The list of NL East regression candidates features a third baseman and outfielder who played over their heads, a second baseman who broke out on the basepaths and two imports who struck it rich thanks to career seasons.
NL East 2014: Jayson Werth, Chris Johnson lead regression candidates
The NL East features newcomers and mainstays alike that are likely to backslide in the upcoming season.
Greg Fiume
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Atlanta
Chris Johnson. Allow me to make an understatement: a .394 batting average on balls in play is difficult to sustain. That’s the long and short of the argument against Johnson, as his .321/.358/.457 slash line greatly exceeds any previous line that he had produced.
Johnson is a solid hitter who excels at hitting line drives, which fall for hits more often, so it’s not like he is simply lucky. That said, his .394 BABIP from 2013 was 33 points higher than his career average of .361, meaning that while he is prone to high BABIPs, he did get lucky at least a bit last year.
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Miami
Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Let’s play the BABIP game again! Salty’s was .372 in 2013, 50 points above his career average as he produced the best season of his career, and the only one above league average (per wRC+). The good news is that Saltalamacchia has upped his walk rate in each of the last three seasons, and posted the best strikeout rate of his career.
All that improvement aside though, Saltalamacchia's luck played a significant role in his breakout season. He still swings and misses with the best of them, whiffing just under 30% of the time, and he saw his line drive percentage spike almost six percentage points up to 28.6%, another unsustainable rate. Add in the switch from a hitter's haven like Fenway to the spacious confines of Marlins Park and we're looking at an almost inevitable regression from 2013.
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New York
Daniel Murphy. This may be walking a bit of a fine line when it comes to predicting regression, especially because Murphy largely is the guy he was last year, nay, the last three years. The regression for Murphy will come in the form of stolen bases and runs scored more than it will in his slash line.
Murphy established a career high in stolen bases for the fourth straight season, but while the other totals were rather tepid, 2013 saw him swipe 23 bases in 26 attempts. At 28 years old, Murphy is in the middle of his prime, but speed is one skill that can decline even as one is entering his prime hitting seasons. His 92 runs are another anomaly, as he actually got on base less than he did in 2012, though he scored 30 more runs. A large part of that has to do with Terry Collins hitting him second on a more consistent basis, but even with a revamped Mets lineup, 90+ runs seems a large hill to climb.
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Philadelphia
Marlon Byrd. It was quite the turnaround for Byrd, who saw his slash line go from .210/.243/.245 in 2012 to .291/.336/.511 in 2013. Like others on this list, Byrd is not as bad as his lows, but neither is he as good as his highs. He slugged over .400 for the first time since 2010, and he cleared the bar by 111 points.
So it seems easy to predict a return to normalcy in the slugging department, even with the offseason move from spacious Citifield/PNC Park to the cozy Citizens Bank Park. His other slash stats should come down a bit as well, as Byrd’s .353 BABIP was well above his career .325 figure, and with it his counting stats and most certainly his 24 home runs -- a career high.
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Washington
Jayson Werth. After traveling a circuitous path to stardom, Werth landed with the Nationals after inking a $127 million deal, and promptly submitted an anticlimactic .232/.330/.389 (which was somehow league average according to wRC+).
Fast forward to 2013, and Werth recorded a .318/.398/.532 slash line en route to receiving MVP votes (and was 60% better than league average). As good as he was though, Werth is going to be a victim of his own success. Per wRC+ (and OPS), 2013 was Werth’s best offensive season to date, and at 35 years old, it’s not unfair to expect a return to something more like his 2012 season (.300/.387/.440). The upside here? His beard won’t go anywhere.
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