Veteran first baseman Jesus Aguilar is set to sign with the Seibu Lions of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. The MVP Sports client has appeared in the Majors in each of the past ten seasons but will head overseas for the first time in his career.
Aguilar, 33, signed a one-year, $3MM deal with the A’s last offseason but struggled greatly through 36 games. In 115 plate appearances with Oakland, the burly slugger managed a tepid .221/.281/.385 slash with a 27% strikeout rate. It was a second consecutive lackluster campaign at the plate for Aguilar, and although he turned around a bit after signing with the Braves on a minor league deal, he never got a look in the big leagues with Atlanta. In 241 plate appearances with Triple-A Gwinnett, he hit .271/.373/.379 with a hefty 14.1% walk rate.
With the exception of a down season in 2019, Aguilar was a well above-average hitter from 2017-21. Even with a rough showing in ’19, his batting line over that five-year stretch checked in at .262/.338/.478, and he slugged 93 round-trippers along the way. Aguilar’s best year came with the Brewers in 2018, when he swatted a career-best 35 home runs and turned in a stout .274/.352/.539 batting line. The Lions will be hoping for that type of production, or something close to it, in signing the veteran slugger for the upcoming season.
This is the most exciting news.
A Japanese team found Jesus?
That’s actually pretty funny
They found their personal Jesus.
A lion is also symbolic of Christianity.
Christians were also fed to lions.
Classic Roman humor.
To be honest, nearly every player’s best year came around 2018 or 2019, when they could bunt the ball and it would travel 435 feet. I mean, Brett Gardner hit almost 30 HRs that year (‘19).
@Yankee Clipper
MLB needs to stop messing around with the balls and mounds. Raise the mound and bring back actual batters that could make contact and run the bases.
YC
“To be honest, nearly every player’s best year came around 2018 or 2019, when they could bunt the ball and it would travel 435 feet.”.
Almost like it’s super important to look at wRC+ (which MLTBR rarely does) and not just the triple slash line.
@filihok
But even with stats like wRC+ and wOBA, they’ve got some correctable blind spots, especially when it comes to ground balls and double plays. If you’re trying to get the full picture of a player’s skills,
wOBA is determined from a formula where the coefficients are chosen for the purpose of maximizing correlation. This ends up seeping into the other metics like xwOBA, xERA and wRC+ and polluting it.
OY
“wOBA is determined from a formula where the coefficients are chosen for the purpose of maximizing correlation. This ends up seeping into the other metics like xwOBA, xERA and wRC+ and polluting it.”
What are you taking about?
@filihok
I thought you were a stats guy. Clearly not. Now, run along and enjoy some more social media…
OY
“I thought you were a stats guy. Clearly not. Now, run along and enjoy some more social media…”
I’m asking you what you mean
Why do hostile?
@filihok
wOBA (Weighted On-Base Average) is a baseball statistic calculated using a specific formula. In this formula, certain numbers (coefficients) are chosen to make the statistic strongly correlate with a player’s overall offensive performance.
The coefficients used in the wOBA formula also affect other baseball metrics such as xwOBA, xERA, and wRC+. The use of these coefficients influences these metrics, and the speaker is using the word “polluting” to suggest that it might have unintended or undesirable effects on the accuracy or purity of those other statistics.
OY
“In this formula, certain numbers (coefficients) are chosen to make the statistic strongly correlate with a player’s overall offensive performance.”
What do you mean by this?
First, the coefficients aren’t “chosen”. They are calculated to reflect the value of the events
Second, having the coefficient of a single reflect the true value of a single, you know, makes sense.
@ Clipper – So true. I ignore all 2019 offensive stats.
This guys gonna set HR records over there
It’s nice to get information like he’s appeared in games for 10 seasons, but it would be nice to see overall service time mentioned for players like this. In this case it’s 6.082 years, which is kind of surprising to me at least. He’s well short of getting that pension even though it seems he’s been around forever.
I did not expect this one
This is actually probably a good move for Aguilar. He’ll likely feast on KBO pitching
NPB, not KBO. But point still stands.
He will feast on sushi
At least the overseas FA market is hot.
Unfortunately for Aguilar he was not hitting and the A’s well they found a diamond on the rough called Ryan Noda.
Christmas came early for the Lions.
They are gonna love Aggie in Japan. He’s a teddy bear.
You know the league is competitive when guys like Aguilar are having to go play oversees.
Overseas*
I thought after he had that breakout 2018 season that he would just crush MLB pitching onward. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
you weren’t alone. many people thought that very same thing. npb is considered aaaa talent level so it’ll be very interesting to see how he stacks up at that there. will he excell or flop? either way is very possible.