Odubel Herrera led baseball in a category last year. That’s great. When you find out what the category is you will begin to understand why the Oracle, that’s me by the way, is suggesting that no one reading this report believes improvement will come in 2016 for this player. It won’t.

(1) Odubel Herrera led baseball last season with a .387 BABIP.

As you will find elsewhere in this Guide, a number that huge simply isn’t sustainable. Period. Here are the number of men who posted a mark of .380 the last five years. Note how many hit the mark two years in a row (minimum 502 plate appearances).

 

BABIP over .380

2011

Adrian Gonzalez, Matt Kemp

2012

Dexter Fowler, Torii Hunter, Mike Trout,

2013

Chris Johnson, Joe Mauer, Michael Cuddyer

2014

None

2015

Herrera, Miguel Cabrera, Dee Gordon, Paul Goldschmidt

 

As you can tell, not a single man on the list has posted back-to-back seasons of .380. It just doesn’t happen. Period.

During his minor league career Herrera had a .350 mark, in and of itself pretty stupendous, though it should be noted that he never played a game at Triple-A and has only 197 games above Single-A ball.

The odds are extremely low that Herrera will even reach his minor league mark this season in BABIP. Extremely low.

(2) Herrera had a 23.5-percent line drive rate last season. That mark was 29th best in baseball. Could he repeat it in 2016? Sure he could. At the same time, it too is a rather large number. Moreover, of the 28 men who bettered that mark last season only eight had a higher GB/FB ratio (I’ll get back to that in a bit). Herrera also had a 27.7-percent line drive rate against lefties. There’s no way the lefty will do that again. 

(3) Herrera had a monstrous .714 batting average on the 84 line drives he hit last season. Just to compare… Andrew McCutchen who matched the 23.5-percent line drive rate of Herrera hit .699 on line drives last season and owns a career mark of .712. Is Herrera really better than McCutchen?

(4) Herrera walked 28 times… last season. In 537 plate appearances he took a walk 28 times. Awful. For a guy with a lack of pop he struck out a good bit too as he whiffed 129 times. Add those two numbers together and you end up with an embarrassing 0.22 BB/K ratio. 

Add all that up and it’s a stretch to think that Herrera will be able to match the .297 batting average he posted last season. A big s t r e t c h.

As for the rest of his game…

His average will likely fall. Herrera doesn’t walk. With it his OBP could dip. Last season the mark was a passable .344 but if he gives any of that back his ability to score runs will be diminished. Despite 147 games played he scored 64 runs last season. Hell, Avisail Garcia, who was a monumental bust, scored 65 times.

Herrera has no power. He hit eight homers last season. His Isolated Power mark was .121. His SLG was .418. That’s not even league average stuff for an outfielder. In fact, the eight homers he hit last season were a season best for his career (he hit 13 homers in 610 minor league games). He hit a mere 29 percent of batted balls into the air leading to a 1.61 GB/FB ratio for the Phillies last season. You just don’t see guys with numbers like that hit 15 homers. They often fall short of double-digits as he did last season. He won’t be adding power to his game in 2016.

Herrera appeared in 147 games. Only 27 of those outings did he hit leadoff. Still, he drove in 41 runs last season. Jeff Francoeur had 45 RBI, folks.

Herrera stole 16 bases last season. He was caught eight times. That’s a success rate of 66.7 percent. Horrific. Let me state it another way. A 67-percent success rate is the break-even point for baserunners. What that means is that, despite using his wheels to steal 16 bases last season, his running did nothing to help his team win. Nothing. In fact, he really shouldn’t even be running if he’s caught the frequently. His minor league mark was only 71.9 percent by the way, so he’s not likely to push 20 thefts this season, even with his speed, since he’s so brutally inefficient at swiping bags.

Many will expect Herrera to improve on last season. That’s highly unlikely. It’s also dubious that he will be able to full repeat his overall game in 2016 meaning he had better up his steal total substantially, which is unlikely, or he’s likely to disappoint a whole lot of owners.