Four spring stats that might actually (maybe) matter for the Rays

Every spring we are told (relentlessly) that SPRING TRAINING STATS DON’T MATTER. It would be annoying if it weren’t for the fact that is so true. Michael Taylor slugged .849 in spring training last year en route to his wild and crazy breakout 2016 in which he, well, posted an OPS of .654 and was worth -0.3 WAR. Rick Porcello posted a 2016 spring ERA of 9.77; seven months later he was named the American League Cy Young Winner.

The sample size is simply too small, the rosters too flooded with Quad-A players, and both hitters and pitchers too focused on tinkering with new batting stances or new pitches for any result to truly matter. Every year we get lured into certain players (I see you, Mitch Haniger) who are tearing it up during the preseason, and, as a result, we over-inflate their expectations for the regular season.

That being said, there are a few little statistical nuggets here and there that I do believe we can at least notice and comment on, even if we do not accept them as law. Here are four stats that stand out for the Tampa Bay Rays this spring with all the caveats that need to be added hopefully covered in the first paragraph.

12:1 - Steven Souza Jr. K:BB ratio

We’ll start with an individual player stat. Souza is one of the Rays on whom I am most bearish so this might simply be a case of confirmation bias from yours truly. After all, Souza is still hitting .300 with a .525 in his 40 at bats this spring, so it’s not as though he’s looked lost up at the plate.

That being said, Souza’s discipline at the plate has been sliding for a while now, and it’s slightly terrifying. Souza demanded a spot on the 2014 Nationals big league side in part because of the excellent eye he was showing in Triple-A. In 96 Triple-A games that year, Souza posted a strikeout rate of 18.4% and a walk rate of 12.8%. For comparison sake, Edwin Encarnacion posted a strikeout rate of 19.7% and walk rate of 12.4% last season. In his 21-game debut, Souza walked a respectable 11.5 percent of the time while striking out a somewhat understandable 26.9 percent of the time - this was a rookie after all.

Both those numbers tracked the wrong way in 2015, however. Souza’s walk rate dropped to 10.8 percent while his strikeout rate jumped to 33.8 percent. This was Souza’s first season with the Rays and if there was any excuse for "adjusting to a new environment," that certainly wasn’t the case in 2016, his second season with the Rays, when he saw his walk rate once again decrease (down to 6.6%) and his strikeout rate increase (34.0%). If we complete the track by using those spring training numbers, he is now walking just 2.5 percent of the time, while striking out 30 percent of the time. For comparison’s sake, there was not a single player in 2016 with at least 100 plate appearances who struck out that often while walking that infrequently. There’s a reason for that. The only players who qualify for those "standards" when we drop the PA minimum to 50 are a bunch of pitchers and Erik Kratz - we don’t want Erik Kratz hitting in the sixth spot for us, thank you very much.

Spring training and all, but I’m still a bit worried about Souza.

13:9 - Blake Snell K:BB ratio

Here’s another walk-to-strikeout ratio for you plate discipline heads in the audience. I tend to weigh spring struggles a bit more than spring successes. This may be a dangerous game, but with the rosters including so many players who won’t see the light of day come regular season, it should be a lot easier to dominate right? Dominating may just come as the result of beating up on terrible pitchers, or getting to pitch to Tim Tebow (yikes), but if you’re struggling against those types it’s going to make me raise my eyebrows a bit more.

With Snell, these struggles hold the added worry that this is the exact issue with which he has always struggled. If we lower the innings minimum to 80 innings, Snell posted the highest BB/9 of any pitcher in the major leagues in 2016. He still managed an ERA of 3.54, but his 4.35 xFIP suggests he may have gotten a bit lucky.

Of course, Snell was able to offset a bit of these control issues in 2016 with a high strikeout rate (9.91 K/9). As such, his K%-BB% remained respectable (11.7% - just above Junior Guerra and Tanner Roark) despite the high walk total. That’s where this 2017 spring stat is a bit of a double-dip. Those 13 strikeouts and nine walks have come in 19.0 innings this spring, meaning Snell is averaging 6.2 strikeouts per nine, a far cry from his elite 2017 strikeout rate. Now the low strikeouts worry me far less than the high walks, as this is the most easily explained by small sample size, tinkering, etc. of spring training. Still, the control issues remain something to watch with Snell as he matures.

3.97 - Team ERA

Alright, we need to get a little positive juju in here. Team ERAs have been astronomical this spring, as nine teams currently have a team ERA over 5.00 and only four have one below 4.00. The Rays are one of those four, coming in fourth across all of major league baseball this spring in team ERA.

As always, we get all the weird stat-contorting factors listed above, but those are at least slightly mitigated when accumulated over a team-sized and then league-wide basis. Justin Marks (11.2 IP, 0 ER) and Tommy Hunter (8.0 IP, 1 ER) have been the two main contributors, but Chris Archer (1.98 ERA) and Alex Cobb (3.95) have looked solid as well.

The Rays saw their team ERA rise from 3.74 in 2015 to 4.20 in 2016, and while some of that was due to a league-wide rise in scoring (league ERA of 3.96 in 2015; league ERA of 4.19 in 2016), it was enough of a slip to see the club go from 11th in team ERA in 2015 to 15th in 2016. The Rays most visible line to contention in 2017 is a dominant run prevention side that can bop enough home runs to sneak out lots of close wins. That’s part of why this strong spring for Rays’ pitchers has been so heartening.

267 - Team strikeouts (hitters)

OK, back to a negative (or at least not great) stat to end. The Rays had the seventh-highest strikeout rate in 2016, and they look like they’re right back at it in 2017. The Rays are tied for the fourth-most team strikeouts through Tuesday, and they have played the fewest games of any of those "top five."

We already called out Souza and his 12 strikeouts, but he’s far from the only culprit. Daniel Robertson is leading the way with 17 Ks, while Brad Miller and Evan Longoria are nipping at his heels with 15 and 14 respectively this spring. The three Rays with more than 30 at bats and fewer than five strikeouts? Curt Casali, Luke Maile, and Jake Bauers. The first two were officially just optioned to Triple-A, while Bauers seems destined to follow them.

We all know the Rays’ lineup is going to be mighty K-heavy, but let’s hope it’s not quite this bad. The Rays have still averaged just about a league-average total of runs scored/game this spring, but who among us wants to watch a team challenge for the all-time team strikeout record in 2017? Hopefully we can write this off as just spring, although given the research I’ve got going for an article later this week, I’m not so sure it is.