Justyn-Henry Malloy Interview | Talks college ball, plate approach and getting traded to the Tigers.
January 26, 2023
Justyn-Henry Malloy Interview | Talks college ball, plate approach and getting traded to the Tigers.
4 comments
Personality of Curtis Granderson with the BB% of Juan Soto. What’s not to love?
Interesting that he said he’s been in Lakeland taking nothing but ground balls for multiple days. The Tigers *really* seem committed to trying him at 3rd. In the interview he makes it sound like he likes OF more despite most of his time before pro ball being at 3rd
Probably the player I’m most excited to see this year, hopefully he makes the team out of spring training
Now that Hittin’ Harold has been shown the door, I need another guy to use an example of why we just can’t play bad defenders on a regular basis.
Our fans were all over Javy Baez when he led the league in errors. “He’s a below-average fielder, too!” Last year, he made 26 errors and had a .954 fielding percentage at shortstop. That’s not great. To put that in context, Bo Bichette was second with 23 errors and managed a .958 fielding average.
But then Javy Baez at least covers a lot of ground. Whereas Bo made 3.46 plays/9, against a league-average of 3.91, Javy made 4.34 plays / 9, almost identical to his career average of 4.37 at short. So he makes up for bad throws with above-average range. And we’re still not that happy about the bad throws.
Which brings us to Justyn-Henry Malloy at third base. A case of “we want to believe!”, the way that desperate people invest in Ponzi schemes, or fall for catfish scams, despite there being lots of red flags. “Here’s the solution to our big hole at third base”, we hope.
That’s just not going to happen. Here’s why.
JHen is not a green kid; he’s not a 17-year-old Dominican free agent. He’ll be 23 next month, and played three years of college ball (mostly 3B) and 170 games in the minor so far. You figure he’s been playing baseball for 15+ years at this point in his life. He was USA baseball U15 player of the year in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NYvfN9too . So he’ been focusing on this for a while. His fielding is going to be about what it is now. I get that everybody tries to improve their fielding, but if everybody could improve their fielding just by working at it, then there would be no bad fielders.
As it works out, it’s very rare that any minor league player overcomes fundamental deficiencies in fielding. None of our guys who were poor fielders (Nick Castellanos, Christin Stewart, Willi Castro at short, Haase behind the plate) materially improved in recent in years, for example. Guys who were good fielders like Derek Hill and Jake Rogers were good in the minors first.
So, just how bad is JHen at 3B, anyway? Well, let’s go to the tape.
In 81 games in the minors, he’s made 24 errors at 3B. So about as many errors as Javy made at short last year, in about half as many games. And, keeping in mind that third base sees about half as many chances as shortstop, his error rate is off the charts and his fielding percentage of .872 is just embarrassingly low. What’s considered good at minor-league 3B? Well, Jeimer Candelario managed a .946 for his minor league 3B career (and .968 in the bigs.) Miggy was .934 for minor league 3B.
In games in summer leagues, Malloy has an almost identical .873 fielding percentage at 3B. 13 errors in 46 games. And at Georgia Tech, he made 17 errors in 56 games (including four errors in one game) for a .863 fielding percentage.
So, not so good in terms of errors. In fact, unplayably bad. Nick Castellanos in the minors was learning third base as a high school prospect, and still managed a .919 fielding percentage. Malloy makes 50% more errors at third than Nick did in the minors. (Nick went on to a .955 fielding average in the pros, and still couldn’t stick at 3B.)
We cut short Tork’s experiment at learning 3B when he only managed a .901 fielding percentage in the minors. So better than Malloy, in a small sample.
Now, part of the situation in Tork’s case was an underwhelming plays/9 of 2.04. Nick at least managed 2.24. Candy was 2.73. Miggy was 2.71 And Malloy is only 2.12. He makes a below-average number of plays, with an unacceptable error rate. Oof.
He didn’t play any third base last year in AA. There’s a reason for that. There’s zero evidence that he’s ever going to play 3B for the Tigers, despite any extra practice or spring training reps he might receive.
He wants to play the outfield. He’s demonstrably a better fielder in the outfield than at 3B, zero errors there in 62 minor league games, though with below-average plays made / 9. We need outfielders. Let’s let him play the outfield.
I want to like the Woodward Tigers, but their audio quality makes it really difficult.
4 comments
Personality of Curtis Granderson with the BB% of Juan Soto. What’s not to love?
Interesting that he said he’s been in Lakeland taking nothing but ground balls for multiple days. The Tigers *really* seem committed to trying him at 3rd. In the interview he makes it sound like he likes OF more despite most of his time before pro ball being at 3rd
[Probably my favorite clip from the interview](https://streamable.com/c1aww8)
Probably the player I’m most excited to see this year, hopefully he makes the team out of spring training
Now that Hittin’ Harold has been shown the door, I need another guy to use an example of why we just can’t play bad defenders on a regular basis.
Our fans were all over Javy Baez when he led the league in errors. “He’s a below-average fielder, too!” Last year, he made 26 errors and had a .954 fielding percentage at shortstop. That’s not great. To put that in context, Bo Bichette was second with 23 errors and managed a .958 fielding average.
But then Javy Baez at least covers a lot of ground. Whereas Bo made 3.46 plays/9, against a league-average of 3.91, Javy made 4.34 plays / 9, almost identical to his career average of 4.37 at short. So he makes up for bad throws with above-average range. And we’re still not that happy about the bad throws.
Which brings us to Justyn-Henry Malloy at third base. A case of “we want to believe!”, the way that desperate people invest in Ponzi schemes, or fall for catfish scams, despite there being lots of red flags. “Here’s the solution to our big hole at third base”, we hope.
That’s just not going to happen. Here’s why.
JHen is not a green kid; he’s not a 17-year-old Dominican free agent. He’ll be 23 next month, and played three years of college ball (mostly 3B) and 170 games in the minor so far. You figure he’s been playing baseball for 15+ years at this point in his life. He was USA baseball U15 player of the year in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09NYvfN9too . So he’ been focusing on this for a while. His fielding is going to be about what it is now. I get that everybody tries to improve their fielding, but if everybody could improve their fielding just by working at it, then there would be no bad fielders.
As it works out, it’s very rare that any minor league player overcomes fundamental deficiencies in fielding. None of our guys who were poor fielders (Nick Castellanos, Christin Stewart, Willi Castro at short, Haase behind the plate) materially improved in recent in years, for example. Guys who were good fielders like Derek Hill and Jake Rogers were good in the minors first.
So, just how bad is JHen at 3B, anyway? Well, let’s go to the tape.
In 81 games in the minors, he’s made 24 errors at 3B. So about as many errors as Javy made at short last year, in about half as many games. And, keeping in mind that third base sees about half as many chances as shortstop, his error rate is off the charts and his fielding percentage of .872 is just embarrassingly low. What’s considered good at minor-league 3B? Well, Jeimer Candelario managed a .946 for his minor league 3B career (and .968 in the bigs.) Miggy was .934 for minor league 3B.
In games in summer leagues, Malloy has an almost identical .873 fielding percentage at 3B. 13 errors in 46 games. And at Georgia Tech, he made 17 errors in 56 games (including four errors in one game) for a .863 fielding percentage.
So, not so good in terms of errors. In fact, unplayably bad. Nick Castellanos in the minors was learning third base as a high school prospect, and still managed a .919 fielding percentage. Malloy makes 50% more errors at third than Nick did in the minors. (Nick went on to a .955 fielding average in the pros, and still couldn’t stick at 3B.)
We cut short Tork’s experiment at learning 3B when he only managed a .901 fielding percentage in the minors. So better than Malloy, in a small sample.
Now, part of the situation in Tork’s case was an underwhelming plays/9 of 2.04. Nick at least managed 2.24. Candy was 2.73. Miggy was 2.71 And Malloy is only 2.12. He makes a below-average number of plays, with an unacceptable error rate. Oof.
He didn’t play any third base last year in AA. There’s a reason for that. There’s zero evidence that he’s ever going to play 3B for the Tigers, despite any extra practice or spring training reps he might receive.
He wants to play the outfield. He’s demonstrably a better fielder in the outfield than at 3B, zero errors there in 62 minor league games, though with below-average plays made / 9. We need outfielders. Let’s let him play the outfield.
I want to like the Woodward Tigers, but their audio quality makes it really difficult.