520 with 14 homers and 57 runs batted in. He was then promoted to the bigs and, in 88 games with the Rays, slashed.293/.354/.478 with 13 homers, 53 RBI and 50 runs scored.

2014: Myers was limited to 87 games due to injury and his performance tanked… massively. He batted .222/.294/.320 with just six homers over 361 plate appearances.

2015: He was traded to the Padres where he, once again, dealt with injuries. He appeared in just 60 games and produced a league average type of effort (.253/.336/.427). He also ramped up his workload at first base and admitted he would rather play first base than the outfield. "This is the first defensive position I've found that I really like in professional baseball," said Myers. "If the opportunity presents itself next year, then I'd love to do it again." Yonder Alonso was dealt to the Athletics this offseason opening up the spot for Myers full-time (Brett Wallace figures to settle in as the backup).

HIS HEALTH

Because of a lack of health, Myers, like any other player in his situation, had to alter his mechanics. Most times when a player alters his swing to accommodate a health situation the results aren’t impressive. They weren’t in Myers’ case either. He’s had issues keeping both hands on the bat through the strike zone and that has caused his top hand to preclude his ability to throw the barrel of the bat at the ball with enough alacrity to drive it.

Honestly, it’s hard to know where Myers is at right now with his body. For the sake of this review I’m going to have to assume that his wrists, along with the rest of his body, are healthy. Admittedly I do not know if this is the case or not nor do I believe anyone but Myers really knows as of this writing. Multiple years with injury and multiple issues to the wrist area; those are concerning. Often times people with injuries to that area of the body take a long time to build back the required strength to help drive the baseball. A full offseason of rest and training – again, I’m assuming he should be alright. It’s certainly an uncertainty.

THE SKILLS

Myers has appeared in 235 big league games and has accrued 987 plate appearances. Given that a full season is rendered as 502 plate appearances when we’re talking about qualifying for the batting title, let’s be very unscientific and say that Myers has two full seasons of work under his belt. That assumption would lead to an average effort of .256-14-69-64-8 with a .734 OPS. Mark Canha went .254-16-70-61-7 with a .742 OPS for some context as to how middling that effort of Myers would be.

Myers has hit .256 in his career. The league average is .252 since his career began.

Myers has a .327 OBP. The league average, since he began, is .318.

Myers has a .407 SLG. The league average is .392.

That’s not good.

He’s stolen an average of five bases per season.

That’s not good.

He’s hit a total of 27 home runs.

That’s not good.

A one-time elite talent, are there any parts of Myers game that lead anyone to believe that a 25 homer, .875 OPS type season could be possible? Let’s dive into the data a bit further.

When he pulls the ball he has lots of success. Here is a look at his spray chart over his young career.

A few notes: He is at his best when he pulls the ball. Sort of. Oddly, when he yanks the ball, it is nearly always on the ground. As such, he’s rather unlikely to see a massive power surge since he simply doesn’t lift the ball enough to his pull field.

When he hits the ball up the middle his slash line is historically good.

When he hits the ball to the opposite field, all he does is drag the ball through the zone and pop the ball up. He needs to do a much better job on balls hit to the right side of the diamond.

As for pitch type…

In 2013 Myers was attacked with the fastball 49.6 percent of the time.

In 2014 the number dropped to 48.6 percent.

In 2015 the number rose to 55.2 percent.

Pitchers simply haven’t been as afraid to attack Myers with the fastball as they were when his career began, likely because of his inability to lift the ball. With health that should change in the positive for Myers (i.e. more fastballs).

Here are the numbers for the last three years on the four seam fastball:

2013: .328 average, .607 SLG, .279 ISO

2014: .214 average, .315 SLG, .101 ISO

2015: .276 average, .487 SLG, .211 ISO

Maybe he got a bit healthier last season after all, as he certainly drove the pitch better than he did in 2014.

Myers has decreased his swinging strike percentage each season: 11.5, 10.3 and 9.9 percent. That’s solid. He also upped his contact percentage from 74.5 to 76.1 to 76.3 percent (contact made when swinging at all pitches).

He has a slightly above average 11.8 percent HR/FB ratio so that’s not the issue with his lack of homers. The issue is that he doesn’t lift the ball enough (I mentioned that above). Through three seasons his fly ball rate is 35.2 percent. That’s league average stuff. Unless he changes his swing path he’s going to need some HR/FB growth before his homer mark jumps substantially.

SPOT IN THE ORDER

The Rays and Padres have really had no idea how to deploy Myers, at least on a consistent basis. It’s rather remarkable really. Here’s a look as to where he has appeared in the batting order since joining the majors:

Talk about not giving a guy a chance to succeed. It can’t be easy for Myers to show up every day and have no idea where in the order he’s batting. It’s also interesting that, given his skill set, he’s hit leadoff more times than any other spot in the order. He has no top-of-the-order speed nor has he ever been profiled as a top-of-the-order bat. It’s just not his game, despite the solid ability to get on base. Looking at the Padres current roster though they may not have a better option than Myers at the top. Make sure you factor in any news you hear about what the Padres plan to do with the batting order as Myers batting leadoff is totally different than Myers batting fifth in terms of the production one should expect in the counting categories.

How has he performed in each spot?

He has performed best at the leadoff spot in terms of slots in which he has seen at least 29 games, but even that first spot OPS of .781 OPS isn’t very good.

CONCLUSION

Myers is still just 25 years old.

He has the pedigree of future all-star.

He’s been waylaid by injury.

He’s cut his strikeout rate a bit.

He’s upped his walk rate a bit (10.7 percent last year versus 9.5 for his career).

He will qualify at first base and the outfield in most leagues.

Alas, he doesn’t steal bases. He doesn’t hit for average. He doesn’t drive the ball into the seats with enough frequency to be a prime target in 2016. A Mark Canha season, with health, would appear to be the low end of expectations in 2016 with the upside to pull off a Shin-Soo Choo type effort.