https://www.blessyouboys.com/2024/6/10/24152114/detroit-tigers-prospects-hao-yu-lee-analysis-trade-deadline
Change in approach powers offensive breakout for Tigers 2B prospect Hao-Yu Lee
The Detroit Tigers’ lone player for player trade at last year’s deadline
saw them flip the expiring contract of Micheal Lorenzen to the Philadelphia
Phillies in exchange for Taiwanese second baseman Hao-Yu Lee. It was straight
swap that was initially received pretty poorly by fans because it fell short
of what many were hoping to get back for the surprise All-Star. Lee was
assigned to the Whitecaps, but injured his leg not long after the trade, and
didn’t get a chance to make a strong impression on Detroit fans as a result.
Despite the injury, he had a successful 2023 campaign and hit .273/.362/.399
at the High-A level between his assignments in Detroit and Philly as a
20-year-old. We rated Lee as the 19th best prospect in the organization
entering the year.
Unlike most hitters his age, he has a calm disposition at the plate and doesn
’t fall into the trap of expanding the zone unnecessarily. That’s
presumably the biggest reason why Lee was targeted by Detroit in the first
place. I had the chance to talk to him shortly after he was traded to Detroit
and I asked him about his approach to hitting. “I don’t do anything
special. It’s just very simple, you know? Yeah. I don’t want to make it too
complicated, so it’s basically always hunting fastballs. That’s my approach,
” he said through Peter Lin, his translator.
Youth and excellent performance are marks in his favor, but as a bat-first
infielder, Lee was pushed down the list by concerns about the anatomy of his
offensive production. With an profile centered around driving fastballs out
over the plate to center and right field, noted Brandon Day in his prospect
writeup, it would be tough for Lee to stay afloat in the higher levels of
organized ball unless he could improve defensively enough to make an offense
characterized by high contact and low power work.
Evidently, the team agreed. Along with an assignment to Double-A Erie, the
Tigers sent him out with a mission to pull the ball, and he’s thrived as a
老虎球團給要求拉打的任務，結果得到蓬勃發展。
result. The plate discipline that has driven his game so far is still intact,
but he’s now playing better than ever against the best competition of his
life. Through 50 games, Lee has hit .269/.351/.482 with the SeaWolves. That
figures out to a 133 wRC+, meaning he’s been 33 percent more offensively
valuable than the average Double-A hitter.
Check out the batted ball distribution numbers that have accompanied his
success:
Hao-Yu Lee batted balls
Year Pull% Cent% Opp% wRC+
2022 43.00% 23.00% 34.00% 131
2023 32.10% 29.60% 38.30% 117
2024 45.80% 36.10% 18.10% 133
I tossed in his 2022 data for good measure. It’s his only other major sample
size of games on record, and he hit to all fields more consistently in that
season than he did last year. With a big red sign here that says correlation
doesn’t equal causation, I found it interesting to note that the year Lee
spent pushing the ball to the opposite field was his weakest by wRC+. The
data bears out that, this year more than ever, it’s pretty plainly been his
goal to hit the ball to left field whenever the opportunity arises.
Lee has taken another step in the right direction with regards to his batted
ball outcomes by reducing how often he pops the ball up. He had already
whacked a significant percentage off the top between 2022 and 2023, and
appears to have done so again this year. His infield fly ball rate of 7.1
percent is less than half the 18.3 percent rate he put up last season. Those
balls in play have been largely converted to ground balls, which are still
not an ideal outcome, but certainly preferable to infield flies.
透過減少內野高飛的頻率，李在擊球結果方面又朝著正確的方向邁出了一步。
他的內野飛球命中率為 7.1%，不到上賽季 18.3% 的一半。這些比賽中的球大部分
已轉換為滾地球，這仍然不是理想的結果，但肯定比內野飛球更好。
I’m encouraged by the fact that these changes have not corresponded to any
significant changes to his fly ball rate or walk and strikeout numbers. He’s
still hitting fly balls 37.1 percent of the time, nearly matching the figure
from 2023 exactly, and his walk to strikeout ratio has actually ticked up
ever so slightly. As a huge believer in the importance of BABIP, I’m even
more encouraged by the fact that Lee isn’t getting nearly as much batted
ball luck as he was last season and is still outperforming his former self by
a significant margin at a much more difficult level. Most players his age are
still in college or toiling in the lowest levels of the farm system.
令我感到鼓舞的是，這些變化並沒有對應於他的飛球率或保送和三振數的任何重大變化。
他的飛球命中率為 37.1%，幾乎與 2023 年的數字完全一致，而且他的保
送與三振率實際上略有上升。
Best of all, Lee has finally tapped into his above average raw power. He’s
on the shorter side — though Tigers have him listed at at 5’10”, I can
look him in the eyes — but he is built like an angry fire hydrant and has
always had the physical ability to put a charge into the ball. However, in
years prior, his focus on spraying screaming line drives undermined the more
traditional power numbers.
最重要的是，李終於發揮了他高於平均水平的原始力量。
Not so this year. In 50 games, he’s already mashed eleven doubles and nine
home runs, already surpassing his total from last year and matching the
number of home runs he hit in 79 games in 2022.
If this who Lee is now, it gets a lot easier to see him as a future MLB
producer than it was at this time last year. There will always be questions
about his value on the defensive side of the ball, and it doesn’t help that
the Tigers organization has more second baseman than places to play them. They
’ve given Lee some starts at third base, but the jury is still out on his
arm strength and accuracy. He could also learn to handle a corner outfield
spot if the bat carries the profile there. This is a problem for a different
day, though. The Tigers are thirsty for reliable offensive contributors. A
promotion to Toledo is probably inbound for Lee this summer, where he’ll get
a chance to prove that his bat makes him the guy for the job.
In a different universe, a different Jacob Markle is writing about how Lee is
on track to make his major league debut as a September call up this season if
things go well through the summer. Having just watched the Tigers keep
Justyn-Henry Malloy and Colt Keith in the minors after proving all they could
in Triple-A last year, though, it would take some extraordinary circumstances
for Lee to break that trend in this universe. At just 21 years old, the
Tigers are in no hurry for him to break through to the bigs, and as we see
again and again, those last two steps are the toughest.
Instead, keep on eye on Lee as a potential contributor during the 2025
season, following a similar trajectory as Malloy has taken this year. The
fact that we can even suggest that path with even a measure of confidence is
a massive leap forward from the equivocation that dogged him after last
season. He’s firmly a better player now than he was not long ago. For an
organization who has struggled to develop hitters as badly as the Tigers have
for the last decade or more, that’s no small thing.
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