Nah. With his speed and power, PCA always had a chance to BABIP his way to crazy numbers. And I think that's part of this. But that's not to take away from the plate discipline improvements -- which appear to be real. He's making much better swing decisions.
It's worth noting that Javy batted .299/.371/.515 and put up 2.0 fWAR in 47 games there. He was actually worth a pretty good prospect haul. Just not this much.
1. Please no. He's a piece of human garbage and I don't want my money going in his pockets.
2. Please no. He was bad in Japan last year.
3. Please no. He's 35 years old. There's not much reason to suspect he's going to get any better than he was last year.
4. Please no. He was never all that great to begin with. He had two great years - 2018 and 2020. For the rest of his career, he floated between a 1 - 3 fWAR guy.
5. Please no. He'd be a distraction for the clubhouse.
6. Please no. Only the chuds would be excited by that signing, and I hate chuds and want to deny them any happiness.
If that metric doesn't already exist, it should be pretty easy to manufacture. Compare baseline performance to monthly splits or preferably some sort of rolling 10 game average. Calculate who has the largest standard deviations. Compare.
I'm not a math guy or a programmer, so I'd love to be told how wrong I am.
Cubs hitters are currently leading the league in walk rate. PCA, Busch, Dansby, and Amaya are all sporting career best figures. I'd be curious as to the how/why so many guys are taking big steps forward.
I was just looking at this. He's still on pace for a 4fWAR year and tied with Busch for the second best position player on the Cubs. I guess defense is still important, eh?
Edit: I see he's also running a career-high walk rate.
Last year, I had a three week blowout where my team hit 71 bombs.
You probably don't have to get anywhere near that just to claw your way back up into contention.
Yeah, a good chunk of my cash is tied up in him. Ketel Marte and J-Rod aren't helping much either.
I'm just lucky my bench players have picked up the slack.
I can't see him keeping the BB% up that high when big leaguers realize he can't do any damage to them.
For some reason, I see the big league version of him looking like James Loney with more walks and strikeouts.