The Season That Was: Travis Snider

Travis Snider was the unanimous choice as number one prospect in the Jays organization when he was called up at at the end of August in 2008. Everybody looked at him to become a big time power hitter. The knock against him was that he struck out a little too much and wasn't the best defensive outfielder. In spite of his young age, he was just 20 when he was called up but he hit great for the month he was in the majors, .301/.338/.466.

He quickly became a favorite here and earned the nickname 'Moonraker' which is much better than what they gave him in the minors, 'Lunchbox'. We had high hopes for him this season. In the Community Project we marked him down for a .320 OBP and a .450 SLG in 525 PA. We were a little too optimistic.

Actually we didn't miss by much, he beat our OPB guess by 8 points and was 31 points short in SLG but really not far off what we guessed, except for plate appearances, where we were high by 249. How were we to know that Cito wouldn't play him against lefties and that the team would be impatient with him and send down when he slumped. A couple of injuries after he was shipped off to the minors may have slowed his recall. So he didn't have the season we hoped for, Fangraphs had him at a 0.3 WAR.

He hit right-handers (.244/.327/.448) than lefties (.225/.333/.275) but he was only allowed 40 at bats against left-handers so the small sample size warning fits. In the minors, over the years, he didn't hit that much worse against southpaws. I'm hoping that Cito doesn't convince him that he can't hit them by always sitting him against them

He hit better at home (.256/.357/.446) than on the road (.225/.299/.392). 

He got on base well, with RISP, but didn't hit great, .236/.386/.345.

Cito had him bat 9th most of the time he played (36 games), 8th some (18 games) and 7th some (13 games) and then had him bat a game or 2 in every other slot in the batting order other than leadoff. 

By month he hit:

April          .258/.324/.484

May           .216/.237/.243

August      .184/.340.421

Sept/Oct   .260/.355/.443

So he slumped a bit in May and they shipped him out. 

His longest hitting streak was a big 4 games. 

His favorite team to play was the Twins (.500/.619/1.188) over 7 games. Least favorite was the Royals, hitting .133/.188/.133 in 4 games. 

Defensively he wasn't great. He played 435.1 innings in LF and had a -1.2 UZR/150 according to Fangraphs. He played 173.1 innings in RF and was worse there with a -18.5 UZR/150. Maybe small sample size could explain that. He made 4 errors in the OF for a .969 FP.

He clearly wasn't one of Cito's favorite players. Of course, Carlos Delgado and Shawn Green also weren't favorites of his. It wasn't the season we hoped he'd have, but then he is just 21 years old. He was the 6th youngest player in the AL this year. Only one of the 5 younger ones wasn't a pitcher, Elvis Andro. I'm not worried about him, he'll still have a great career, it just will start a little slower than we hoped. My only real worry is that Cito doesn't learn to like him this year and he ends up sitting way too much. But then Delgado and Green over came his not wanting to use him in time.