Should the Phillies move on from Michael Saunders?

By: Jason Ferrie, Sports Talk Philly Columnist 

During this past offseason, the Phillies decided they need a veteran presence in their outfield and signed Michael Saunders to a one-year/$9 million deal that includes a club option for 2018. The thought process was not only would Saunders add a veteran to the young lineup, but he could produce in the middle and even split up some of the right-handed bats. Unfortunately for the Phillies, the production hasn’t been there—which resulted in Saunders being dropped to eighth in the lineup Monday and not starting Tuesday. Since Saunders is on a one-year deal, should the Phillies consider parting ways with the 30-year-old outfielder?

Much of the conversation surrounding the signing of Michael Saunders was that the Phillies signed an American League All-Star who could help the team—but that doesn’t cover the fact that Saunders was selected based on a half-season of work. To understand the asset you believe you’re getting, it’s beneficial to check the body of work. If you look at his last three seasons, Saunders peaked as a 2-win player. Some of that could be attributed to health—but that is a part of the game. Saunders has always carried a high strikeout rate, decent walk rate and power. Last year he managed to hit a career-high 24 home runs with 16 of those coming prior to the 2016 All-Star break.

A lot of players can manage to have a decent half, but the value truly comes in keeping it together for an entire season and Saunders hasn’t been able to do that. Between injuries and his second-half in Toronto last season, most fans should’ve expected results that didn’t match his production north of the border. In fact, if we look at Saunders splits following the All-Star break, they’re close to this season. Here are his numbers for Toronto after the All-Star game and to this point as a member of the Phillies.

Those numbers certainly don’t reflect an All-Star, do they? I don’t think the Phillies overpaid for Saunders, but I think local expectations were set too high for a player who has been an okay major league outfielder with an injury history.

Whether Saunders can turn things around or the Phillies would be better looking for outfield production elsewhere has been debated over the past few days by those in the fanbase. As always, I like to look at the batted ball data and see if he is getting unlucky. Here is the batted ball data between last season and this season for Saunders.

As the data shows, Saunders isn’t hitting the ball as hard this season as he did last season. Each batted ball type is showing a dip in exit velocity and the number of batted balls hit of 95 miles-per-hour are down significantly. This isn’t good for projecting a turn-around. The positive for Saunders is that the balls being barreled per plate appearance remain in decent shape between seasons—which could point so a little bad luck. Right now Saunders has a .275 BABIP, which is about twenty points lower than his career average.

Using the xwOBA metric provided by Baseball Savant, I queried the database to search for all batted balls that Saunders has put in play with a wxOBA greater than .400, to see if he is getting unlucky on balls in play that generally would be hits. The results show that 12 balls in play resulting in an out had a xwOBA of at least .400 this season—including one that appears would have been a home run in Toronto. Half of these batted balls were ground balls hit at a high velocity, which were right at the second-baseman. If we hypothetically assumed half of those turned into hits, Saunders would be hitting .270 instead of .227, which shows we are still working with a smaller sample size considering he has only 28.7-percent of the at-bats he had last season.

A big concern for Saunders is that the plate discipline he displayed in Toronto, even in the second half, has completely disappeared. While he is still seeing about 4.3 pitcher per-plate-appearance, Saunders is chasing more pitches outside of the zone than at any point in his career. For his career, he has an O-swing rate of 26.1-percent, per FanGraphs PITCHf/x data. This season that rate has jumped to 32.1-percent. While he is making contact on 60-percent of swings outside of the zone (51.5-percent for career)—it could explain some of the weaker contact.

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This season Saunders is specifically struggling with the four-seam fastball—a pitch he mashed for a .586 slugging percentage and 10 home runs a year ago. To this point in 2017, he has a .391 slugging percentage with 2 home runs. It also seems that Saunders is seeing more cutters this season—which is a pitch he struggled with last season as well, hitting just .147 with a .324 slugging percentage. This season, he has been thrown a cutter 13.9-percent of the time–which is up from 8.2-percent last season. It is a new league with arms Saunders hasn’t faced much in the past—which could be part of the struggles.

Even if we go to the defensive side, Saunders remains a liability in the field with -1 defensive runs saved this season. However, he hasn’t been as bad as he was in Toronto to this point—where he ended with -11 defensive runs saved in 1,058 innings last season. That is another big risk coming to the National League for Saunders, the designated hitter doesn’t exist.

Does it make sense to move on from Saunders? At this point, I am leaning no. I think that the players down in the minor leagues may need a little more time and as I stated above, Saunders is still working in somewhat of a small sample size here. Six hits make a drastic difference for him—but the lower exit velocities and increased chase rate makes me nervous. The fact that he was an All-Star last year after never being that type of player in his career is hurting the fan's perception of him as well. But if the Phillies did decide to give Roman Quinn at-bats over Saunders, it would be hard to be too mad that them.