J.D. Martinez broke his elbow Friday night, leaving an already depleted Tigers outfield even further depleted. Martinez is expected to miss 4-6 weeks according to MLB.com, and the team has called up Steven Moya to replace Martinez in the lineup. If Moya can be the best version of himself, the Tigers might not actually miss Martinez all that much.



Now, that seems like a ridiculous statement. After all, Martinez has been heating up at the plate. He hit .404/.462/.614 in June, good for a 186 wRC+. But there are a couple of mitigating factors here. First, the Tigers as a whole are on fire offensively right now. In addition to Martinez, Jose Iglesias, Victor Martinez, James McCann and Ian Kinsler have a wRC+ north of 140 this month, and overall the Tigers’ 129 wRC+ ranks second in the majors for June. Furthermore, Steven Moya has been projected as a pretty decent hitter in the past, especially in the power department. More on that in a second.

The main mitigating factor is Martinez’s defense. Now, if you don’t want to take a less than half season defensive sample as gospel, no one is going to blame you. But sometimes the defensive metrics line up, and so far this season they have lined up on Martinez in a big way, just not in the big way you would hope. After putting together his first positive defensive season in four years in 2015, Martinez has gone right back to being a dud per both DFS and UZR. He is drawing poor marks for both is range and his arm, and when you look at his advanced fielding statistics, the season that sticks out as an outlier isn’t 2016 but rather 2015.

The point is that even with his great hitting, Martinez has only been worth 0.7 WAR this season. That ranks just 63rd among outfielders this season, and puts him beneath stalwarts like Ryan Rua, Ezequiel Carrera and Marlon Byrd. So if Moya can come up and be the player the Tigers hope he is, then the Tigers might be just fine.

The player they think Moya is is a guy who can hold his own defensively, particularly thanks to a great arm, and someone who can hit a ton of homers but might have strikeout problems. On that front, the Tigers can be somewhat encouraged by his strikeout percentage in Triple-A this season.

Steven Moya, Minor League K% Season Level Age PA K% 2010 Rookie 18 144 44.4% 2011 A 19 337 37.7% 2012 A 20 258 22.9% 2013 A+ 21 388 27.3% 2014 AA 22 549 29.3% 2015 AAA 23 535 30.3% 2016 AAA 24 212 20.8% Note: Minimum 100 PA per level per season

So, as you can see, Moya has reduced his strikeouts in a big way this season. His K% at Triple-A is the best of his minor league career. In his small major league sample this year, his K% still hovered above 30%, so this progress at Triple-A may just be Moya adjusting to the not-great level of competition in today’s International League, but if you’re looking for a glimmer of hope with respect to his strikeout issues, you now have one.