David Lough is a Poor Royals' Version of Manny Machado...For Now

This could turn out to be a rambling post. The impetus for writing this one was just through exploration of FanGraphs’ leaderboards rather than through something structured and well-conceived. David Lough became relevant for the Royals in 2013 after Jeff Francoeur was shown the door (thankfully). Lough showed an ability to play all 3 outfield positions with slightly below average offense. In order to show that David Lough might be underrated, I will compare him to Manny Machado. 

Jeremy Guthrie and the Value of Defense

           Jeremy Guthrie seems to be an interesting person. His Twitter feed is often full of shoe giveaways and other assorted things. As a baseball player, and from a statistical perspective, he is equally interesting. Throughout his career, he has maintained a below-average K% and yet has remained an effective “innings eater”*. He doesn’t generate ground balls more than other pitchers, and he doesn’t strand more baserunners than other pitchers. He is roughly average in those categories. However, he does have a below average (or above average, depending on your perspective) career BABIP; essentially, fewer balls in play go for base hits against Guthrie than the league average, which is odd because the vast majority of pitchers have little to no control over their BABIPs.

*Innings eaters. A nice way of saying, “You’re not very good, but you’re not bad, and you’re healthy, which is valuable”