| 11 May 2010
After terrible and injury-plagued seasons in 2008 and 2009, Austin Kearns was pretty much a forgotten man. Over that time, he posted a wOBA under .300. He managed to stay above replacement level based solely on his defensive numbers.
When I took a look at Kearns during the offseason, I thought he would be a good option because he would have a little bit of an offensive rebound, and also because he has consistently been one of the best defensive corner outfielders(according to UZR and Dewan's +/-).
This season, though, Kearns has been a tremendous find for the Indians. Over the past two seasons, he was worth -18 batting runs. Already this season, he has been worth 6.3 batting runs in just 84 plate appearances. It is admittedly a very small sample, but I still wonder how he has made such a turnaround. There may be something we can take from it to see if it is sustainable.
For starters, he has an unsustainably high BABIP of .442 after posting extremely low BABIPs in his past two seasons. There is a basis for his high BABIP, though. He has hit line drives 31.5% of the time, which is well above anything he has done before. Because of his high line drive rate, his xBABIP is a still-impressive .350.
Adjusting his current line(.338/.405/.541) to use his xBABIP, I come up with a .268/.343/.471 line that is still above average(.351 wOBA). This is assuming that all of his "lucky" hits have been singles, though.
Besides for his line drive rate, I'm not sure that we should be too impressed with Kearns just yet. His strikeout rate remains a very high 28.4 percent, which is right where it was last season; his walk rate is down from 15.2 percent last season to 10.7 percent.
His ISO is encouraging, standing at .209 after failing to top .109 the past two seasons. This is also probably fueled by his line drive rate which I have a hard time believing he will sustain.
Kearns has definitely been a find for the Indians, but signs don't point to his hot start being sustainable. ZiPS projects that .252/.355/.401 for the rest of the season. That is still above average and sounds right to me. Add in the fact that he is always a plus in the field, and he will be a valuable player going forward. Paying a guy like this the league minimum is a steal.
Photo Credit: Bill Florence
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
