NL Central 2014: Starling Marte, Jhonny Peralta top regression candidates

There are myriad reasons that a player can go from a good season to a bad one. Personal troubles, injuries, league adjustment, pressures of a new contract, getting older and so on. There’s also the inconvenient notion that a player just might have been playing over their head. Getting lucky, as Daft Punk would have it. In those particular cases -- we can point to regression -- there is a downturn in production as the player returns to what is often seen as his “true” talent level. Let’s take a look and see who is likely to experience that unpleasant symptom in the National League Central.

Travis Wood. It’s an obvious choice, perhaps as Wood’s 3.11 ERA was his first under 4.00 since 2010. Wood is not as bad as his 2012 season, but nor is he as good as his 2013. His peripherals didn’t change all that much from previous seasons, which might imply that his abilities are steady enough to repeat a breakout season, but more likely mean that he is going to regress back to his previous output.

While Wood did well to cut his home runs per nine innings from 1.44 to 0.81, fueling his breakout season, that reduced home run rate is right in line with his previous rates (2010-2011). Pair that pedestrian home run rate with a mild strikeout rate, a league-average walk rate and middling stuff and I’m running out of ways to say average. That’s what Wood is. He’s average, and as the ability to chew some innings, but repetition of his superlative surface stats is unlikely.

Leake only struck out 15.2% of batters he faces, and while he only walked 6%, he allowed almost a home run per nine innings. All of that totals a 4.04 ERA according to FIP but netted Leake a 3.37 ERA last season. Wood does well to keep the ball down, but as his home run rate would indicate, when it gets up, it can go a long way. The trick is that even at 1.0 HR/9, 2013 was Leake’s best year yet in terms of keeping the ball in the park. There’s a good chance that his ability to limit home runs will regress next year and with it, his ERA.

Jean Segura. Regression isn’t always about talent, as Segura has plenty of that. Instead it’s about moving from production that is above (or below) a player’s true talent level towards that true talent level. Segura came out with guns blazing in 2013, ripping off a .325/.363/.487 slash line, to go with 27 bases.

Even as a top prospect, immediate production like that was unexpected, and Segura showed his inexperience in the second half, slashing .241/.268/.315. His meager walk rate (4%) means that his impressive bat-to-ball skills get to shine, but it also means he is likely swinging at pitcher’s pitches. As bad as his second half was, it indicated (along with some variance) that the league had adjusted to Segura’s tendencies. It will now be on him to adjust back. While Segura wasn’t as good as his first half, nor is he as bad as his second half. Still, his overall line of .294/.329/.423 with 44 stolen bases isn’t one that can be expected to be repeated.

You see, Marte only walked in 4.4% of his at-bats and unlike the aforementioned Segura, he doesn’t have the contact skills to make up for that. Marte sported a 24.4% strikeout rate, and while his OBP was solid it was inflated by an obscene 24 hit by pitches. That number is likely unsustainable. Even if he is one of the more oft-hit players in the league, no player save for Marte and Shin-Soo Cho was hit more than 20 times in 2013. Marte also carried an incredible .363 BABIP and while a player with his speed can certainly support a BABIP well-above average, .363 seems a bit high to assume sustainability.

BABIP is often a scapegoat and shortcut for luck, when in reality it’s more complicated than that. For our purposes though, we can note something simple; when Peralta has a good BABIP, he has a good season. In 2013, his BABIP was .374, and we know how that went. In 2012, it was .275 and he was 14% worse than league average. Peralta’s BABIP has yo-yo’d like that for the last four seasons or so, and while his career norm is well above the 2012 number (.315), it’s well below what he produced last season. This isn’t a prediction that Peralta will yo-yo once again, but even a return to his career averages would represent a relatively large-scale regression.