If I’d known that the Giants were going to call Casey Schmitt up on May 9, I probably would have written about him instead of Kevin Gausman. I would have skeptically looked at his numbers in Sacramento, noting how they didn’t portend great success in the majors. I would have expressed my suspicions about whether he had enough power to be an impact player, and whether he had enough professional experience at shortstop to play him there in the majors. Though I’m sure I would have couched it in all sorts of language like “The Giants are smart and I am dumb” and “The Giants do have more information than me,” I would have been somewhat pessimistic regarding the move.
And then you’d have all laughed at how wrong I was.
When he got called up, Casey Schmitt was a revelation. I don’t know if it’s actually true that he singlehandedly revitalized the season all by himself, but it feels true. Pre-Schmitt, the Giants were moribund, listless, boring. Post-Schmitt, it was the Year Of The Giants Rookie, and he was the central figure in that. After his 10th game, he was hitting .400. After his 20th, he was still hitting .342. Now that he’s played 30 games, he’s down to .277, and he hasn’t hit a home run since his third game, on May 11, and it’s not like he’s big on walking.
So the league has caught up to Casey Schmitt. It’s surprising if you remember that electric start to the season. It’s less surprising if you look at his AAA numbers, when he had a 5.5% walk rate and hit just one homer in 145 plate appearances. He had an ISO of less than .100, and he played 9 out of his 32 games in extreme hitters’ parks in Salt Lake City and Reno. There was no reason to think he’d light the world on fire in the majors, and once he did, there was every reason to think the world would put it out.
Time for a fun1 exercise!
Player A: 7 G, 28 PA, .464/.464/.821, 2 HR, 5 RBI, .500 BABIP
Player B: 7 G, 30 PA, .444/.500/.630, 1 HR, 7 RBI, .524 BABIP
Here is a picture of a sloth so that you hate me slightly less for this comparison:
Player A is, as you presumably guessed, Casey Schmitt’s first seven games this year. Player B is…oh, I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Just click it.
Pretty good, right? No? You’re mad about that? Please don’t hurt me. Remember the sloth.
Okay, all better.
Now, I’m not saying that Casey Schmitt is going to end up in a Dominican prison for arms trafficking, or even that he and Vélez will be anything approaching equivalent baseball players. Obviously, Schmitt has tremendous defensive value, which Vélez also theoretically had. And Vélez was 27 at the time, while Schmitt is currently 24, a significant difference.
But the thing we can take away is that the cool, fun hot streak does not mean more than that. It is nothing more than a period of time that is cool and fun, and predicts nothing about future performance.
For all that the Giants like to preach about good process, the Casey Schmitt process wasn’t particularly good. He wasn’t ready when they called him up, but they had a need for a solid defender who could play several infield positions. Offensively, it happened to work for a while, but if you’re focusing on process instead of results, you have to ignore that.
If you are a Smart Baseball Team, you don’t look at the shiny .464/.464/.821 line over Schmitt’s first 7 games, but instead you look at the .500 BABIP that it took to make that happen and the 0% walk rate and the way he hasn’t yet learned to control the strike zone the way you (in this scenario you are the organization) want him to. Then, when Schmitt cooled down over the next several weeks — over the rest of May, he hit .255/.263/.291, and has only gotten worse in June — you evaluate him on the whole package.
That seemed like I was bashing the Giants, didn’t it? Sarcastically capitalizing words to make them look bad? Well, I wasn’t. I think they’re doing that. I think that they were ready to phase Brandon Crawford out if Schmitt’s performance was anywhere near for real, and they gave him several weeks, and it wasn’t.
And that means that the hard part is coming up. The Giants still imagine Schmitt will be part of their future in some form, I’d bet, and they need him to keep developing. But that requires playing time, and if he gets that playing time in the majors, the team will suffer. They’re already borderline contending, and they certainly don’t want to take a step back. Which means that at some point, they’ll have to send Casey Schmitt down to Sacramento.
For a fan base that immediately took to him, that’s going to be tough to accept. For a team that has gotten interesting in large part because of its rookie hitters — Schmitt, Blake Sabol, and Patrick Bailey — taking one away will be a blow. A little less energy, hopefully a little more production, but also less fun. Less interesting. Less chance of an infielder uncorking a 95 MPH throw.
But when a guy is hitting .138/.167/.241 over the first half of June, it’s tough to keep giving him rope. And it’s not like it’s bad luck either:
Over his left 50 PAs, Casey Schmitt has been bad. Based on expected results, over the last 50 PAs, he should have been bad. He’s still good enough on defense that it’s not right to call him unplayable, but it is right to say he’s not playing well enough to stick around anymore. The Giants need production. For a week, Schmitt gave them that by himself. For the next month, he hasn’t.
Not fun
Truth hurts, Hombre.
Perfectly stated. The day Casey ("Chasey" - Brisbee) is optioned out will be a dark day on the Giants media socials but the first step towards a brighter future.