On Sunday’s radio show someone in the chat room asked whether I thought Carlos Delgado would rebound. I said yes, but couldn’t get into details so here they are.

Delgado is an interesting player.  He had a big drop off in power last year from 2006, which was reflected not just in his HR totals but in his “Linear Weighted Power Score” or PX from Baseball HQ. After his slow start this year there was some talk that he could be finished.  Mets fans can be forgiven for bridge jumping after the Mo Vaughn debacle, but Delgado looks like he should rebound shortly. The question is how much?

To date Delgado has a 23% hit rate. He has been above 29% in almost every season in the majors. So there is no reason to be pessimistic in the batting average department for now. His xBA is .264 which, while not great, at least shows that he should be in the same ballpark as the last two years.

His contact rate is 81% with an 89% rate in the last seven days. He has been below 80% in each of the last five years so even with a slow start he is making better contact than normal. He has a 12% BB rate which is also in line with his career norm and is an uptick from last year’s 9%. So at least in the batting average department he should be fine.

The question is whether when these hits come they will be of the extra base variety. This is a tougher question. His PX score is on the rise, with a 172 PX in the last seven days, so at least in the short term he has been on an upswing. However, overall he is still below average at 98 and last year he had a huge drop from the 180s previously to 123.

The culprit last year was a sharp decline in HR/FB rate. Previously Carlos was in the low 20% range, last year that dropped to 13%. So far he has 4 HR out of 38 FB or a rate of 10.5%.

Based on this it appears that the days of 30 HR power are probably over.  This relegates Delgado to the realm of 25 HR and .260 BA upside. That is still valuable and he will certainly get better in the short term.  Given the inherent variability of a player’s performance anything from 15-25 HR going forward could be possible, but figuring out where in that spectrum he will land I will have to relegate to Nostradamus. If you view him as a buy low and have reasonable expectations then he could be an asset.