JJ Wetherholt’s ridiculous season
by Gabe Simonds
JJ Wetherholt is answer to the question: what if you just maxed out everything a baseball player does? JJ Wetherholt, at least in his first three months of professional baseball, has been an elite baserunner and elite fielder. It doesn’t matter what stat you use. He is +13 outs above average, which is quite literally 100 percentile among defenders according to Statcast. He is 95th percentile by baserunning value. He has 1.2 dWAR if you prefer Baseball-Reference. And his hitting isn’t bad either.
Wetherholt, now with 3.3 fWAR on the year, is on pace to have the best rookie season by a Cardinals player since Albert Pujols. And it’s pretty much equal to Pujols’ season. He’s on pace for 7.1 fWAR, Pujols had 7.2 fWAR. That’s a rounding error. I have comped him to Chase Utley before in sort of a pie-in-the-sky outcome - that is not a crazy comp. Utley was not a Hall of Famer caliber player because of his offense - well he sort of was - but he maxed out his baserunning and fielding value.
Ignore the power aspect - Citizen Banks Park is a much better park for homers than Busch Stadium, but even accepting that, Utley most likely has more power than Wetherholt ever will - if you look at the season by season wRC+ Utley had, it doesn’t feel THAT crazy anymore. Utley’s peak began with a 134 wRC+, which he followed with a 130 wRC+, and then a 150, then 134, 141, and 128 wRC+. Wetherholt still has work to do, since he’s “only” at a 127 wRC+ right now.
However, he is arguably getting unlucky. Maybe yesterday’s game fixes that. I don’t know. But he entered yesterday’s game with a .360 xwOBA and a .343 wOBA. His 3-5 day with two homers and a HBP rose his actual wOBA to .354. But you know, it probably raised his xwOBA too. Somewhat inexplicably his second homer carried an expected batting average of .030 while simultaneously being a homer in 19 parks. His single carried a .930 xBA and there’s no data on his first homer, but that was more of a no doubter. Point being, I think his xwOBA will still paint him as unlucky.
So that 130-140 wRC+ range doesn’t feel crazy, and we’re talking about a 23-year-old with 71 career games. While his baserunning and fielding really has nowhere to go but down, his hitting may not be a finished product. We really have a special player here.
https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/st-louis-cardinals-news/72057/monday-morning-observations-about-jj-wetherholt-masyn-winn
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