Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about Nick Kurtz and how good he might be as a staple in the middle of a contending A’s team’s order. Kurtz was just named AL’s Rookie of the Month for June following a particularly impressive week in which he won not one, not two, but three games with majestic last inning HRs.
Everything Kurtz is doing has to be seen through the lens of a 22 year old who played in only 33 minor league games before being called up to the big leagues. His next game will be just his 81st as a pro: exactly half a major league season.
That being said, there is a difference between being potentially great and being “all that” right now. And even June’s “Rookie of the Month” worthy performance came with more than its fair share of warts. Kurtz is very much an unfinished project with issues that need addressing, and even June was not kind to him in every way.
Strikeouts
Kurtz comes with the reputation of having a great eye, drawing a lot of walks, and being relatively hard to strikeout for a “40 HR potential” power hitter. But even dismissing his first 2 weeks when he whiffed literally half the time, strikeouts have continued to be an issue for Kurtz.
In May his K rate was a more acceptable 28.9%, made all the more palatable because he also walked at a 13.3% rate.
However in June those rates did not improve, they got worse. In June Kurtz walked in only 8.9% of his PAs, and his K rate crept back up to 30.8%. (And this does not include his 4 K performance yesterday, getting his July off to less than a promising start.)
Kurtz’ K rate for his rookie season currently stands at 33.7%, often the result of a swing that gets far more violent and wild than it needs to be. But while you may reasonably infer Kurtz will manage the strike zone better and better as he adjusts and matures and settles in, the fact remains that currently 1/3 of the time, pitchers strike him out.
Other June Regressions
Kurtz wowed the country, and his fan base, by launching more than his fair share of HRs in June, 7 all told and so many of them clutch and dramatic. But what was happening the rest of the time?
Besides striking out more, Kurtz was also making less solid contact. His line drive rate, 14.6% in May, plummeted to 6.3% in June. His soft contact fell sharply as well — what spiked was incidences of “medium contact”.
So half his line drives turned to so-so contact from May to June while he struck out more and HRed more.
Defense
Kurtz not only comes with the expectation of a great eye and not a ton of strikeouts, but also as being a slick fielding 1Bman who provides positive value.
Certainly we have already seen a glimpse of plus defense with his sometimes acrobatic saves of poor throws while maintaining contact with the bag, and scooping low throws with grace.
But when you put all the aspects of fielding the position together, so far Kurtz has graded out quite poorly: in 45 games he is at -2 DRS, -4 OAA, with negative ratings for range (-2) and overall fielding run value (-4).
Platoon Splits
The “glass half full” piece is that Kurtz’ overall slash line of .241/.311/.489 doesn’t tell the story of how much he is mashing RHP.
Kurtz’ line against RHP is .264/.340./566, good for a 146 wRC+. Do that against everyone and you’re a hitting star.
Trouble is, dramatic walk-off HRs against Josh Hader aside, overall Kurtz is still struggling with a paltry .178/.231/.267 line against LHP. That comes with a modest 7.7% BB rate and gaudy 34.6% K rate.
Conclusion
Again, Kurtz is a budding star. He’s all of 22 with barely a handful of pro games before he was lifted to the world’s biggest baseball stage, and he is still seeing pitchers and parks he has never seen before.
The “ceiling” comp we’ve heard is to Jim Thome and Thome, called up for 27 games at age 20 and 40 games at age 21, struggled with lines of .255/.298/.367 and then .205/.275/.299 — though he did breakout in his age 22 season to hit .266/.385/.474. But by then Thome already had 67 games under his belt and Kurtz is about to play in only his 50th game tomorrow.
Thus, there is ample reason for optimism and excitement. It just all comes with a “however” and that “however” is that Kurtz still has plenty of weaknesses to correct in order to become the complete package the A’s drafted him to be and that A’s fans all hope he will become sooner rather than later.
So the June award is a validating feather in his cap — and now there’s some work to do.