The Real Omar Infante

At the time of this post's creation, Omar Infante is on the comeback trail, rehabbing from a fractured left hand that has sidelined him since late May. In a Gwinnett Braves game tonight, Infante both homered and committed an error at shortstop. There has been a lot of excitement among this community about Omar's return to the major league club, so I decided to delve a little bit deeper into his stats this year and throughout his career. We all know that Infante had been having a great year offensively before his injury, but will it continue after his return? Find out after the jump.

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Acquired in the trade with Chicago for Jose Ascanio, that also included Will Ohman, Infante had never had a very productive offensive career with an OPS of .701 and a .308 OBP (this is including time spent in Atlanta). However he was a utility man and even a corpse would have been an improvement over the venerable Chris Woodward, both a terrible fielder while playing with us (-49.5 UZR/150 at 3B where he had the most innings) and terrible hitter (.199/.252/.279) while being a 1.2 wins below average player. 

Many believe that Omar has had a career resurgence in Atlanta, and he did bat .293 with a .338 OBP last season. This is much better than his past numbers, but his .755 OPS was only .006 higher than the average. So he was basically average offensively last season. This season though, Infante had been hitting a robust .349 with an OBP of .389 and OPS of .820 prior to his injury. Some factors other than vast improvement have influenced these numbers a great deal. First of all is the obvious BABIP of .372. Infante's career BABIP is .306, including this season, so we will certainly see these numbers drop.

Another potential blip in this season's stats is the contact rate on pitches outside of the strike zone. Over his career, Infante has made contact outside of the zone at a 54% rate, with a 61% rate last season. However, this number jumped to 76.5% this season, 13.2% above the major league average. While there is a chance that Infante has adjusted his swing, it is more reasonable to assume that his rate will regress back towards the average. All of his contact rates have risen from last season, when he had career bests in contact percentage in the zone and overall contact percentage. He is swinging at fewer pitches out of the zone (from 31.3% to 24.6% to 21.1%) which would be a reason for his higher contact rate. I still think it is a little bit higher than it really should be, though.

The debate over how important defense is rages on, and probably will continue into the foreseeable future. No matter how much you believe it matters relative to hitting and pitching, defense is still an important part of the game. Infante is an average defender (career UZR/150 at 2nd is -1.6, and 1.2 at short, his two most played positions). While a plus defender off the bench is very valuable, an average defender obviously will do little harm. Omar can serve as a late game defensive replacement in the infield, as long as he is replacing a below average fielder, like Chipper.

All in all, Omar Infante is a well rounded utility man who provides average offense and defense. Although he has been hitting for a high average this season, Braves fans need to temper their expectations for him. He will probably OPS around the league average of .750. Clearly this is an improvement over Diory, who I still like, but we are not adding a superstar at the deadline, like some seem to think. Infante's return will help this Braves team down the homestretch and into the playoffs, but it is not fair to expect him to continue his offensive performance.