Edwin Encarnacion lately...

I thought I would write about how well Edwin Encarnacion's bat has kicked in lately with his 1.111 OPS and 14 RBIs in his last twelve games and what that has meant to the Blue Jays. But a picture really is worth a thousand words:

Edwin Encarnacion and his arm bar home run trot

After hitting 42 homers in 2012 and finishing April with nine more, it is pretty apparent that Edwin Encarnacion has arrived as an elite power hitter in Major League Baseball. And Mr. Encarnacion does not hit little cheap shots either. He crushes baseballs. He hit two in last night's game that were just crushed. But I noticed something unique in his home run trot. While he was circling the bases, he puts his right arm in a stationary position. I am not sure how how Major League pitchers feel about his trot, but they sure look fun.

Here is what I am talking about. Here is one of the homers. Watch him as he rounds second and heads to third. Gosh, that ball was crushed!

Here is the other one and he does it again on the second homer. I could not embed these so you have the link instead.

Have you ever seen anyone do that before? I have not. I am sure that someone has asked Edwin about the move, but until I find it, all I can do is speculate about what he is doing. Here are my guesses:

• He is taking his Blue Jays' teammates on a pony ride.
• He is strolling with his lady friend around the bases.
• Hitting homers is like leaning at the bar of his favorite Toronto pub.
• He is making sure his armpits are aired out before he gets greeted by his teammates.
• He is walking the dog and the pitcher was his dog.
• Hitting home runs is like square dancing.
• The game is so easy for him that his arm is resting up on his easy chair.
• He needs the aerodynamics to keep making left turns.
• He is warding off bad mojo from glaring outfielders.
• He is waiting for a hawk to land on his arm.
• Hitting homers is like being a passenger in a car with the window down.

Do you have any more ideas? Or maybe you have read an article about it. Whatever Encarnacion is doing, it is kind of cool and different. One thing is also sure: Edwin Encarnacion has become one hitter I would gladly pay to see hit again and again.

Update** My good friend, Navin, who knows all things Toronto sports says (in the comment section) the move is called, "The Edwing." I could not find a Google reference, but if Navin says it, it is gold to me.

Six things you probably didn't know about Edwin Encarnación

Everybody is aware that the Toronto Blue Jays' Edwin Encarnacion went all Bautista on us in 2012 as he suddenly became a premier slugger in baseball. Everyone is aware that he hit 42 homers and slugged .557 en route to a .941 OPS. Everybody also wonders if he can repeat those numbers after coming from nowhere to have that kind of season. But there are things that you probably do not know about Encarnacion which may just hint that he is not a fluke.

1. Edwin Encarnación hardly ever hits the ball on the ground. Of all qualifying batters in 2012, only Josh Reddick of the A's had a lower ground ball to fly ball ratio and lower ground ball percentage. Only 33% of Encarnación's batted balls went on the ground for a ground ball to fly ball ratio of 0.67. And since 18.6% of those fly balls went over the fence, that is a good recipe for hitting homers. This is not a fluke as his career ratio is 0.80 and has been under 0.70 in two of his last three seasons.

2. He also has very good plate discipline for a bopper. He only swung at pitches outside the strike zone 24.5% of the time. That is the 25th lowest in baseball. And only 26 other baseball players (qualified for batting title) swung at less of a percentage of pitches than Encarnación who only swung at 41.6 percent of the pitches he saw in 2012. This shows that he has become adept at waiting for something he likes before pulling the trigger. The plate discipline is not a fluke as it was only one percentage point below his career average. The swing percentage was a marked improvement and could be one of the markers of his improved season. His career swing percentage is 46%.

3. For a big guy who hits for power, he does not swing and miss very many pitches. Only 41 qualified batters swung and missed less than Edwin Encarnación's 7.1 swing and miss rate. In other words, he is not just up there hacking. His strikeout percentage was only 14.6%

4. You can't pitch him fast or slow. Encarnación had the fourth highest pitch value against the fastball in 2012. His prowess versus the fastball was 30 wFB. He was also tied for fourth best against the change up. And he was seventh best against the curve. So what DO you throw this guy? Good luck with that.

5. He is a better than average base runner. Not only is it somewhat rare for a slugger to be good on the bases, but he is surprisingly effective at stealing. He doesn't do it a lot, but in 26 attempts over the past two seasons, he has been successful 21 times good for an 80.8% success rate. And that rate exactly matches his career success rate when attempting to steal a base.

6. His 2012 season was as good as it was despite a .266 BABIP. The low BABIP makes some sense since he hits so many fly balls. But still. He hit .286 despite a .266 BABIP. Can you imagine if a few more things dropped in for him? His career BABIP is .280, so he was a bit unlucky in 2012.

There you have it--six things you probably did not know about Edwin Encarnación. Those six things--especially the first five--show at least to this observer that like Bautista before him, Encarnación's season was not a fluke and that he can repeat what he showed us in 2012.

Celebrating Edwin Encarnacion

Last night on Twitter, the statement was made that Edwin Encarnacion has been as productive as David Ortiz for a third of the price tag. The statement was immediately challenged. "Are you sure about that?" The answer is yes. As the saying goes, "Look it up." Encarnacion currently has 3.0 fWAR and David Ortiz has 2.9. The WAR figures are remarkably similar on Baseball-Reference.com as well. The only thing incorrect about the original statement was that Encarnacion makes one-fifth of what Ortiz makes. The fact that Dunn was selected to the All Star Game over Encarnacion was one of the most egregious All Star crimes this century.

The formula looks rather familiar, doesn't it? A player from the Dominican Republic is under-appreciated and bounces around a little bit. He is never considered an everyday player until his late twenties when as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, he decides to seek out coaching and change his approach at the plate. This willingness to listen and improve yields high power results and an overall massive uptick in performance. Sounds just like Bautista, right? The stories are remarkably similar except that Bautista will always be a better fielder.

Whatever it is that goes into coaching in the Toronto organization and in the willingness of its players to evolve, Encarnacion is a success story in spades. His current triple slash line of, .295/.384/.578 is plutonic. His ISO, wOBA and wRC+ are easily the best of his career. His wOBA of .409 is tenth in the majors and his ISO of .283 and wRC+ of 161 are both eighth in the majors. That is all around awesomeness, is it not?

Encarnation has increased his percentage of fly balls and since his homer to fly ball rate are the highest of his career, that is a good combination. The updated ZiPS projections think he will finish with 37 homers. That number is very realistic and could be conservative. He has 25 right now.

PitchF/X data indicates that Encarnacion has become a very patient hitter at the plate. His 22.7 percent of swings at pitches out of the strike zone are the lowest of his career. His overall swing percentage is also the lowest of his career. That seems to indicate that Encarnacion is waiting for his pitch and then crushing it when he gets it. And for a power hitter, his 7.7 percent swing and miss rate is very low for such a basher. His 15.9 percent strikeout rate is not the norm for such high power numbers. And just for kicks and giggles, the Blue Jays' slugger has stolen nine bases in eleven attempts this season and in the past two seasons is 17 for 21.

The problem for Encarnacion has been where to put him. He was not a good third baseman. He has played there once this season. He has played 39 games at first this season and is holding his own there. He'll never be a Teixeira over that bag, but he can improve and can become a decent first baseman. He started the season as the designated hitter, but it is hard to see him in that role. First base seems to be his future.

And his future looks suddenly bright. There were some trade speculations about Encarnacion a few weeks ago when he started to bust out with his season. But those talks have settled down as the Blue Jays just tied him up with an extension that makes him a Blue Jay through the 2016 season. The top dollars of the deal top out at $10 million and so the deal seems very reasonable for the Blue Jays and gives Encarnacion a guaranteed home and paycheck for a while.

It has been fun to see Encarnacion grow in the eyes of the Blue Jays' fan base. He was affectionately known as, "E-5," for most of his Blue Jays experience. That was a play on the initial of his last name and the double-meaning that E-5 is the designation for making an error at third base. Now Blue Jays fans just call him, "EE," and everyone knows what that means. If that was a shoe size, it would be very large. And that is fitting because Edwin Encarnacion is living large and playing large up in Toronto. He has been a terrific story this season and one of the top five story arcs thus far.

Encarnacion's Strange Trip Home

Edwin Encarnacion doubled his career transaction total in just two months. And the sum total of those strange trips through the transaction wire is a return ticket home to Toronto for almost half the money he made last year.


First, he was put on waivers by the Blue Jays after a semi-productive year for the Toronto team in 2010. The Oakland Athletics picked him up off of waivers on November 12. The A's then non-tendered him and he became a free agent on December 2. Exactly two weeks later, the Blue Jays signed him and brought him back to the ball club. That's quite a road trip.

Encarnacio, who made $5,170,000 last year as the Blue Jays' semi-regular third baseman dashed off 21 homers in 2010, a goodly sum in 332 at bats and added to the Blue Jays' record breaking team home run total. He seemed to fit right into the Blue Jays all or nothing style. He hit for a low average (.244) and a low On Base Percentage (.305) but his power numbers brought his OPS up to .787, good for a 111 OPS+, a figure that is considered well above average.

But he's barely an adequate third baseman and B-R rated him there with a negative figure of -0.2. That's not terrrible in the grand scheme of things and better than some of his results from years past. Fangraphs rates his defense lower, but his WAR at about the same as B-R. All told, according to Fangraphs, he was worth $7.3 million last year, meaning the Blue Jays got a bargain.

Now that Encarnacion is going to make half of that in 2011, he could be a semi-steal. But you get the sense that the Blue Jays aren't really sold on Encanacion as their third baseman and if they had their druthers, they would put someone else over there. We'll have to see what they end up doing with him and the position. The guess here is that he will get as much playing time as last year.

As for Encarnacion, he'll have to make do with less money and continue his career with the team he is intimately familiar with. Again, this is just a guess, but his market must have been bleak to settle on a contract that is a little more than half of what he made last year and less than 30% of his value as a player. But, that's the way it goes on the fringe and two and a half million is still a nice chunk of change to do something as wonderful as playing baseball at the sport's highest level.

Blue Jays Clean Out Some Dead Wood

If this writer understands this properly, MLB teams have to set their 40 man rosters and at the same time, clean out their Disabled List in preparation for the Rule V Draft. That means that each team has to choose which 40 players in their organization they can't do without. For the Blue Jays, that meant cleaning out their disabled list of pitchers, Rommie Lewis, Jessie Litsch and Dustin McGowen. Those three players were added to the 40 man roster meaning the Blue Jays had to clear some space. Edwin Encarnacion was put on waivers and Brian Tallet and Dewayne Wise were assigned to Las Vegas.

Encarnacion was immediately claimed by the Athletics, so his era in Toronto is over. Encarnacion had some pop in his bat but couldn't get himself on base enough and performed poorly at third base. But his 111 OPS+ in 2010 is better than most of what the Athletics put in their line up, so the flyer on Encarnacion makes sense.

Brian Tallet and Dewayne Wise both refused their minor league assignments (as the Blue Jays probably expected) and both are now free agents. Tallet, 33, had a good stretch in the Blue Jays' bullpen from 2006 to 2008. In 2009, the Blue Jays tried to convert him to a starter and though he had a few good games, the overall result was poor. He returned to the Blue Jays' bullpen in 2010 with disastrous results. According to Fangraphs, he had the second least effective year of any AL bullpen pitcher. The Blue Jays obviously have seen enough and will move on. Tallet could probably catch on somewhere. He is a lefty after all and left-handed arms always seem to end up somewhere.

The future is not as clear for Wise. After eight part time seasons as a fast outfielder with no power, Wise has barely kept his career alive. He's now 32 years old and may catch on somewhere as a fifth outfielder off the bench. But realistically, it's hard to imagine anyone signing him to anything other than a minor league deal, which won't improve the deal he just turned down from the Blue Jays. But at least such a deal from another team would result in a Spring Training invite that will allow him to compete for a spot. The Blue Jays have lots of outfield options and will not miss Wise at all.