Digging Into BB% Leaders - Cavan Biggio

Toronto Blue Jays infielder Cavan Biggio was among the best hitters in walk rate (BB%) in the 2020 MLB season. Matt Goodwin digs into his Statcast profile to figure out what this means for his fantasy baseball value.

When looking at a player’s stats, what we really want to know is how skilled he is, not necessarily just how a particular year happened to pan out. An output stat like walks can give us some meaningful information, but there is a lot more going on that might help us better understand how and why a player was able to be successful or not. That requires digging more deeply into a player’s profile. In this case, we will start with walk percentage.

This series (K%, BB%, ISO, OBP, SLG, OPS, and wOBA) continues with BB%, using only publicly available data from Fangraphs and Baseball Savant.

Previous articles: K% - Ketel Marte and K% - Christian Yelich.

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Starting With Walk Percentage

Walks are important. The old adage that a walk’s as good as a hit may be an oversimplification, but it does hold some water. Yes, it matters more in OBP, OPS, and points leagues, but it is still a useful skill for batters where you want runs, power, average and steals as well because having a good eye at the plate should maximize hitter counts and, as we know, getting on base more often positions you to be able to score and steal more (for the sacred few who still steal with any regularity).

So while it may be tempting to dismiss walk percentage in a league that does not directly count it, it is still helpful in overall player evaluation. If you play in a league where they are part of the scoring, well then you should definitely be paying attention,

As with the K% pieces, we will start with the Fangraphs leaderboards to see the top 20 and bottom 20 BB% among qualifiers looking for any players, in particular, that stand out and then dig in a little deeper.

No surprise in players like Juan Soto and Bryce Harper being at the top, or Eloy Jimenez and Ketel Marte being at the bottom. Perhaps it is also not surprising to see Cavan Biggio in the top-12, but it does stand out because of how important walks are to his game and, in turn, his value. Is he a good hitter or just good at walks? Is it sustainable? Is it possible to be too good at walking? 

On the opposite side of things but equally as impactful to his fantasy value is Adalberto Mondesi and his minuscule 4.7 BB%. You most definitely want to see more free passes for a guy with speed and can you justify chasing steals with somebody who is this bad at it?

Time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

Digging in on Cavan Biggio

Here’s the central question we need to tackle given Cavan Biggio’s outstanding walk rate: If all a player has is walks, does that make him good? With a current NFBC average ADP of 56.78, getting Biggio means passing up position players like his teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Randy Arozarena, and Pete Alonso. Or bypassing pitchers like Corbin Burnes, Carlos Carrasco, Max Fried, and Sonny Gray. If you are going to pull that particular trigger, you’ll need a solid return on investment and that relies on him being better than just good.

It’s great news that in 2020 Biggio’s 15.5% walk rate put him in the 92nd percentile, but it is also fairly concerning that his HardHit% and Barrel% were in just the 13th and 27th percentiles, respectively. He clearly had issues with hitting the ball hard in 2020, but was it a blip on the radar, or just what he is? First stop will be to check in on 2019 to see what those numbers might mean with a touch more context. Here’s the chart:

2019 looks much better, right? You’d want the HardHit% to be a little higher, but a 62nd percentile Barrel% for a rookie is just fine. Yes, 2020 looks bad, but as we saw with Christian Yelich in the last piece, even elite players were susceptible to the doldrums of The-Year-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. But Biggio remains divisive with plenty of doubters and just as many truthers. So who will we get in 2021? Will the real Cavan Biggio please stand up...

Before we head down the rabbit hole that awaits us it is important to note that a complicating factor (besides the COVID season) is the reality that we have just 159 total games worth of data for Biggio at the Major League level so while he has numbers for both 2019 and 2020, they play out more like two halves of one season in terms of a sample size.

Looking at Biggio’s performance seems like a constant tale of two ditties; one a tune singing the praises of excellent on-base abilities and demonstrated ability to compile counting stats, the other a requiem for the hard contact skills you want to see, but just aren’t there. He seems to be good without being good, and that’s hard to understand. Let’s try anyway.

Results From The Minors, 2018 (AA) - 2019 (AAA)

The amount of minor league data that is available is not nearly the same as what we have with the big league clubs. Since he appears to be a guy with great walk rates and on-base ability but without much pop, let’s take a look at some numbers that can speak to those elements (based on Biggio’s production above A-ball):

First, there is clearly a significant difference in sample size here between the AA and AAA production, and that is always important to note. Starting with wRC+, which admittedly is a bit of starting at the end so we can work our way back to the beginning, the difference is minor and the numbers look really good; like a player that you definitely want and should be willing to pay for in the early rounds. That is a comparison to other minor leaguers in this case, but for context, Fernando Tatis, Jr., Mookie Betts, and Manny Machado all had wRC+ scores of 149 in 2020 at the MLB level. The OPS looks pretty good too. Again, for some MLB perspective and context, in 2020, George Springer had an .899 and Anthony Rendon finished at .913, ranked 23rd and 24th in the league respectively. The OBP numbers are also encouraging, but a wOBA in 2019 that is lower than the OBP means there’s not a lot of power in the way he was getting on base which tells us this was and continues to be the rub with Biggio: his lack of hard contact.

With that light history lesson in mind, let’s take a look at his MLB experience.

Results From The Majors, 2019 - 2020

While the minor league data simultaneously gives us cause for hope and concern, surely his 695 plate appearances in a Toronto uniform will clear this up, right? Well, take a look:

What immediately jumps out here is that xSLG from 2020, 85 points lower than what he actually slugged. So based on his underlying stats, the SLG should have been much worse and yet Biggio outperformed expectations. In fact, the xSLG of .347 was in the 12th percentile in the league which is most definitely not what you want ( the .434 the year before was in the 37th which is better, but still not good). 

Even with all of that, his OBP was pretty awesome, good enough for 21st in the league. We haven’t gotten to the bottom of it all quite yet, but we can be confident that even despite having a weak-contact profile, Biggio will likely find ways to get on-base, his stellar BB% is a big part of that, and you can be confident in OBP sustainability even if he does not improve the underlying skills.

The Underlying Skills (Or Lack Thereof)

Biggio is definitely good at working the count and that works to his significant advantage. From 2019 to 2020 there were some really good improvements in K% (down from 28.6 to 23), SwStr% (down from 8.7 to 7.8), and first-strike percentage (down 56 to 49.8). However, he also dropped in two places where you would want to see improvement: his zone swing percentage (down from 63.3 to 62) and meatball swing percentage (down from 77.2 to 72.5). For a guy like Biggio with an anemic Barrel% of 5% and 9% drop in HardHit% (including a drop from 54.4 to 29.8 on four-seam fastballs), failing to swing at pitches in the zone, especially meatballs, limits his opportunity to correct the hard-hit issue and hints at what might be a fundamental flaw of his approach: he is watching good pitches go by chasing the walks that he clearly so desires. More on that in a moment.

We can see what he is demonstrably good at above, but here is some data that gets at the heart of his struggle. His weak contact numbers went WAY up in 2020 and his fly balls went down enough to be cause for concern since so much of his HR potential comes from hitting a lot of fly balls (it’s a volume thing - hit a ton of fly balls and some will make their way out whereas if you hit fewer, there are fewer that have a chance to leave the yard).

This chart shows an increase in the wrong kind of contact. It is curious that a player who is so good at zone recognition would struggle so much to make solid contact. Biggio has great eyes and there is no doubting that. But is he too reliant on them as the basis for his success? It seems the answer is yes. Increasing his Swing%, especially on the more hittable pitches, will be key to making improvements in the contact profile. If he can do that, he becomes much more than an OBP specialist.

Conclusion

Cavan Biggio is chasing walks and it is hurting his offensive production outside of OBP. Whether he is too narrowly focused on them, or he lacks the confidence in his swing, the results speak for themselves. It seems very odd that a player with such a good eye would struggle so much to drive the ball which may point to a mechanical flaw with his swing or simply might be evidence that his hands are not, and may never be, as good as his eyes.

In the end, until he gets it all worked out, Biggio’s value is limited to points-leagues and those category leagues with OBP instead of AVG. He is being significantly over-drafted where walks do not have a direct impact on your scoring system. He may score a ton of runs as an indirect result of being on base so much in that very potent lineup, but you’re paying too much for that if it is all he will contribute for your team.

Part 2 will continue with Adalberto Mondesi, digging into his 2020 season starting with BB%

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