On Monday, the Philadelphia Phillies seemingly excised one of the most disappointing prospects in recent memory when they outrighted Domonic Brown off of their 40-man roster. The 28-year old Brown isn’t a free agent yet – he could still accept an assignment to the minor leagues and stay in the Phillies organization. But the more likely scenario is that Brown will reject his assignment and become a free agent, opening his market up to the other 29 teams in the league.
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That 2013 season was pretty good overall for Brown. In his age 25 year, he hit .272/.324/.494 with those 27 homers, adding eight stolen bases for the hell of it too. But while I really, really hate playing the arbitrary endpoints game, almost all of the success in Brown’s career can be tied to a hot two month stretch in 2013.
Brown from his major league debut (July 28th, 2010) to April 30th, 2013: 589 plate appearances, .235/.314/.385, 15 home runs.
Brown from May 1st, 2013 to June 30th, 2013: 230 plate appearances, .290/.326/.613, 18 home runs.
Brown from July 1st, 2013 to September 2nd, 2015 (his final game of the season: 929 plate appearances, .241/.295/.364, 21 home runs.
Think about this for a second. A full one-third of Brown’s career home runs came in one two-month period of time, encompassing 13% of his career plate appearances. Before the hot streak, Brown had a .305 wOBA and an 89 wRC+. After the hot streak, Brown had a .290 wOBA and an 81 wRC+. Before the hot streak, Brown hit like Erick Aybar. After the hot streak, he hit like Jean Segura. For his career, which includes that absurd hot streak along with the two much larger, much less impressive samples, Brown has hit like…well, he’s hit like Jeff Francoeur (.311 wOBA, 88 wRC+ for Francouer compared to a .310 wOBA and a 94 wRC+ for Brown).
So, Brown can’t really hit aside from that unreal two month hot streak from two seasons ago. And for what it’s worth, that hot streak came along with 12 walks, 46 strikeouts, and a completely absurd 29.5% HR/FB. The only players in baseball with a mark that high this year were Nelson Cruz and Chris Davis. The league average over the last five years has hovered somewhere between 9.5% and 11.4%, and Brown’s marks before and after his hot streak were 10.6% and 8.7% – hardly outside of the scale of what’s reasonable.
Brown as a defensive substitute off the bench is a non-starter. In 3.596 innings in both left and right field, he has amassed -30 DRS and -34.5 UZR. He was roughly average over 403 /3 innings in right this year, and has been below average in every other season of his career.
What about as a platoon bat? Well, Brown *has* hit righties better than lefties, mashing them to a .251/.314/.423 clip compared to a .230/.278/.350 line against southpaws. So…is this what Brown is? A guy who can play against righties as a DH? OK, cool, but only four DHs with at least 200 plate appearances hit worse against righties than Brown’s career .251/.314/.423 line. That’s…not ideal.
Is Domonic Brown worth a flyer? Any team interested should know what they’re getting – a guy that can’t hit lefties, can’t play defense, and hasn’t hit at even a league average clip over his career minus a hot streak that will be three years removed once the 2016 season starts. None of that screams “guaranteed roster spot!” or “incentive-laden deal!” to me, but your mileage may vary.
