Any resemblance to anyone dead or alive is purely coincidental.The question most of us are asking – assuming we are still paying attention to the Royals - is whether or not Billy Butler is the real deal. His three doubles tonight were impressive and essential in the Royals’ win. He’s only in his third year and is hitting .301 with some power. That’s a rarity for KC, so naturally it is tempting to imagine that he might become a player we can build our team around. I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at Butler and compare him to a few other hitters we’ve seen around here.
Butler has his share of inconsistency at the plate. As a rookie, he hit .339 up until July 21, only to hit .264 the rest of the season. In his second year, he had stretches of multi-hit games where he looked like he could hit just about anything. 14 hits in 7 games, 13 hits in 7 games, 15 hits in 8 games, etc. But, those were just blips on a 162 game schedule. This season he has gone through five periods where he looked like a different hitter from the one before.
| Games | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| 18 | .193 | .324 | .246 |
| 10 | .447 | .475 | .737 |
| 46 | .277 | .310 | .429 |
| 35 | .341 | .400 | .587 |
| 6 | .200 | .259 | .400 |
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And, of course, he’s 5/10 in his last two games.
This isn’t particularly unusual for a hitter. However, when the club is desperately looking for anyone to be a savior or even half-savior, it’s frustrating when he doesn’t maintain the levels we know he is capable of.
Through Monday, Butler ranked #165 in the MLB by Plate Production per at bat out of 434 qualifiers. That’s the best on the Royals, but when you consider #217 is average, it’s not all that impressive. Still, he is only 23 years old and you have to factor in age and experience. So, I’m not complaining.
Just going through the names that come to mind, I decided to compare him to nine other Royals. I took their first three "full" seasons for each as the basis.
I will include their raw numbers below if you want to look at them, but first I am going to rank them from one to 10 with respect to batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. The first table represents their ranking by their cumulative three-year totals. Except for Butler, they are in alphabetical order.
THREE YEARS
| Player (age) | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler (23) | 6 | 7 | 5 |
| Beltran (24) | 7 | 8 | 4 |
| Brett (23) | 2 | 5 | 7 |
| Cowens (24) | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Damon (24) | 9 | 9 | 9 |
| Dye (27) | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| McRae (29) | 5 | 4 | 6 |
| Otis (25) | 4 | 6 | 8 |
| Sweeney (27) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Tartabull (25) | 8 | 2 | 3 |
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The bottom line here is that Butler is holding his own among nine other extremely good MLB players. I included their age in their third year. Butler is tied with Brett as the youngest. Actually, Billy is a month younger than George at the same point.
Tomorrow I will approach this from the standpoint of what those players did as a group from here on in their careers. That may or may not portend what Butler will do, but it at least it should give us an idea of what is possible.
Here are the rankings for each of the first three seasons for each player. I also included all the raw data at the bottom.
FIRST YEAR| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Beltran | 3 | 6 | 4 |
| Brett | 6 | 7 | 9 |
| Cowens | 9 | 10 | 10 |
| Damon | 7 | 8 | 8 |
| Dye | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| McRae | 10 | 9 | 7 |
| Otis | 5 | 3 | 6 |
| Sweeney | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Tartabull | 8 | 5 | 3 |
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SECOND YEAR| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler | 8 | 9 | 8 |
| Beltran | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Brett | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Cowens | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Damon | 9 | 8 | 9 |
| Dye | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| McRae | 3 | 4 | 4 |
| Otis | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Sweeney | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Tartabull | 4 | 2 | 2 |
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THIRD YEAR| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler | 5 | 6 | 4 |
| Beltran | 3 | 5 | 3 |
| Brett | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| Cowens | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Damon | 8 | 9 | 8 |
| Dye | 7 | 8 | 5 |
| McRae | 2 | 4 | 7 |
| Otis | 6 | 7 | 9 |
| Sweeney | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Tartabull | 9 | 3 | 2 |
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THREE YEARS RAW DATA
| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
Butler | .289 | .343 | .443 |
Beltran | .288 | .340 | .456 |
Brett | .310 | .352 | .434 |
Cowens | .263 | .311 | .346 |
Damon | .275 | .331 | .401 |
Dye | .299 | .363 | .518 |
McRae | .290 | .356 | .441 |
Otis | .292 | .350 | .427 |
Sweeney | .320 | .390 | .528 |
Tartabull | .286 | .370 | .516 |
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FIRST YEAR RAW DATA| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler | .292 | .347 | .447 |
| Beltran | .293 | .337 | .454 |
| Brett | .282 | .313 | .363 |
| Cowens | .242 | .303 | .286 |
| Damon | .271 | .313 | .368 |
| Dye | .294 | .354 | .526 |
| McRae | .234 | .312 | .385 |
| Otis | .292 | .350 | .427 |
| Sweeney | .322 | .387 | .520 |
| Tartabull | .270 | .347 | .489 |
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SECOND YEAR RAW DATA| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler | .275 | .324 | .400 |
| Beltran | .247 | .309 | .366 |
| Brett | .308 | .353 | .456 |
| Cowens | .277 | .340 | .402 |
| Damon | .275 | .338 | .386 |
| Dye | .321 | .390 | .561 |
| McRae | .310 | .375 | .475 |
| Otis | .301 | .345 | .443 |
| Sweeney | .333 | .407 | .523 |
| Tartabull | .309 | .390 | .541 |
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THIRD YEAR RAW DATA| Player | BA | OB% | SLG% |
| Butler | .301 | .355 | .481 |
| Beltran | .306 | .362 | .514 |
| Brett | .333 | .377 | .462 |
| Cowens | .265 | .298 | .341 |
| Damon | .277 | .339 | .439 |
| Dye | .282 | .346 | .467 |
| McRae | .306 | .366 | .442 |
| Otis | .293 | .352 | .413 |
| Sweeney | .304 | .374 | .542 |
| Tartabull | .274 | .369 | .515 |
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I don't think your conclusion that Butler is inconsistent at the plate is a fair one, largely because you've cut up his performance into irregular amounts to fit your hypothesis. Instead of looking at his performance in chunks of 6, 10, 18, 35 or 46 games, look at his performance over each successive group of 50 games. It presents a completely different pitcure:
He's still got another 16 games to go before he completes his 7th set of 50 big league games, and my guess is that he'll cool off some in that time and come pretty close to his prior performance. With the exception of one sophomore slump (not unusual) and his current hot streak (also not unusual), Butler has been pretty consistent, with OBP and SLG numbers that are always +/- 20 points of league average and a batting average that's typically 20 points above average.
I think Butler has nowhere to go out up as a hitter, given that he's still only 23, so I expect this trend to increase over the years, but so far I wouldn't call his performance inconsistent. One bad stretch at age 22 doesn't make you an inconsistent hitter, nor does any tiny sample of a dozen or so games.