Jacob Berry Report and General Thoughts on Valuing DH Type Prospects

Jacob Berry has one of the strongest statistical resumes amongst college players in this years' draft class. After posting a .332/.439/676 slash line with 17 HR and a 33/58 BB/K ratio at Arizona State (a fairly hitter friendly environment), he transferred to LSU, where he has kept up his dominance despite a nagging finger injury. With this track record, it's easy to envision him as a top 5 pick, but he has some warts that make him a unique player to value, and make for an interesting discussion on roster construction and where baseball may be headed.

To start, he does exactly what you want offensively. Berry has an immaculate swing that is perfectly optimized for power and contact. There is loft in the swing, but his swing isn't so steep that he can't reach pitches up in the zone. From the looks I have seen, he has very few holes where pitchers can target. He makes strong swing decisions, and has a plus feel for hitting overall. In terms of pure hit tools, he's in the Jung/Termarr/Lee class of hitters.

Now lets move to the warts. The first one typically wouldn't be, but it is because of the second. From his stat line, Berry looks like a prototypical masher with great plate discipline, but his raw power is not all that impressive. It's above average raw, but he relies a lot on his feel for contact to clear the necessary power bar for his position, which is 1B/DH. Most of the 1B/DH types are the opposite; they have big raw power and no feel to hit. In general I tend to think that hit tools are fairly sticky, so I'm less worried about Berry and think his hit tool will let him get enough power, but this is a concern worth vocalizing.

The more pressing concern with Berry is how bad his defense is. Going into the season, the consensus view was that he was a 1B/3B that was most likely ending up at 1B, but now I think it's pretty obvious he is a fringe 1B and most likely a DH. The nagging injury could play a part in why he looks so bad defensively, but he is not very fluid in general and I am skeptical he will be even a fringe defender at first, which is a very large cap.

Finally, I was to summarize Berry through the lens of the new universal DH rule, and how this affects his overall value. In my opinion, there are two ways of utilizing the DH spot. The first is to use the standard Adam Dunn type masher as your DH. These guys have their value and make a lineup's run production higher, but they offer very little in terms of roster flexibility. The second option is to use the DH as a quasi load management tool, which requires more utility bats that are flexible enough to play two or three positions well. I prefer the later utilization because it allows for more robust roster management and rewards good player development and building depth in the minor leagues, even though there are some aspects of being a DH that may make players uncomfortable and negatively affect performance.

Since I prefer the second option for DH's, I will most likely have Berry lower than consensus, and more specifically, lower than teams that prefer the first option for DH. His lack of defensive value hurts him heavily, even though I do love his hit tool and believe he can hit for enough power. From a draft class/signing bonus pool point of view, Berry's cap adds a lot of variance that I want to avoid when spending a large amount of my bonus pool on a college hitter.