I love Freddie Freeman. He’s starting to get some national press for being one of the best hitters around right now. But even for Braves fans who watch him every night, I bet he’s better than you think he is. I’m going to show you.
1. He hit .302/.400/.569 with 6.1 fWAR in 2016. That’s pretty great. In 2013, I thought Freeman was a star when he hit .300/.400/.500. That made him one of the best hitters in the league. Well, he did that last year and crushed 34 home runs too, boosting his slugging percentage 69 points. That’s terrific and is what I assume most Braves fans think of him. But he’s better than that.
2. Remember last April/May? Freeman struggled and we were all worried his wrist troubles from 2015 might sap his power hitting permanently. Well, he got past that in June and hasn’t let up since. Fangraphs have a split tool where you can see the stats of a player over the last calendar year (i.e. from 2nd May 2016 to now). Do this for Freeman and you replace last year’s bad April run with this year’s great one. This makes him better than you thought. How much better? .319/.417/.624. Oh, and he’s been worth 7.9 fWAR in that calendar year. This is a year’s play. It’s not a small sample fluke. But he’s better than that.
3. That 7.9 fWAR over the last calendar year puts him 4th best in MLB in that time. Ahead of 2016 AL MVP contender Mookie Betts. But he’s better than that.
4. That 7.9 fWAR is the 10th best season by a Brave since 1950. Single seasons better than that? Aaron (x4), Matthews (x2), Lonnie Smith, J.D. Drew and Darrell Evans. Chipper Jones never had a season so good. Nor did Andruw. But he’s better than that.
5. Last year Freeman fought his way out of a slump in April and gradually improved into June when he started to properly break out. He’s not let up since. Fangraphs have another graphical split tool that you can use to show how a player has performed over the last chosen number of games. Let’s pick a rather arbitrary sample size large enough to see a trend but within that break out. Half a season, 81 games? He hit .350/.462/.697 with 5.4 fWAR. This version of Freddie Freeman is a 10 WAR player over a full season. But there’s one more reason why he’s even better than that.
6. Freddie plays first base. This dings him in the WAR calculation, because although he’s a decent first baseman, the positional adjustment always hurts his value. First basemen are just not as valuable in the field as other positions. Remember point 3 above? 4th most WAR in MLB in the last calendar year? Above him are Trout (CF), Bryant (mostly 3B) and Seager (SS). Nearly every season the WAR lists are topped by players in premium defensive positions. It’s pretty hard to match them if you play a "negative" position like 1B. So to see how good Freeman really is, you shouldn’t compare him to Trout and Bryant. You should compare him to other first basemen. The top 3 first baseman seasons since 1950 are: Norm Cash (1961) – 10.2 fWAR; Albert Pujols (2003) – 9.5 fWAR; Jason Giambi (2001) – 9.2 fWAR. Freddie’s 7.9 fWAR over the last calendar year would be the 18th best season by a first baseman. At the half season rate above? The best since 1950.
There’s still 5 months left of this season, so I’m not saying that Freddie can keep up this pace over the whole year. He could get hurt, or have his contact lenses bother him again, or lose his swing. However, his last 4 months of playing are up there with the best ever seasons by a player at his position and his peripherals don’t suggest it’s a fluke.
I told you. He’s better than you think he is.
http://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=5361&legend=1&statArr=58&split=base&time=game&ymin=&ymax=&start=2015&end=2017&rtype=mult>1=81
