57.11 Blazers Bring Back Infielder Mike LeBlanc

[Bob Breum]

Montreal announced today that they have inked minor league infielder Mike LeBlanc to a major league contract, paying him $1 million for four seasons. LeBlanc was a first round draft pick of the Brooklyn Robins out of high school in 2047.


Mike LeBlanc
The Blazers originally acquired LeBlanc in a trade with the Chicago Black Sox before the 2056 season. They moved him from second base to third base, and worked with him to master the new position. Unfortunately, LeBlanc was allowed to hit minor league free agency after the season as a result of a tiff between management and ownership regarding the budget.

Management was anxious to bring him back, but the Rocky Mountain Oysters signed him to a minor league deal with a major league option. When the Oysters didn't promote him by May 1, LeBlanc was once again released to minor league free agency, and the Blazers pounced. For now, LeBlanc is still toiling in the minors, having been assigned to the Blazers AA affiliate, the Mississauga Spartans, where he continues to hone his skills at third base.

[GoldenOne]

Nah, we just released him. He cant play 3B anymore and is now only useful at 1B. I had to promote some guys and he was just the odd man out.

[Bob Breum]

Nah, we just released him. He cant play 3B anymore and is now only useful at 1B. I had to promote some guys and he was just the odd man out.

Thank you for the correction. Now let me correct you. When we originally traded for LeBlanc, he was being used at 2B. He had zero experience at 3B. Our intent all along was to move him to 3B. When we lost him to FA, he was not yet fully trained at his new position. We hope that by the end of this season that he will have grown his 3B rating up to 5, and that he can be a competent option at the hot corner for us. We believe that his bat will play well in our home park, which rewards hitters with high gap ratings.

[GoldenOne]

Not sure how that is correcting me - just my opinion that he cant play 3B anymore. With a range of 2, you will not see him get up to being a 5 again at 3B.

[Bob Breum]

When we first acquired him, he was not rated at 3B. The primary factor for 3B is Infield Arm. It was my evaluation before we traded for him that he could be an average 3B given sufficient playing time at the position.

Once we started playing him there, the game then rated him at 3B to have a potential of 5. We have watched him progress from 1/5 to 2/5 to 3/5. It is our expectation based on experience that he will eventually reach 5/5, barring injury.

He is improving at the position, not regressing. His range has not changed. He’s a classic 3B whose range is “a step and a dive,” but if he gets to it, he’ll make the play. He has great hands, quick feet, and a strong arm.

[Bob Breum]

LeBlanc just improved to 4 out of 5 at 3B. I know it'll take a lot more reps to get him up to 5, but he's slowly getting there.

[BaseClogger]

You don't see guys with that low of range but excellent ratings otherwise very often. Looks like he's playing in AAA and not AA--he's too old for AA.

[Bob Breum]

Looks like he's playing in AAA and not AA--he's too old for AA.

He just celebrated his 28th birthday during the last sim. After the trade, we decided to assign him to AAA so that he wouldn't need to share playing time at 3B with our 3B prospect in AA, Tom 'Gauntlet' Allen, who is only 21.

[BaseClogger]

Tom Allen looks like a better hitter than he was a football coach.

[RonCo]

LeBlanc's ability to play 3B is an interesting question. He's got the arm, but that "2" range just looks really ugly. The question is made a little complex because he's SO MUCH BETTER than the average 3B in Error and TDP.

If I look at his expanded defensive stats at third this year I see:

BIZ-Routine (90-100%) = 84/86 = 97.7%
BIZ-Likely (60-90%) = 16/22 = 72.2%
BIZ-Even (40-60%) = 5/7 = 71.4%
BIZ-Unlikely (10-40%) = 0/3 = 0%
BIZ-Remote (1-10%) = 0/14 = 0%
BIZ-Impossible (0%) = 0/0 = 0%

So he's really, really good at balls hit close to him, and really really bad at balls hit far away. It's a numbers game really. There are relatively few balls hit to areas he needs to get to (17 of 132 in this sample size). So my guess is that on the field LeBlanc will be roughly league average with the glove overall. But he'll get there in a pretty unique way.

[RonCo]

Here's a back of the napkin addendum...I went to OOTP and pulled down a set of its advanced/expanded defensive metrics. Here is the quality of balls hit to every guy who had played 3B in the BBA today:

	BIZ	PCT
Sum of BIZ-R	4972	56.8%
Sum of BIZ-L	1604	18.3%
Sum of BIZ-E	775	8.9%
Sum of BIZ-U	455	5.2%
Sum of BIZ-Z	553	6.3%
Sum of BIZ-I	396	4.5%

So if my supposition is right, LeBlanc is going to be better than average on ground balls of a category R & L (roughly 75% of balls) and quite a bit worse than average on groundballs hit of a category E, U, and Z (about 20%). Of course, he'll be just as bad at "impossible" grounders as everyone else is.

Let's say he gets a grounder hit to him every game, or 162. That means roughly 90 will be in the R zone, where he'll probably turn 2-3 extra outs over the average. Say roughly 30 will in an zone L, where he's maybe 1 out better than average. He'll have then, roughly 15 in E, where the average fielder converts at 70%. So where he should convert 10 outs, maybe he only converts 7. That wipes out his advantage in easy plays. He'll have roughly 15 balls in U and Z, of which he's converted zero to date. The average defender converts only 50% of U and 25% of Z, so let's say 4 Us and 2 Zs. For 6 plays total.

Since he's 1 up in category L, that would mean he'd wind up about 5 plays worse than the average 3B. If his offense gets him 5 more hits than the league average hitter, then he's breaking even.

Of course, I could be blowing smoke here. The sample size of his time at 3B this year is really quite small.

But yeah, his profile is very interesting.

[Bob Breum]

Here's a back of the napkin addendum...I went to OOTP and pulled down a set of its advanced/expanded defensive metrics. Here is the quality of balls hit to every guy who had played 3B in the BBA today:

	BIZ	PCT
Sum of BIZ-R	4972	56.8%
Sum of BIZ-L	1604	18.3%
Sum of BIZ-E	775	8.9%
Sum of BIZ-U	455	5.2%
Sum of BIZ-Z	553	6.3%
Sum of BIZ-I	396	4.5%

So if my supposition is right, LeBlanc is going to be better than average on ground balls of a category R & L (roughly 75% of balls) and quite a bit worse than average on groundballs hit of a category E, U, and Z (about 20%). Of course, he'll be just as bad at "impossible" grounders as everyone else is.

Let's say he gets a grounder hit to him every game, or 162. That means roughly 90 will be in the R zone, where he'll probably turn 2-3 extra outs over the average. Say roughly 30 will in an zone L, where he's maybe 1 out better than average. He'll have then, roughly 15 in E, where the average fielder converts at 70%. So where he should convert 10 outs, maybe he only converts 7. That wipes out his advantage in easy plays. He'll have roughly 15 balls in U and Z, of which he's converted zero to date. The average defender converts only 50% of U and 25% of Z, so let's say 4 Us and 2 Zs. For 6 plays total.

Since he's 1 up in category L, that would mean he'd wind up about 5 plays worse than the average 3B. If his offense gets him 5 more hits than the league average hitter, then he's breaking even.

I'm trying to follow this. Granted it's small sample size, but in your prior post you said that he was 5 for 7 in zone E, which is better than the expected 40-60%. Yet now you're saying that he would only convert 7 of 15 in E. Have I missed something?

Using expected outcomes of 95% for R, 75% for L, 50% for E, 25% for U, and 5% for R, then taking your distribution of 150 GB across these zones, I get ~118 outs for the average 3B, and ~120 outs for LeBlanc, which is essentially league average, given the small sample size.

If you consider that LeBlanc's fielding data has been accrued while he is still learning the position, it suggests that he should be somewhat better than league average once he attains a rating of 5 at 3B. He just now graduated to 4, so these numbers are almost all acquired while he was rated 3 or less.

[RonCo]

Yeah you've got my thought pattern down well enough. Assuming that's a good way of looking at it, you can play your own math. I'm not really going to hang much on that 5/7 yet, simply because it's in a middle category, and I dunno. I'm not sure I'd see a + defender, but I could well be wrong -- or at least if the FAC (Fancy Assed Calculator) that OOTP is gives a favorable Randomness, it could happen.

Regardless, I think he can probably play that position, so I'd gently disagree with Brett on that flat-out statement. If he had a 5 or so range, he'd probably be a Zimmer kind of player. But as is, league average would be fine.

[Bob Breum]

If he can achieve a neutral ZR, I think his bat should play well enough in our home park to be a solid option at the hot corner for us. Of course, as long as Eduardo Gonzalez remains healthy, LeBlanc is marooned in AAA.

[Bob Breum]

It's small sample size, but LeBlanc hit .349/.373/.492 in 67 plate appearances at the tail end of the season, then hit .295/.326/.447 in the playoffs. He DHed for us vLHP in the playoffs.