FanPost

The Other Dickerson

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The Braves have been connected to both Padres outfielder Hunter Renfroe and recently DFA’ed Rays outfielder Corey Dickerson by MLB reporter Jon Morosi in the past week. However, I posit that the Braves shouldn’t be looking to trade for an outfielder that plays in San Diego or has the last name Dickerson. They should be looking for an outfielder that plays in San Diego and has the last name Dickerson.

Alex Dickerson was one of many Padres outfielders that emerged as a potential building block in 2016. Dickerson, then a 26 year old rookie who’d hit at every stop of the minors, had to deal with injury problems that lengthened his timeline to get to the majors. However, after he posted a ridiculous 172 wRC+ at Triple-A El Paso, the Padres gave Dickerson an extended opportunity in the 2nd half of 2016 to show what he could do at the major league level.

Alex did not disappoint, posting a 112 wRC+ on the strength of a .257 AVG/.333 OBP/.455 SLG triple slash. More impressively, Dickerson hit for a large amount of power whilst maintaining good contact metrics. Dickerson posted league average chase rates, but made contact 83% of the times he swung (about 5% more than league average). His 8.2% swinging strike rate and 15.4% strikeout rates were both considerably below league average, while his 9.1% walk rate was about 1% above league average.

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Pairing good contact, plate discipline, and in-game power skills tends to lead to very real and sustainable offensive performance in the future, and there was reason to be excited about what Alex Dickerson could do with a full season’s complement of plate appearances in 2017. Here are some of the most comparable offensive performances to Dickerson in the 2016 season, based on plate discipline metrics and isolated power numbers from Fangraphs.

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You’ll notice a lot of great professional hitters on that list; when your closest comparable in performance is Matt Holliday you’re clearly doing a lot of things right with the stick. However, the injury bug bit Dickerson again during spring training in 2017 when he started to suffer from back spasms. After a few months on the shelf trying to rehab his back without surgery, Dickerson relented and went under the knife to remove bulging disk material from his lower back in mid June. Since the recovery time from such a procedure is about 3-4 months, that effectively ended his 2017 campaign w/out a single plate appearance to his name.

Now we are in 2018, and the #Braves are known to be looking for an outfielder. There’s been no indication of whether or not Alex Dickerson is part of any trade discussions at this point; pretty much the only reports on him coming from Padres camp so far are about how upper management is "cautiously optimistic" of Dickerson’s full recovery from his surgery. As always, there's substantial risk in taking a bet on a guy who hasn't had a meaningful at-bat since the Obama Administration. But if the Padres’ willingness to entertain trade conversations on Renfroe is any indication, there’s no sacred cow in the outfield mix outside of Wil Myers and Manuel Margot. Plus, with injury concerns comes the opportunity to cash in on a discount in an already notably weak player market. Since Corey Dickerson is now off the market, it behooves the Braves front office to find out if the other Dickerson is on the market.

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