Here's My God's Honest Opinion On Yoan Moncada

Yesterday on White Sox Twitter, Yoan Moncada was the center of hot debate after he struck out with the bases loaded early in the game and I sent this tweet:

Now I have been an ARDENT Yoan stan since the White Sox traded for him in 2016. I knew he had a skillset that could and even should lead to some level of stardom. Maybe even superstardom. There aren't many player in baseball that have his frame, athleticism, and knack for knowing what he should and shouldn't swing at. 

I also knew that with his approach paired with his swing and miss, there would be periods of struggle early on in his career and that we needed to be patient with him as a fanbase. That's why I invented the Banned List - to call out all of the people that just said "HE SUCKS!!!" Without giving him a chance to develop and find his groove. They wanted instant gratification and that wasn't going to happen with Yoan Moncada. It was going to take a moment for him, and that's fine. 

I did think that he would eventually "click" and become that stud the White Sox traded Chris Sale for though. 

That happened in 2019:

Dude was awesome, plain and simple. He hit for power, average, walked a little bit, and REALLY took to 3B well. I want to make it clear that anything that is said about him in this blog is strictly focused on his offense. His defense at 3B has been well above average since he moved there and nobody has a single issue with that.

Unfortunately, he followed up his great 2019 with a mediocre 2020. I give every player in any sport the benefit of the doubt for their 2020 seasons considering the state of the entire world, so let's all throw that season away. 

2021? It's been a weird and different story. 

Right now, a lot of people are REALLY fed up with Moncada. Other people will defend him until the death. Myself? I lie somewhere in the middle and can see both sides. Considering his prospect pedigree and that he possesses god gifted talent that can't be taught, I want (and even expect) a really fucking good hitter. He's already been that over the course of a full season once… but he hasn't been for a while now. 

Here is his full 2021 offensive output:

Is that bad? No. Not at all. Does it meet expectations of someone we've seen dominate? No. Not at all. I believe that If he didn't come to Chicago with stud expectations, people would see a player who plays a great 3B that's a little better than league average as a whole offensively and be more than content with that. 

But that's not what people were sold on. People were sold on a guy who could hit 30 bombs, steal a bunch of bases and evaporate baseballs to a tune of a .900+ OPS year in and year out. Maybe even sprinkle a little bit of MVP talk in there. That's the kind of player we were sold on getting as the headliner for the Chris Sale trade. 

Now even though he's been… fine… this year, it's fair for people to be completely underwhelmed with him at the same time. They see the talent just by looking at him and know he's got it in his body to be that goddamn stud. A blue collar fanbase doesn't want to see someone with all the talent in the world tap fail to tap into that talent. That's just how most White Sox fans are wired. 

Advertisement

Others are wired to look at stats and prove people wrong with said stats. That's why you'll see people saying shit like "He's worth 3 WAR and has the same wRC+ as Anderson!!" and shit like that. But those stats don't tell the whole story, either. 

Moncada has been really good and really bad this year. The difference between his first two months and last 2.5 months are night and day.

Here are Moncada's numbers through May 31st:

Those are very good numbers across the board, but you can look at those BABIP numbers and say, "he's due for a face plant". That face plant happened, to nobody's shock, but we also assumed we'd see an surge in his power numbers. An ISO of .133 is…. not good. That's something you'd expect out of Nick Madrigal, who's the size of one of Moncada's legs. 

That power surge never came. While we knew there would more than likely be a drop in both his average and OBP from the 1st two months due to his crazy high BABIP, we assumed the power would make up for those declines and keep him around the same 140ish wRC+. A lot of that is due in part to his ability to evaporate baseballs with great regularity. 

Here is a snap shot of what he did to baseballs in 2019:

That's a lot of LOUD contact. Making contact with authority that frequently will often lead to higher BABIP numbers. If you piss on the ball regularly, you're regularly going to find green grass. The baseball gods will bless you. That .422 BABIP you saw in April and May? No, that wasn't sustainable. But something like… .375 or so would be for a player that has the ability to murder baseballs like Moncada, especially when you pair that ability with Moncada's above average speed.

But then we get to June. Here are his numbers from June 1st - Now:

Advertisement

Nice walk rate. Everything else? Blech. Not good. Below average across the board. His BABIP plummeted into the .200s and the quality of his contact has taken a drastic dip from his 2019 season:

Down, down down across the board. It's not a good trend.  His barrel rate is especially alarming. I don't know why or how we have seen such a drop in Yoan's quality of contact and maybe someone smarter than me can try to explain it, but we have. His numbers against fastballs and his launch angle are both down. Maybe that's the reason? Not positive. I just know his numbers haven't been good for a long time now. 250 plate appearances isn't a slump. A slump lasts a few weeks. Not a few months. 

Yo has gone from from being THE dude in the White Sox lineup to a guy opposing pitchers want to see in the box due to his current impotence for hitting the ball with any authority coupled with Abreu, TA, Eloy, Vaughn and other studs around him. His power has wained that much, and it's perplexing to me and a lot of other people at this point. 

I'm just playing devil's advocate here. A lot of people are looking at his current 3.0 fWAR and saying, "he's still one of the best hitters in the White Sox lineup! He's 2nd on the team in WAR!!!" and they're not wrong. He is, in fact, 2nd on the team in fWAR as it stands today. The people that are defending him with that statistic just aren't looking at his season under a microscope, in my opinion. 

Before we continue, I want to issue a disclaimer: I FULLY understand that you don't have to put up a .300/.400/.500 slash line to be valuable to a team and value can be hidden in a player's game elsewhere, like with Yo's defense.

BUT, like I said, we're only talking about offense in this blog. WAR is an all encompassing stat that takes a player's defensive performance into account. If Yo weren't a stud fielder, his WAR wouldn't be 3.0+ with 6 weeks left of games to play. He'd be much worse than that. 

Back to my comment about how people aren't looking at Moncada's season under a microscope though - here is his season broken down into two parts: the first 2 months and last 2.5 months.

Through May 31st, Moncada was worth 2.2 fWAR and about 6.5 fWAR/150 games played:

Advertisement

This is awesome, in spite of the BABIP peripherals. On June 1st, Moncada's season would have had to take a BAD turn for the worst for him not to wind up as a 4.5+ fWAR or better player at season's end. His BABIP was most likely coming back to earth, but the assumption was always that he would find his power stroke as the weather warmed up, making up for the lack of batted ball luck he'd surely be running into. 

That…. didn't happen. His batted ball luck waved bye bye, which was predictable, but from June 1st onward he has had a near identical power output from his first 2 months of the season. That power output straight up stinks. You're lying if you say it doesn't. 

Here are his splits from June 1st through now:

That's about a 2.3 fWAR/150 and that 2.3 number is LARGELY carried by his ++ defense at 3B. He's now hovering around 40th in baseball in terms of fWAR on the season's whole. That's a far cry from the top 10 number he had through June and THAT is why you see so many people frustrated with him. It's been 2.5 months of very, very bad offensive output. You pair that with the expectations that came with #1 prospect ranking and his clear as day talent, and you're going to get a lot of shit from fans. 

Is that shit fair? I don't know. Not for me to decide. I do know that at this point, I'm really frustrated with Moncada at this point, and can definitely sympathize with anyone else who is too. You see what Eloy and Lu are doing and want the same from Moncada. Vaughn has blossomed into a stud. TA has been TA - and don't point to their near identical wRC+ numbers. TA had a 106 wRC+ from game 1 through May 31st. He's got a 120 wRC+ from June 1st through his last game. The consistency has largely been there for him this season.

Moncada has been night and day. He went from a 144 wRC+ through May 31st to a 90 wRC+ over his last ~250 plate appearances. If those numbers were more like 120 and 120, I don't think people would be bitching about him NEAR as much. It's just that he is in SUCH a bad rut right now that you're hearing people freak the fuck out about him. Again, I get it. Sports make people emotional. 

That said, I do think the people calling for his heads are idiots, just like I think those who defend him to his death are also cherrypicking and not looking at Moncada's 2021 season correctly or even honestly. But I will say this - I am still an ardent believer in Yoan Moncada. Aside from Robert, he has more natural talent than anyone on this roster. I choose to think he finds his groove sometime soon and has a hot October. If he does, this team can win it all. Hopefully that happens. 

I'll finish by saying there are plenty of people in Sox Twitter and otherwise that can try to make sense of Moncada's season much better than I can. This is what I see. If I am wrong, ill-informed, incorrect, whatever, then let me know on Twitter. Help me figure Moncada out.