Kelly Johnson

Anonymous asks:

Kelly Johnson hit the waiver wire in my deep, 12-team, NL-only. Should I acquire him? Is there a second-half turnaround in store for him?

The first part of the question is easy. Unless you have a league with very limited reserve lists, you should jump all over Johnson if he's available in your league.

By my reckoning, Johnson earned $19 in 4x4 last year. That put him fifth among National League second basemen in 2008. It's nearly impossible to trade for a middle infielder who produces nearly $20 worth of stats; you have nothing to lose by taking the gamble except your FAAB.

If Johnson fails and merely stays at the level he's at, he'll still hit some HR, drive in some runs, and steal some bases. If you can take the average hit, then you're still going to get a productive player - which is more than you can say for any of the dreck that's probably sitting in your free agent pool.

Will Johnson turn it around? That's a tougher question.

There's certainly something to Toz's theory that Johnson should swing and miss more often. His contact rate of 84.2% is almost four percent higher than Johnson's career norm. The odd thing is that most of Johnson's additional swings have come at pitches in the zone and not outside of it. Whatever has happened to Johnson this year, it's not that he suddenly forgot the strike zone and started swinging at bad pitches.

I did notice that his G/F ratio skewed toward flyballs this year. Johnson's 0.89 G/F lends itself to the idea that he's more of a flyball hitter than he's ever been before. One would expect that Johnson might be hitting a few more balls out of the park, but his HR/FB% of 6.2% is very low. Again, there might be something to the idea that Johnson has developed a better batting eye but the end result is that he's swinging at higher quality strikes.

All this being said, Johnson's BABIP is so low that he almost has to bounce back. That doesn't mean he will - better players than Johnson have simply had entire years where the bounces don't fall, the close plays don't go your way, and you suddenly start making all kinds of unorthodox outs. But even with the lower LD%, Johnson should be able to increase that BABIP and - as a result - increase his production, assuming he gets another chance.