Jon Shepherd: Nick Markakis is everything

Over the first third of this season, there has been considerable discussion about how well Nick Markakis has performed. Depending on your perspective, he has been doing poorly, has been a breath of fresh air or something in between. Amazingly, all of those stances are somewhat equal in being accurate. Markakis has been doing poorly, he has been excelling and he has been merely adequate. How is this so? It depends on what you choose as your baseline. Back in the day, we nailed what Markakis would earn in an extension based on his performance to date. However, that contract has been a massive overpay with him producing below our 25th percentile projection. That was due to both his offense and defense. His last season before the extension was incredibly remarkable and he never experienced anything like it since. His offense and defense improved a third year straight and his 6.1 fWAR would have put him in the discussion for MVP had he played for a more successful club. In the years since, his power has evaporated. His defense has also deteriorated with a reduction in range that has also mitigated the value in his arm due to putting him into poor positions to throw. This year is not much different. It was thought that his decreasing power was made worse by a thumb injury in 2012 (as opposed to his hamate break) and that the power would return when the injury fully healed. However, his ISO is about half of what his career mark is. Combine that with an on-base percentage below his career average and another net negative defensive season, Markakis is on pace to have an fWAR of 1.5. That value would be the second-worst value of his career, besting only his -0.1 value in 2013. An average starting-caliber player is considered as having a 2.0 WAR, so one can conclude that he is having a poor season. As a right fielder, the picture becomes murkier. True, of the 23 right fielders with enough playing time, Markakis' ISO bests only Will Venable, Nate Schierholtz, and Norichika Aoki. However, his .353 OBP puts him at seventh in that group. How can we make sense of those extremely different rankings? A statistic called weighted Runs Created Plus is a good solution to the problem. What that metric does is figure out the league average number of runs scored as a result of a certain event. It enables us to use the entire batting line in a weighted way to figure out how valuable the offensive performance was. When we do that, Markakis' value is 108 wRC+, which puts him as 13th out of 23. It is also above league average for all qualified and unqualified right fielders, which is 102 wRC+. His defense is also above average among the qualified right fielders, so his current fWAR stands ninth out of 23. All in all, that is a decent performance. Finally, one could also put forth the argument that Markakis is having a rather exceptional season. A more modern thought, but old enough for Earl Weaver to have recognized and valued, is that a leadoff hitter should above all not get called out. When it comes to getting on base, Markakis' .353 OBP would make him the fourth-best leadoff hitter behind the team performance of the Rangers, Cardinals and Brewers. Of course, doing a single thing exceptionally often does not make one exceptional. A leadoff hitter often only finds himself in a leadoff position once or twice a game in the American League. This means that other aspects of hitting gain some importance. A simple way to evaluate overall performance would be to use lineup-specific values for run production based on on-base percentage and slugging. Again, this is simplistic, but this is like a Runs Created value for only leadoff hitters. What we wind up finding is that in terms of expected runs, OBP is about three times more valuable than slugging out of the leadoff position. When you factor those weights in, Markakis' performance would be seventh and snug in between the Cardinals' and Giants' leadoff hitters. That is first-division performance. With that in mind, you can say pretty much anything about Markakis and be correct within a given context. He has done poorly, he has been decent and he has given first-division production. Jon Shepherd blogs about the Orioles at Camden Depot. Follow him on Twitter: @CamdenDepot. His thoughts on the O's appear here as part of MASNsports.com's continuing commitment to welcome guest bloggers to our little corner of cyberspace. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our roster of writers.