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A report recently came to light that the San Francisco Giants were making first baseman and owner of a genuine super-beard, Brandon Belt, available in trades. Apparently, there are teams interested in the oft-injured slugger, despite the whopping $48 million due to him over the next three years. It’s not terribly surprising that Belt is available, as teammates Madison Bumgarner and Brandon Crawford are also very publicly on the block amid a teardown from the glory years of 2010 to 2015. The Giants are clearly stripping it down to the studs after a last gasp in 2018 that didn’t ultimately work, and Belt’s 50 missed games due to injury was a prime reason for the failure.
All that said, I should come clean and admit I’m a massive Brandon Belt fan. Sluggers who seem to underperform from a power standpoint but make hard contact and are good at controlling the strike zone are like catnip to me. I have been biting at Belt every season since 2014, and the lack of that big season pay off has not deterred me. He’s like the girl who cheats on you every time you give her a chance, but you can’t help keeping her around. She’s got you hooked. I don’t care if she's put me in the friend-zone, reduced to the boyfriend-equivalent of an emergency QB. I love her, come fight me!
It might be a fool’s errand to expect much more than we’ve seen while he still wears a Giants uniform… but if he gets traded? Well, that might be a different story.
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Carrying the Torch for Belt
Despite a torrid start to 2018, it turned out to be a season to forget for Belt, as he posted just 14 home runs with a .253/.342/.414 line and a near career-worst .160 ISO over 456 plate appearances. It’s clear that the combination of a knee injury and mid-season appendectomy sapped his strength. It looks even worse when you see that the 2018 season followed up a seemingly similarly underwhelming 2017 campaign in which Belt missed 58 games due to injury and slashed .241/.355/.469 on 451 plate appearances. Unfortunately, the lack of power production isn’t that surprising considering the 30-year-old’s history of counting stats. The 18 homers were nice in 2017, but it represents a career-high from a position where power is table stakes. Belt just hasn’t come through with the big jump in production that some, myself included, argue is hiding in him.
Let’s start with the obvious issue for any power-hungry Giant, and that is where he plays half of his games: AT&T Park. Despite remarkably similar career triple slash lines home vs. away, not to mention nearly identical ISOs of .183 and .195 respectively, Belt has hit 42 homers in the bay and a whopping 70 dingers on the road. This massive discrepancy has occurred because the veteran first baseman is a fly-ball hitter, albeit not an extreme one, who plays in a park that greatly suppresses fly-balls. Put those two things together and you get an 8.8% HR/FB rate at AT&T and a much more attractive 14.2% HR/FB anywhere else. Considering Belt has nearly the same number of plate appearances, nearly identical fly-ball and line drive percentages, and makes pretty much the same contact at home and on the road, we can deduce that Belt would have hit an estimated 30-40 home runs more over his career had he played those games in a neutral park.
To make it easy, try adding 25% of the home runs he’s had in any given season and see how that impacts the way you think about Brandon Belt. Suddenly, we’re talking about a guy who has averaged a line of .262/.362/.459 over the last four seasons who was producing an average of 21 homers per season. Belt was already an underrated hitter last season, as he ranked 12th among first baseman in wRC+ and tied for 12th in WAR with the Rays’ C.J. Cron, who had 30 homers and more than 100 more plate appearances. The additional counting stats, the boost to the slash line, and before you know it Belt is a solid top 10 first baseman, hard stop.
But since my love for this stoic bear of a man knows no bounds, I’ll take it a step further: I believe that Brandon Belt could be a top five first baseman if he goes to the right team. Now, I know this is a big jump, as he’d have to pass up some combination of Matt Carpenter, Matt Olson, Joey Votto, Anthony Rizzo, and Cody Bellinger, but I believe it’s in the cards. Regarding contact and power peripherals, Belt brings a much bigger bat than his counting stats have shown historically. Over the last four seasons, he’s averaged a .197 ISO and made hard contact a whopping 39% of the time. Those compare more favorably than you’d expect to other players who we consider “power hitters” such as Carlos Santana (.197, 33%), Edwin Encarnacion (.260, 38%), Jose Abreu (.221, 36%), as well as the aforementioned Rizzo (.230, 33%). Belt definitely doesn’t bring the same level of raw power to the table, but he’s such a good overall hitter that he can make up the home run difference by excelling in average, on-base percentage, and even run production stats depending on where he plays.
It is reaaalllly early still, but Belt is projected to be drafted as the 28th first baseman and the 224th player overall. I mean, I’m as excited by Marwin Gonzalez, Asdrubal Cabrera, and Yuli Gurriel but they aren’t in Belt’s class. Just eyeballing the ranks, but I’d rather have Belt in a vacuum than Joey Gallo, Eric Hosmer, Justin Smoak, and Jake Bauers. I’d also rather have him than Corey Dickerson, Kyle Schwarber, and Odubel Cabrera. These players are going between four and 160 picks earlier, making Belt a tremendous potential value. You can snag him as a backup first baseman and outfielder, which he qualifies in some leagues and likely will play enough to qualify for 2018.
On a personal note, I want Tampa Bay to trade for Brandon Belt. After the Rays sniped Tommy Pham from St. Louis last season and just recently bought themselves $30 million of Charlie Morton, Tampa is in prime position to upgrade the hitting prowess from the position. Belt could hit in the middle of the order for a surprisingly competitive team that produces a lot of scoring chances, makes smart strategic decisions, and deploys players in advantageous situations. A team like this could use Belt’s skill set in a manner that would maximize his opportunities to generate runs, thus increasing his counting stats. Financially, it makes about as much sense as the recent rumors that have the Rays vying to acquire Edwin Encarnacion, so why not Belt instead?
Regardless of which team he heads to, a Brandon Belt trade could create a lot of room for surplus value at almost no cost. An owner could conceivably punt first base in the early rounds, assuming one of the elite options like Freeman or Goldschmidt isn’t available, and plan to grab Belt and some combination of Luke Voit, Ryan O’Hearn, and Peter Alonso and just wait and see who pops. First base is likely to be quite top-heavy in 2019 from a draft perspective, but I’m excited about the value of Brandon Belt. I’ll be grabbing a fair amount of shares of the 31-year-old, even more so if and when he’s traded out of San Francisco.
