A Glance at Richie Sexson

Richie Sexson's struggles have been well documented, by both the team and fans. He's been moved around in the lineup. He's logged 88, 231, 25, and 12 plate appearances batting 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th respectively, while being the subject of boos and the occasional article in the papers. However, most remain optimistic because Sexson is historically a second-half hitter. In his career, Sexson has an .806 OPS (87 tOPS+) before the break, and a .939 OPS (117 tOPS+) after the break. Let's look at his first half/second half OPS over his career:

2006: .706/1.012
2005: .865/.962
2004: Injury shortened year
2003: .889/.980
2002: .882/.847
2001: .792/.995
2000: .753/961
1999: .790/.850

2007 (so far): .712/.649

2002 was the only full year of his career in which he had a higher OPS in the first half. Weather is probably the most likely explanation for this huge disparity in his numbers. Of the four teams he has played for (Cleveland, Milwaukee, Arizona, and Seattle), three play in what one could call "cold climates."

The real question this year is will Sexson follow his normal trend and have a strong second half? Perhaps something lies in the statistics more given to luck (BABIP) or his tendencies as a hitter (GB%, BB%, LD%, HR/FB) that will tell us what to expect in the second half, as opposed to the traditional statistics:

BABIP -
Career: .299
2007: .209

That's a huge, huge difference. Normally, I would say he's due for some regression, meaning more of his batted balls that are going for outs will begin falling for hits. However, let's keep digging before pronouncing Sexson's struggles this year as bad luck.

GB% -
Career: 44.4%
2007: 49.2% (19th highest in the league, among Luis Castillo, Michael Young, Derek Jeter, and Ichiro in the top 20)

Now we're getting somewhere. He's hitting a lot more balls on the ground this year. Generally, speedy slap hitters (Ichiro, Lofton, Pierre) are the heavy groundball hitters, because they have the speed to leg out infield hits and make infielders rush their throws. It's no secret that Sexson moves about as fast as the Empire State Building on a good day. He simply doesn't have the tools to succeed while hitting the ball on the ground. This could be a big reason why his batting average of balls in play is so low.

LD% -
Career: 19.0%
2007: 13.8%

A player simply can't survive in the major leagues with only 14% of his hits going for line drives. Line drives are the surest form for scoring runs as each line drive is "worth" roughly 0.4 runs (outfield fly balls are "worth" the second most at about .05 runs, and groundballs are "worth" -0.1 runs...this can be largely attributed to the higher likelihood of double plays). To give you a sense of how terrible a 13.8% line drive rate is, Sexson ranks 171st out of 177 qualified major leaguers (ahead of only Gerald Laird, Ray Durham, Chris Young, Aubrey Huff, Casey Kotchman, and Brian Schneider). So our $14M per year first baseman is in the same company as two backup catchers, an over-the-hill second baseman, an overrated young outfielder, a one-hit-wonder third baseman, and an injured young first baseman. That's some good company.

HR/FB -
Career: 22.8%
2007: 16.9%

Not only is Sexson hitting the ball on the ground more often and hitting weak flyballs, as his LD% tells us, but fewer of his flyballs are leaving the yard. This is a nightmare, because if his flyballs aren't going for homers anymore and he's not hitting the ball hard anywhere else, we've got the recipe for a piss-poor hitter with little hope for recovery.

When looking at component stats, regression to the mean is largely dependent on whether or not the player is still major league quality hitter. When looking at the numbers presented here, it looks more and more likely that Sexson is done being a productive player. He's either hiding an injury, or Safeco is becoming too much for him to overcome and he's trying to change his plate approach. His first year in a Mariners uniform was very successful, especially when you account for the park he plays half his games in. However, he's two years older now and is reaching the significant decline phase of his career. Safeco notoriously feasts on right-handed power hitters, and it looks as if it has claimed another victim in Richie Sexson. I'm not discounting him completely, as a change of scenery would probably do him well. However, his declining bat, and absolutely abysmal play in the field makes him a giant blackhole on the team. He is being paid as one of the elite players in the game. While he was never worth what he was being paid, the past two years have been especially bad. Too many people point out Beltre's contract as the albatross on the team, but really Sexson should be taking way more heat than he has been.

Will he continue to hit under .200 for the rest of the year? Probably not. Will he be worth $14M this year? Absolutely not.