Ian Stewart – Reason To Be Optimistic

One of the first moves Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer made after coming to the Cubs was buying out Aramis Ramirez’s contract and letting him go. One of their next moves was getting his replacement. Hoyer traded Tyler Colvin and DJ Lemahieu to the Colorado Rockies for pitcher Casey Weathers and third baseman Ian Stewart.

In a word, Stewart was Horrible last season with Colorado.  He started the season as the Rockies starting third baseman and by mid-May he was back in the minors. He did get called back up in early July and made about 20 starts before being sent down again for the season.

Here is his line for the year:

G     AB     H     HR     RBI     BA

48   122   19      0       6      .156

The good news is, he actually was pretty good in the minors. He hit .275 with 14 HR’s.  He had a decent OBP (.359) and his SLG(.591) was solid.

So why was he so poor in Colorado? A lot of it had to do with a wrist injury, but a lot of it was just bad luck.

When you look at his peripherals, they look very similar to 2008, 2009 and 2010 when he hit 24, 25 and 18 HR’s respectively.  Over that 3 year period his Contact Rate (CT%) was 69%, last year it was 67%. A CT% like that is generally gonna put your average at around .240. So why did he hit .156?

Two reasons. First, he had a crazy high groundball percentage (57%) in the first half of the season. When you are a power hitter without much speed, hitting the ball on the ground is not a good idea. And second, his first half walk rate was just 7%. Couple that rate with the groundballs and the 67% contact rate and it’s no surprise that he hit just .106 in the first half.

The good news is that in the second half his groundball percentage dropped to 30% and his walk rate moved up to 10%. It helped him hit .214 in the second half. Not exactly Aramis-like, but definitely showing signs of improvement.

Look, this guys batting average ceiling is probably around .245, but he has a lot of power and he’s still young (26). In fact he’s only 5 months older than Tyler Colvin. So if Cubs fans can temper their expectations of Stewart in comparison to Aramis; and maybe think of him more as a Carlos Pena at third base (remember, Pena hit .196 in 2009 before hitting .225 last year), then I think we can all declare Jed Hoyer’s first trade a success.