Reds center fielder Billy Hamilton will undergo right shoulder surgery on Friday, C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports (Twitter links). Needless to say, he’ll miss the rest of the season, though his long-term outlook is of greater importance at this stage.
Hamilton is expected to be able to recover in time for a full spring, according to GM Walt Jocketty. “There’s no structural damage,” he said, “but we think [the surgery] will help and [Hamilton will] be 100% and ready to go before Spring Training.”
Hamilton has been dealing with a sprained capsule since mid-August, as MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon recently explained. He was activated from the DL recently, but the problem flared back up. There was apparently some consideration given to simply using Hamilton as a pinch runner over the final weeks of the season, but obviously both team and player decided it was preferable to go the surgical route now.
This season was not what the 25-year-old hoped for even before the shoulder problem arose. The noted speed demon was just productive enough at the plate last year to allow his baserunning and defense to carry his value.
But while Hamilton has improved with his legs this year — he was caught in just eight of 65 stolen base attempts after being nabbed 23 times in 2014 — his numbers at the plate plummeted. All told, he owns a .226/.274/.289 slash in 454 plate appearances on the season.
It appears that Hamilton has every hope of a normal spring, which is certainly good news. But any lost development opportunities could be problematic, as there’s plenty on the line for him next season. Hamilton will enter the 2016 campaign with 2.028 years of service on his clock, making it an arbitration platform year. And Cincinnati will be looking to assess whether he’s a long-term solution in center.
Players like Hamilton remind me that we really need some sort of stat that combines a player’s own OPS, their steals, and their “taking-the-extra-base” numbers. Some sort of composite “bases generated primarily by player” number.
Watching Delino Jr this season makes me think the same thing, like an an adjusted OPS for players who routinely end up at 2B from a single(Deshields Jr., Hamilton, Gordon). Bases generated per PA or something?? Don’t know what it should be called, but completely agree.
Fangraphs’ Baserunning metrics do include things like going first to third, opportunistically taking an extra base, etc. in addition to just value generated by steals. And, their “Off” stat (basically a player’s composite offensive value above average) factors in their baserunning plus their value at the plate.
Hamilton’s generated five more runs than any player in baseball with his baserunning, per BsR, but his overall offensive value is still terrible with all three slash stats coming in below .300.