Collette Calls: Pump the Brakes on Mondesi

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Updated on January 2, 2019 8:08PM EST

While on a panel at First Pitch Arizona in November, I was asked about my thoughts on Adalberto Mondesi under the lens of "next Trea Turner?" My response was "or next Tim Anderson." The response opened some eyes in the room, but I'll own it. I'll own the Mondesi helium shutdown.

Here are the numbers for the two players in their first major league season. Anderson saw more time after his promotion from Charlotte in 2016, but both saw a good chunk of playing time in their rookie seasons:

PLAYER	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG
Anderson	431	9	57	30	10	.283	.306	.432
Mondesi	291	14	47	37	32	.276	.306	.498

PLAYER	BB%	K%	BB/K	O-SWING%	O-CONTACT%	CONTACT%	SwStr%
Anderson	3	27	.11	38	53	71	14
Mondesi	4	27	.14	38	45	67	18

I might be on an island with my opinion based on the latest NFBC ADP data. Given, we are only 31 drafts into the season, but Mondesi has an ADP of 45 and has gone as high as 20 in a draft but no lower than 66. Part of me thinks this is recency bias after watching what Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies did last year in the face of everything that said they were being overdrafted and were too young this time last year. Juan Soto now belongs in that conversation, but wasn't a realistic draft day option give then depth chart was incredibly crowded in

PLAYER	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG
Anderson	431	9	57	30	10	.283	.306	.432
Mondesi	291	14	47	37	32	.276	.306	.498

PLAYER	BB%	K%	BB/K	O-SWING%	O-CONTACT%	CONTACT%	SwStr%
Anderson	3	27	.11	38	53	71	14
Mondesi	4	27	.14	38	45	67	18

The table below shows how that trio did in their minor league careers:

PLAYER	PA	K%	BB%	BB/K
Acuna	1,129	21	9	.42
Albies	1,744	15	8	.54
Mondesi	2,299	25	6	.24

If your first reaction to this is that the numbers are influenced by Mondesi starting his career at the age of 16 in the Pioneer League, I'll reduce the overall numbers to what each guy did in Triple-A:

PLAYER	PA	K%	BB%	BB/K
Acuna	344	21	8	.38
Albies	695	19	7	.36
Mondesi	551	25	5	.21

Simply put, we are dealing with a different type of talent. Mondesi has plenty of athleticism to be a fantasy force, as we saw last season in an abbreviated season. There is also plenty of risk associated with a profile of a player who rarely walks and strikes out at the rate Mondesi did in his rookie season.

Mondesi struck out once in every 3.6 at bats last year, which is one of the 20 highest rates since 2000 for all players with at least 250 plate appearances in a season (complete list):

RANK	PLAYER	YEAR	AB/SO	PA	BB%	K%
1	Jorge Alfaro	2018	2.49	377	5	37
2	Matt Davidson	2017	2.51	443	4	37
3	Tyler Flowers	2013	2.72	275	5	34
4	Danny Espinosa	2014	2.73	364	5	34
5	Mike Zunino	2014	2.77	476	4	33
6	Junior Lake	2014	2.8	326	4	34
7	Adam Rosales	2017	2.89	312	4	32
8	Brandon Barnes	2014	2.92	313	5	32
9	Lewis Brinson	2018	3.18	406	4	30
10	J.P. Arencibia	2013	3.20	497	4	30
11	Chris Johnson	2015	3.28	255	4	29
12	Adam Engel	2018	3.33	463	4	28
13	Miguel Olivo	2005	3.34	281	3	28
14	Miguel Olivo	2011	3.41	507	4	28
15	Rene Rivera	2015	3.47	319	3	27
16	Yan Gomes	2015	3.49	389	3	27
17	Tim Anderson	2016	3.50	431	3	27
18	Caleb Joseph	2017	3.53	266	4	27
19	Nick Hundley	2017	3.54	303	4	27
20	Adalberto Mondesi	2018	3.57	291	4	26

That list does not inspire much hope as there is the cumulative slash line of that group is .229/.267/.383. Three of them stole as many as 10 bases in a season and that same total hit as many as 20 homers in a season.

This graph shows all players with at least 250 plate appearances in a season who struck out at least five times for every time they walked in a season and their OPS while highlighting where Mondesi 2018 and Anderson 2017 show up.

This is not to say that players cannot improve from one year to the next, but it is also worth looking into what other players with this statistical profile have done. There are two bookends of likely outcomes for Mondesi this season. We will start with Tim Anderson because it is the direction I lean toward for Mondesi's potential in 2019:

PLAYER	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG
Anderson 2016	431	9	57	30	10	.283	.306	.432
Anderson 2017	606	17	72	56	15	.257	.276	.402

PLAYER	BB%	K%	BB/K	O-SWING%	O-CONTACT%	CONTACT%	SwStr%
Anderson 2016	3	27	.11	38	53	71	14
Anderson 2017	2	27	.08	43	54	72	15

Anderson's impatience took a slight step back, but his poor contact remained. He chased a higher amount of pitches outside of the strike zone and swung through more pitches than he did as a rookie. He did show positive growth in those areas in his third season at the big league level, but he failed to crack the 20/20 plateau many had him pegged for in 2017 because he got himself out more often than not. StatCast shows that his actual weighted on base average of .315 in 2016 outperformed his expected wOBA by 32 points, and his .289 wOBA in 2017 was nearly the .289 xwOBA he had the previous season. We only have one season of data for Mondesi, but his .341 wOBA last season exceeded his expected wOBA by 24 points.

The other end of this spectrum of probable outcomes is where Mondesi is being drafted so far. I've updated the earlier scatter plot to include the name of the player that Mondesi is being drafted as, so far, this year:

In his second full season at the major league level, Soriano had an .880 OPS and finished third in the MVP voting that season while falling one home run short of a 40/40 season. He led the league in runs, hits, steals, and had a .300/.332/.547 slash line. I do not recall seeing anyone throw out a 40 homer comp for Mondesi, but a 30/40 season has been teased.

2002 is the first season FanGraphs has for plate discipline data, so we cannot look into Soriano's rookie season, but we can check his breakout season and compare it to what Mondesi did as a rookie to see what Mondesi would likely need to ascend to in order to take a statistical step forward:

PLAYER	BB%	K%	BB/K	O-SWING%	O-CONTACT%	CONTACT%	SwStr%
Soriano 2002	3	21	.15	33	43	73	16
Mondesi 2018	4	27	.14	38	45	67	18

Yes, Soriano was a free-swinger at the plate, but he also made more contact and did not expand his zone as frequently as Mondesi did. 2002 was Soriano's second full season at the big league level, and he had a five percent walk rate as a rookie against a 20 percent strikeout rate that season. We do not have the other data, but those two metrics are not that far apart year over year. He got slightly worse in both areas, yet achieved better overall numbers. That is what the optimistic crowd is hoping for with Mondesi when he is being taken as high as the second round in early NFBC drafts.

The table below shows our site projections for Mondesi against those from Steamer at FanGraphs:

PLAYER	PA	HR	R	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG
RotoWire	525	15	65	53	37	.253	.292	.420
Steamer	597	21	73	71	42	.252	.292	.435

Steamer is the more aggressive of the two, yet that projection is still below where the chatter is around the talented youngster. In the face of the StatCast data, as well as how previous hitters with such tendencies as hitters have performed, it would be wise to forecast a move toward the middle of the pack on the scatterplots above rather than Mondesi taking a step forward to become the more recent extreme on it.

Mondesi is going to play every day, and as long as Ned Yost is in charge, Mondesi will be in motion more often than not on the bases. Kansas City lacks power throughout the lineup, and stolen bases as a whole should be up in the league this year now that power appears to be trending down with the adjustments to the baseball. I made a bold prediction in mid-December that Kansas City would become the first team since the 2007 Mets to steal 200 bases in a season. For that to happen, Mondesi needs to reach the higher probability of his outcomes. If he can do that, he justifies being taken in the first three rounds of a draft. But you should build your roster around more stable skillsets if rostering this second-year player is an early part of your roster plan.