Since arriving in San Diego at the deadline last year, Scott Hairston has hit a ridiculous .304/.357/.696 in 112 plate appearances. That stands in stark contrast to his previous 594 Major League plate appearances in which he hit .238/.293/.407. This raises the question, which sample is more predictive of Hairston’s future performance?
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Baseball America’s JC Player of the year, Hairston was selected in the third round of the 2001 amateur draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks. In Rookie ball, he hit for both average and power while commanding the strike zone. He followed up with an even more impressive year split between Low A South Bend and High A Lancaster finishing tied for the minor league lead in extra-base hits.
Following his first full season of pro ball, Hairston was being considered a top prospect. Unfortunately, in 2003 he missed six weeks of the season with a pulled muscle in his back which also negatively impacted his numbers during the month in which he attempted to play through it. Fortunately, Hairston demonstrated no ill effects in the Arizona Fall League. Prior to Spring Training 2004, Baseball America wrote, “Hairston’s total package at the plate could result in Gary Sheffield-like production. He runs well enough to reach double-digits in steals, but won’t to be the threat on the bases that his brother is.”
Throughout 2004 and 2005, Hairston continued to hit in the minors, but at the Major League level he, according to Jim Callis, “developed a tendency to overswing and lost his plate discipline.” And now he found himself buried on the organizational depth chart behind Carlos Quentin, Chris Young, Justin Upton and Carlos Gonzales. This was proven to be the case when even with a strong year in 2006, he was only able to earn a part time role in 2007 before finally being traded to the Padres for Leo Rosales.
Since being traded to the Padres, Hairston’s batted ball distribution has changed dramatically. He is hitting far more fly balls than he previously did and more than twice as many of them are clearing the outfield fences. That seems counterintuitive because in moving from Arizona to San Diego, he moved from a hitters’ ballpark to a pitchers’ park. However, if you look at the Home Run Park Factors page linked to the right, you’ll see that PetCo is actually easier to hit home runs to center field and left center field than Chase Field and equally easy to hit to left field.
Still a HR/F% of nearly 20% is not sustainable. His Line Drive % is also about half what Hairston has previously put up so a regression back toward his previous levels will help to balance out some of the lost value. Also, his improvement in pitches per plate appearance is definitely repeatable and likely shows a change in approach.
Overall, Hairston’s track record supports an optimistic outlook. While, Padre fans can expect a severe drop from his nearly .700 slugging percentage, it isn’t unreasonable for them to also expect a continued high level of play.
