KluberSociety
NBA Starter
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Naylor has latent power and has been making a lot of contact; it just hasn't been productive contact.Naylor is only 24 so you would expect he's still improving but comparing this season to 2019 I'm not seeng any progress.
2019 253 AB's. .249/.315/.403/.719 0.1 WAR
2021 233 AB's. .253/.301/.399/.700 0.2 WAR
Identical for all intents and purposes. Maybe he would have come on strong in the second half when the balls started carrying, but he's a line drive and ground ball hitter with 16 HR's in 583 AB's so I doubt it. To me Naylor looks like a left-handed Harold Ramirez; tremendous strength but hits everything on the ground or on a line, rarely elevates, and is below average defensively. Doesn't hit for power or average and rarely walks.
Amed Rosario is from the same school of hitting but his average is 20-30 points higher because he uses the opposite field and he plays a critical defensive position.
Naylor has the advantage of being able to double as the backup first baseman so we don't need to keep Yu Chang or Owen Miller on the 25 just in case something happens to Bradley. So we could carry five outfielders and platoon at both corner positions. You could have a Zimmer/Harold Ramirez platoon in right and a Naylor/Mercado platoon in left.
He's certainly got hitting potential, whether he ever realizes enough of it to be a productive MLB hitter is up in the air. For what it's worth Fangraphs has him at negative WAR in every season, totaling up to -0.8. This is a result of his atrocious OF defense.
I don't see why the guy should ever be thought of as an outfielder. He's terrible at outfield, worse than Harold according to metrics and I believe it because he is so clunky out there. Harold is more of a clown show but he can get to balls.
He's got a career -1.8 UZR/150 at 1B, and -13.4 UZR/150 at OF (Harold in contrast is -5.8); let him just work on the former when he has zero potential to be decent at the latter.
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