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| This pair of Mets first round picks have already been teammates at several stops in the Mets system |
The young shortstop
will be moving up to AAA for his age-22 season
Given
the reports on Cecchini coming out of St. Lucie towards the end of 2014 (and
that he hit .286/.391/.446 with 11 XBH and 21 BB: 14 K in his last 138 PA there),
I felt confident enough that Cheech would have a good season in 2015 to rank
him #7
on my pre-season list, and then he went and had a great season, at least at the
plate. Given his age, the position he plays, and the way he produced last year
(high contact rate and BABIP, average ISO), the KATOH system than Fangraphs
writer Chris Mitchell has created initially had him as the 14th best
prospect of 2015. Chris has since updated the system to consider more than one
season’s worth of data, and to give less credit to prospects just because they
can play SS, which led to a drop in the rankings for Cecchini, but the fact his
initially system loved his 2015 reflects just how nice of a year it was for
Cecchini statistically at the plate. Unfortunately, while he did some good
stuff in the field (see 20
good fielding plays here), he also committed 28 errors to lead the league
(see most of them here),
and some scout writers questioned whether he was a shortstop after their looks.
Most scout writers only get a few looks at a prospect per year, if that, so I
can understand why they would question whether he can stick there if they saw
him at the wrong time. But as someone who watched him everyday (albeit,
exclusively on MiLB.tv) in 2015, I don’t think a move to 2B is needed anytime soon. Depending on the
stadium, the MiLB.tv angles can be limiting to some aspects of the game, but
when they use behind the plate angles (like they generally did at the B-Mets
home park in 2015), you can often see at least the feet of the second baseman
and shortstop, which means you can watch the fielder from reaction time until
he throws the ball and the camera pans away – look for it when you decide to
review the pages good plays and errors linked above. Below I defend my position
on his defense, explore his splits from 2015 to look for trends to
follow in 2016, and then share a few XBH GIF's at the bottom.
Since
he’s been drafted, many reports on Cecchini have described him as a player
without one standout tool, but who is average across the board and without a
major weakness, which is the sentiment that Baseball America once again
reported in their 2016 Prospect Guidebook.
BA finished their section on him by saying, “Cecchini doesn’t have big power or
speed, but he does everything else well enough to profile as a starter at
shortstop or second base...” They also said that while he lacks “big-time
quickness in the field,” he “makes routine plays at shortstop with good hands,
and shows an above-average arm with mature instincts,” suggesting they’re not
as down on his defense as some other outlets. I think that Cecchini reacts
quickly enough to the contact for the position, but that he doesn’t get the
same first step burst that other shortstops do. He still has enough range for
the position, for now, and the Mets can mask that deficiency some with advanced
scouting and defense positioning at the highest level, but he can’t afford to
lose much speed or quickness, which is why I don’t discount a possible move to
2B later in his career. His arm is strong enough for the position, but his
throwing accuracy was the most inconsistent part of his game last year –someone
described his arm as a shotgun, which was true at times. As for his instincts,
while he always seemed to be in the right place, he still needs to learn when
to put the ball in his back pocket, as you might notice reviewing the errors
GIF page. Assuming the throwing yips don’t stick with him, the overall package
is an average to slightly below-average defender at SS, which is an improvement
over what the Mets have put out there over the past two seasons. Saying that
Cheech is better than a poor defensive SS is not evidence that he is not a poor
defensive SS himself, but the Mets tolerance for defense at SS the past 2 years
suggests that they would absolutely overlook any current defensive shortcomings
if they think his offense will translate. And that’s important, because then Cecchini
becomes a more valuable prospect to the Mets and other teams who believe he can
play SS, and/or are willing to put up with less than stellar defense at the
position. So let’s look at his offense production from a year ago more closely.
2015 with Binghamton: 485 PA, .317/.377/.442, 64 R, 26 2B, 4 3B, 7 HR, 51 RBI, 55 K: 42 BB (11.3 K%: 8.7 BB%), .348 BABIP, 139 wRC+, 3/7 on Stolen Bases, 40.4 GB%: 27.4 FB%: 24.8 LD%: 7.4 PU%, 6.1 SwStr%, 13.7 Whiff/Swing, 3.5 P/PA
At the plate, Zucchini removed the
leg kick from his approach, which increased his plate coverage significantly,
and he did so without seeing a drop in his XBH rate. Among the 117 players with
at least 250 PA in the EL last year, Cheech finished 10th best in K%
(league average was 18.3%), 16th best in SwStr% (league average
9.4%), and 19th best Whiff/Swing (league average 20.3%), so he was
among the best at making contact against EL pitching despite being 3.5 years
younger than the average EL player – he was one of 6 players 21 or younger (as
of 6/30/2015) to play consistently in the EL last year (aka, they had the
minimum 141 AB’s to appear on BB-Ref’s leader board). He has a nice inside out
swing that won’t generate too much power, but that sent line drives all over
the field in every EL stadium last year. He’s never going to be a serious
homerun threat with his current approach, but he should still be able to turn
on 10-15 homeruns at his peak, just don’t expect many oppo-taco jacks - of his
16 homeruns hit in the minor leagues, the spray charts on my stat page shows
only 14, but 12 of those were hit to LF, with the other 2 hit to CF off of a
LHP. Let’s take a look at a few of his splits from 2015 to get a better idea of
how he had his success.
Table 1 – Gavin Cecchini 2015 splits by month
Month
|
PA
|
BB%
|
K%
|
wRC+
|
PU%
|
SwStr%
|
Wh/Sw
|
April
|
47
|
8.5
|
10.6
|
166
|
5.6
|
10.3
|
22.5
|
May
|
121
|
6.6
|
8.3
|
136
|
5
|
6.3
|
13.5
|
June
|
104
|
6.7
|
11.5
|
58
|
13.1
|
5.5
|
11.6
|
July
|
139
|
10.8
|
12.2
|
185
|
8.5
|
5.4
|
12.2
|
August
|
74
|
10.8
|
14.9
|
135
|
1.9
|
5.6
|
14.3
|
One
thing that stands out to me about Zucchini’s season is just how consistent he
was at the plate. There were only 5 instances when Cecchini when multiple games
without a hit in 2015, and only one of those instances extended to 3 games.
Three of those instances occurred in June, when he also saw a huge bump in
pop-up rate, and the combined effect was one forgettable month. Looking at the
gamelog, he started the month 9-17 over the first 4 games, but he had 3 errors
during that time, which put his error count for the season at 14 through 45
games. It would appear that the June slump came around the same time as
Cecchini started putting in the extra work on his throwing, so it’s possible
the two are related. Either way, he snapped out of his slump at the end of the
month, and finished the season with another 14 errors over his final 64 games –
an improvement, but still not great. Although they were still always well above
average, his K% and Whiff/Swing increased over the final few months, which is
not what you want to see, but his SwStr% stayed consistent and among the best
during the same time, which seems weird, but I’d guess it means that his
overall Swing% dropped later in the season.
Table 2 – Gavin Cecchini 2015 splits by pitcher handedness
Throws
|
PA
|
BB%
|
K%
|
wRC+
|
GB%
|
SwStr%
|
Wh/Sw
|
L
|
133
|
11.3
|
6.8
|
176
|
32.7
|
4.8
|
11.2
|
R
|
352
|
7.7
|
13.1
|
121
|
43.4
|
6.6
|
14.6
|
While
he’s still not much of a homerun threat to lefties, his .171 ISO against
southpaws with Binghamton in 2015 was still great for a SS, and he owned them
in every other respect, finishing as one of the top few hitters against LHP in
the entire EL. His final wRC+ ranking against lefties depends on where you want
to make the PA cutoff: he finished first among batters with at least 98 PA
against lefties, drops to third if you lower the limit to 80 PA, and to 6th
if you lower the limit to 60 PA. Aside from making more contact against
lefties, Cecchini also put the ball in the air significantly more often against
southpaws, which is not surprising considering the significantly higher ISO. Some
players see sizable fluctuations in their L/R splits from season-to-season, but
Cecchini’s success against lefties is in such a dominating way – nearly twice
as many walks, so few swings-and-misses, and a nice XBH rate – that I’d be
surprised if he doesn’t keep beating up on lefty pitching in 2016. Fortunately
there are no red flags from his approach or results against RHP, and he was
still a much better than league average hitter against same side pitching –
especially compared to other RHB’s facing RHP’s.
Table 3 – Gavin Cecchini 2015 splits by batted ball type
Batted Ball Type
|
PA
|
wOBA
|
EL wOBA
|
FB
|
104
|
.341
|
.367
|
GB
|
160
|
.287
|
.236
|
LD
|
94
|
.736
|
.750
|
PU
|
28
|
0
|
.019
|
Table 4 – Gavin Cecchini 2015 splits by field
Field
|
PA
|
wOBA
|
EL wOBA*
|
GB%
|
FB%
|
LD%
|
PU%
|
Center
|
138
|
.395
|
.376
|
39.3
|
27.4
|
29.6
|
3.7
|
Opposite
|
117
|
.324
|
.262
|
31
|
31.9
|
25
|
12.1
|
Pull
|
128
|
.462
|
.418
|
50.4
|
24
|
20.8
|
4.8
|
*RHB only
Table
3 is interesting to me, because it doesn’t seem like that above average
production on groundballs should be enough to offset the below average
production on the other batted ball types and push Cecchini up to a 139 wRC+,
which suggests that the rest of his offensive value came from his advanced
approach at the plate. At first glance Table 4 might seem to contradict this,
but remember that those league averages are for RHB only. While he used the entire
field pretty equally, the only game power he’s shown so far is pull side – he
hit all 7 of his homeruns, and 15 of his 26 doubles to LF in 2015. He can drive
the ball well to LF, but he was more of a flare hitter to RF, which is
something I’ll be following closely in 2016.
Looking
forward, I think it’s important for Cecchini to show that he’s over those
throwing yips this season, and that he can maintain his great K/BB numbers
against more advanced pitching. Power is never going to be a big part of his
game, but it will be interesting to see if he can start driving the ball more
to RF as he matures physically. Unfortunately, Cecchini has had to deal with a
few injuries recently: he was given a cortisone shot the week before Spring
Training games started, and it was announced Monday (3/7) that he will be
further sidelined with a back injury. Hopefully this doesn’t become a lingering
problem throughout the season, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out the
Mets want to hold him back so he’s as close to 100% coming out of Spring
Training as possible – they did the same with Michael Fulmer last year and
Matthew Bowman the year before. One thing to watch when he comes back is if he
gets any time at 2B. The Mets may think he’s capable at SS, but they keep saying
they want their prospects to be versatile in the field. Also, Matt Reynolds
will likely be down in Las Vegas at least some of the time he’s there too, and
they may move Cheech over to get Reynolds some looks at SS.
Some XBH GIFs
A baby star's "placenta" has been precisely measured for the first time >> https://t.co/3FfRmImijy pic.twitter.com/XiUWVVA0aE— Discovery (@Discovery) March 7, 2016
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