Colton Cowser 2024

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, Malike said:

I'm not sure it wasn't described well on the radio.

Regardless, it was a fluke play and nothing would have changed the outcome.

If you are going to blame Cowser, you could just as easily blame Gunnar for not charging the ball (btw, I also think this would be poor).

[Frobby]

9 minutes ago, Malike said:

He played CF last night didn't he? I had to listen to the game but I thought Hays was in LF.

Exactly.  And yes, on a grounder up the middle the CF’s job is to be moving in to back up the infielder in case of an error or bad hop.   Instead Cowser was watching the play.  

[Moose Milligan]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Zero people have said luck is the only factor.

Everyone acknowledges he has some growing to do and that the swing and miss is an issue. 
 

But luck is playing a factor and makes the numbers look worse than they are. If he was having better luck and his OPS was more in the 775+ range, which it probably should be, the hand wringing going on over him would be a lot less.

 

Yeah, but he's not having better luck and his OPS isn't in the .775 range.

I like Cowser a lot and I really like his defense.  I think he'll grow to be a really productive hitter, maybe even a great one.  To continue my list of things I like about him before I get to the critical part so you know that it's not all bad, I like the separation between his batting average and his on base percentage and that he's got more than enough pop in his bat.

But it's getting to a point right now where pointing at statcast and saying his numbers should be better than they are is getting tiresome.  The numbers that matter, the numbers that calculate his actual production, aren't spectacular.  To @Frobby's point, I'd like to see all of the times he's been "unlucky" because watching from day-to-day, it's certainly hard to see.  And at the end of the day, what really matters isn't statcast excuse-making...it's actually getting it done on the field. 

[Greg Pappas]

Cowser is a rookie going through the struggles that many rookies go through at the plate.  Westburg was decent in his rookie season, but has improved considerably in his second season.  That happens a lot with rookies.  Some turn it around during their rookie seasons, like Gunnar, but some take longer (if they improve at all.)  We carried Mullins' poor bat early on, and pending a CF acquisition, we should probably do the same with the rook. 
 

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Greg Pappas said:

Cowser is a rookie going through the struggles that many rookies go through at the plate.  Westburg was decent in his rookie season, but has improved considerably in his second season.  That happens a lot with rookies.  Some turn it around during their rookie seasons, like Gunnar, but some take longer (if they improve at all.)  We carried Mullins' poor bat early on, and pending a CF acquisition, we should probably do the same with the rook. 
 

No!  We need these guys to be flawless right away or else they suck.

People will just never learn the lesson of patience. Last year, the complaint was Westburg didn’t have any power. Of course that looks like a foolish complaint now.

Westburg had a 715 OPS last year btw.

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

 

Yeah, but he's not having better luck and his OPS isn't in the .775 range.

Honestly, I’d be happy enough with the .728 he has right now, except that he’s really done far worse since April, and has been piss poor in any kind of clutch situation.  

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

Honestly, I’d be happy enough with the .728 he has right now, except that he’s really done far worse since April, and has been piss poor in any kind of clutch situation.  

True.   But to me when I see a .728 OPS I assume that there's some furious hot streaks in there tempered with severe slumps.  

The anti-clutch is pretty awful, too.

[Malike]

I'm all for letting him play and seeing what they have. Better to get an idea now on what you have. It's not out of the question that he's going to end up with OPS around Mullins' if he stays on his current pace, but he helps on defense. I won't be shocked on some days if we see Hays in CF and Kjerstad in LF at home, though.

[CaptainRedbeard]

Digging into the Statcast numbers, Cowser has a 21 point delta between his xBA (.239) and actual BA (.218) and a huge 62 point delta between his xSLG (.485) and actual SLG (.423). He also has an elite 94th percentile barrel rate.

So it’s apparent that the difference in expected numbers and actual numbers is being driven by fewer XBH than expected on hard hit fly balls, not singles on line drives/ground balls/bloops.  The difference in XBH between xSLG/SLG would likely make up the whole difference between xBA/BA, there aren’t additional singles “missing.”

However, Cowser also has 12 HR and 11 xHR. So I assume it comes down to, based on his barrel rate, you would expect more of his hard hit fly balls to be splitting outfielders or getting over their heads for doubles, and those are what he’s been “unlucky” on.

Also, if you look at his spray chart, Cowser has the Mountcastle problem of never hitting pulled homers down the line where it is easiest to hit them out (except for OPACY LF for Mountcastle…). So perhaps Cowser is more inclined to “underperform” his xwOBA via lower SLG than xSLG by not pulling fly balls, or because his profile is easier to position OF defenders, or something harder to ascertain. This may also be due to how he’s pitched, because he’s so good at killing fastballs that he is never challenged inside and gets a steady diet of down and away and offspeed that are hard pitches to pull down the line even when pitchers miss their spots.

But remember, despite the elite barrel rate, we are still dealing with a small sample of 25 barreled balls this year. And plenty of 2B and even HRs don’t fit the criteria for barrels. If he had gotten “lucky” (or less “unlucky”) with a handful more XBH, his numbers would look a lot different. Even if there are some indicators, I still think it’s far too early to say he’s condemned to being one of the exceptions to the rule and chronically underperforming his expected stats. 

[CaptainRedbeard]

26 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Honestly, I’d be happy enough with the .728 he has right now, except that he’s really done far worse since April, and has been piss poor in any kind of clutch situation.  

The being horrible in clutch is immensely frustrating and inevitably what draws the most ire. He’s similar to the offensive equivalent of Akin, whose numbers are actually pretty good but by being a fan watching the games everybody thinks he stinks. And in terms of actually impacting W/L, they have both been really bad - their WPA is awful this year, and they are two of the few year-long regular team members with a negative WPA - it’s just not predictive going forward.

I’m much more confident that the clutch performance will even out over time than the xwOBA/wOBA difference. That’s one of the core analytics tenets that I don’t think has ever been meaningfully challenged, it just takes a larger sample.

If Cowser has performed anywhere close to his non-clutch/RISP level in clutch/RISP situations, I don’t think there’d be anywhere near the level of angst around him that there is now. The frustration with Kjerstad and Mayo smashing their way through AAA for so long also makes everybody want to find somebody to make space.

[interloper]

When Frobby drops a "piss poor" on you, you know you've been struggling. 

[Aristotelian]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

No!  We need these guys to be flawless right away or else they suck.

People will just never learn the lesson of patience. Last year, the complaint was Westburg didn’t have any power. Of course that looks like a foolish complaint now.

Westburg had a 715 OPS last year btw.

I don't remember anyone complaining about Westburg's power. I think most people thought it would come due to the hit tool he was showing combined with his minor league track record.

[Sports Guy]

4 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I don't remember anyone complaining about Westburg's power. I think most people thought it would come due to the hit tool he was showing combined with his minor league track record.

It was 100% something people complained about and worried about.  Yes, some of them thought it would eventually come but to bring it up to begin with was foolish.  The lack of patience and expectation on these kids is astounding.

We have seen multiple articles this year talking about how much harder the majors are to AAA and how these kids need time and yet people still don’t want to do it.  I just don’t get it. 

[Aristotelian]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

It was 100% something people complained about and worried about.  Yes, some of them thought it would eventually come but to bring it up to begin with was foolish.  The lack of patience and expectation on these kids is astounding.

We have seen multiple articles this year talking about how much harder the majors are to AAA and how these kids need time and yet people still don’t want to do it.  I just don’t get it. 

Was anyone talking about sending Westburg back to AAA or benching him in favor of Frazier? I don't remember it that way at all but I'm too lazy to find receipts. Maybe RZNJ can help out. 

 

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Was anyone talking about sending Westburg back to AAA or benching him in favor of Frazier? I don't remember it that way at all but I'm too lazy to find receipts. Maybe RZNJ can help out. 

 

Well I’m not sure why that is the question here but there were certainly Frazier supporters.