Josh Reddick: A familiar story?

When Reddick first got called up and started hitting well, my first thought was "Huh, wonder if he's kind of like Trot Nixon." As you can probably guess, the answer was “Yes,” otherwise this wouldn’t be a very interesting post. Nixon was a first round pick by the Red Sox in 1993 and a former top prospect (ranked as high as 13 overall by BA) whose star gradually faded (ranked 1994-1996: 13, 46, 39, but not ranked in 1997 and 1998) before breaking out in AAA at the age of 24, putting up a .310/.400/.513 line, which got him back in to the tail end of the Baseball America Prospect Rankings (99 in 1999). It is easy to see why there was skepticism about Nixon’s breakout year – his numbers the previous three years were poor to mediocre, and at 24 he was a bit old for AAA. However, Baseball America put a little bit of faith in the former top prospect by ranking him. The following year, in full time duty as the Red Sox right fielder, Nixon put up a .270/.357/.472 line, and became a lineup stalwart through 2007, although after his career year in 2003, when he was almost four wins above replacement, back injuries and old age caught up with him, as he played in fewer and fewer games per year with declining numbers.

We don’t know what kind of trajectory Reddick’s career will take, but his minor league career path has followed Nixon’s well. Josh Reddick was drafted in the 17th round of the 2006 draft out of a Georgia junior college, a solid draft that included other major leaguers such as Justin Masterson, Ryan Kalish, and Daniel Bard. Reddick signed for $140,000, which doesn’t exceed the slot threshold for all players drafted after the fifth round. After hitting well in A and high A ball to begin his minor league career, and reaching as high as #3 in the Red Sox system and 75 overall in Baseball America’s rankings, Reddick’s career stalled out in AA and AAA. Now, at 24, he put up a solid .230/.333/.508 line, which was most likely dragged down by his average on balls in play, as Andrew noted. He also began to walk more, with his “luck adjusted” line rising to .298/.390/.576. I’m not quite as bullish as Andrew – I think that Trot Nixon’s career, especially the peak value, is a lot better than median for Reddick. It is easy to forget just how good Nixon was, for his career in Boston he was a .278/.364/.464 hitter and he accumulated more than twenty wins above replacement. Nixon was never a star, but was a contributor nearly every single year in a Red Sox uniform. It will be a major coup for the Red Sox if Reddick can become an inexpensive 2-4 win player, as Trot Nixon was.

With Reddick’s defense, ability to draw a walk, and enough pop to carry a corner outfield position, I think there is a fair shot that he fills the right field vacancy everyone had pegged Ryan Kalish to fill. One thing to keep an eye on going forward is how many at bats Reddick gets against left handed pitchers. Lefties were always an issue with Nixon, and he only hit .214/.308/.322 against them for his career. Reddick only has 50 AB in AAA and 9 in the majors against lefties in 2011, so we can't really draw any conclusions about platoon splits just yet.

Josh Reddick

Josh Reddick is scorching the ball for the Red Sox, hitting a whopping .450 so far this season filling Crawford’s open starting spot in left and spotting JD Drew. With the Sox designating Cameron for assignment, it is clear the front office believes in Reddick for at least this season. Over the past three seasons, Reddick has been a top prospect for the Sox, and he has all the tools to be an above average outfielder— a strong, accurate arm, good power, above average speed, and enough range to play center in an emergency, but the trouble has always been his approach. Prior to 2011, Reddick swung early and often, chasing pitches, and making quick outs on challenging pitches. At AAA in 2009 and 2010 he struck out nearly three times more than he walked, which is not a recipe for success at the big league level. Strikeouts aren’t necessarily worse than other outs, but there’s no way to get a hit if you don’t put the ball in play. Reddick slumped out of the gate in AAA in 2010, but salvaged the season with a huge second half, hitting .351/.372/.627, for a final line of .266/.301/466. Even during his hot second half, his success was in spite of his walk rate rather than because of it. During intermittent play in April, June, and September he struggled in 63 major league plate appearances, striking out 15 times while walking only once, and put up an overall line of .194/.206/.323.

Following his disappointing showing in the majors, this season can be seen as a make-or-break year for Reddick, since Ryan Kalish passed him on the organizational depth chart. Reddick took a huge step forward this season, though at first glance it might not seem that way. His line at AAA this season was a Mark Reynolds-esque 230/.330/.502, but his underlying numbers were greatly improved. Unlike an all-or-nothing slugger like Reynolds, Reddick struck out in only 16.8% of his plate appearances, and had nearly as many walks as strikeouts (33BB, 39K). His power was up as well (isolated power of .277 this season, as opposed to .200 in 2010).

The only thing that was down for Reddick was his average on balls in play, which was only .207. Batting average on balls in play is a tricky statistic, as it varies widely from hitter to hitter, and depends on what sort of balls in play the hitter is hitting. Line drives are much more likely to become hits than groundballs, which are somewhat more likely to become hits than flyballs, while pop-ups almost never become hits. There isn’t publicly available minor league batted ball data which we could use to investigate this, but there are three reasons why Reddick’s BABIP can be discounted. First of all, it’s safe to assume he was hitting the ball hard, since more than half his hits went for extra bases. Second, his career BABIP in the minor leagues was .291 over 2000 plate appearances. Finally, it takes more than 650 plate appearances for BABIP to have good predictive value (See this article currently hosted at Fangraphs for a good primer on sample size issues and when stats.) If we take Reddick’s career BABIP (which is still well below the .310 average on balls in play for the International League this season) and apply it to his 2011 AAA season, we end up with a much stronger .293/.385/571 line.

At the major league level, Reddick has been insanely hot, hitting .450/.489/.750 over 40 at bats. It’s obviously folly to project him to keep hitting this way, as he’s currently sporting a .459 average on balls in play, but the bright side is that his newly found plate discipline has remained intact following his promotion. Even normalizing his average on balls in play based on his batted ball data, Reddick’s line would be .325/.382/.600, good for second on the team in OPS. Reddick has 5 walks to only 4 strikeouts, and has shown a much more selective approach than he did in 2009 or 2010. Between his improved batting and quality defense (he currently has a ridiculous 107 runs above average if his numbers were projected out to 150 games), I believe Reddick should provide the production the Red Sox were expecting out of JD Drew this season, and could provide the Sox a solid, cost controlled corner outfielder for seasons to come. I don’t think Reddick will ever have a season quite like Drew did in 2004, and few players ever do, but I believe a career path similar to Trot Nixon seems like a good median projection.

Meet your Red Sox September call ups

Once the calendar hits September 1, the major league rosters expand from 25 to 40 men. It is a quirk in the rules originally designed to allow for teams to get a look at players for the future. However, it is undeniable that some players, particularly relief pitchers, can have a huge impact on pennant races. For a great example of this, take a look at K-Rod's run in September and the playoffs during the Angels World Series title year. Sadly, the Red Sox call ups won't likely be having any pennant impacts this year, but it is a good time to get to know some of the prospects.

Because of the injury stacks in center field, we've actually already seen most of the upper level outfield talent the Red Sox have at one point or another. Kalish is up and is nearly an everyday player, the stories of McDonald and Nava have been well covered, and we also had a brief look at Reddick earlier in the season. With a call up yesterday, Reddick is back up for the remainder of the season and figures to split time in the outfield. In the game tonight Reddick didn't start, but subbed in for Drew in RF.

The other big call up is Lars Anderson, the former top prospect. Coming into this season there were several question marks about Anderson, but he answered them with a big start in AA

and held his own in AAA Pawtucket this summer as well, posting a .262/.340/.428 line over 400 at bats. Allow me to pat myself on the back for nailing his September call up, although it probably has a lot more to do with Youkilis' injury than Anderson's numbers. Anderson started at first base against the Rays tonight, going 0-4 with two strikeouts.

The other minor league player getting his first shot is Robert Coello, who like Anderson made his major league debut tonight. Unfortunately things didn't go well for Coello either, as he was tagged for 3 hits, two walks, and three earned runs over just one third of an inning of relief. Coello is a recent conversion to pitching, having failed to stick as a catcher in the Reds organization. Because of that, he's still very raw and has a tendency to walk a lot of batters. Originally a starter, Coello was converted to relief towards the end of the minor league season and had great success in the role. Hopefully the Red Sox will be able to get a good look at him and see if he'll be able to stick at middle relief.