Hello, everyone! Welcome to my latest Fantasy Baseball segment, Five for Friday! Here, I provide a straightforward look at five different players based on either their previous season performances, or by whatever they have currently pulled off during the course of the active regular season. The catch with this column is that it is entirely driven by you, the readers: each of the five players I cover in each installment are hand picked by Redditors on r/FantasyBaseball who’d like to gather more information about them as we approach draft day, and later on as we get underway with the 2019 MLB season. Therefore, it is my duty to roll up my sleeves and dig up as much pertinent information as the data, tables and graphs allow.
Like with my previous post covering pitchers, today’s piece offers an in-depth look at five different players with variable draft values (I also included ADP from both Yahoo and ESPN this time). The following five hitters are all fantasy relevant in some form or another, so hopefully my research is helpful in aiding fantasy owners with taking on early drafts.
Max Muncy, 1B, Los Angeles Dodgers (#124 in Yahoo, #165 in ESPN)
When I think of Max Muncy and how far he’s gone in just the span of one season, I think of J.D. Martinez when the Houston Astros released him four years ago at the end of Spring Training. Both were below replacement value in the offing. Both were testing the limits of their respective ballclubs’ patience in phases of transition (although in retrospect, this was more or less the case with Houston). And lastly: both experienced self-reflecting periods in their careers without a team and without the certainty of having another Major League at-bat again.
Six years ago, if you told me that J.D. Martinez would have the tenth most home runs, the sixth highest wOBA, and the third highest slugging percentage in the game, all with a World Series ring at the crescendo of a 1.000 OPS season, I’d be more concerned about your future outlooks than his. Just imagine even entertaining the possibly that a worm-burning castaway like Muncy could come remotely close to doing what he did in 2018.
Out of 438 individual player performances with at least 100 plate appearances back in 2016, Max Muncy ranked in the bottom 90th percentile in wOBA (397th). That’s about 14 points (or 37 spots) worse than the awful, injury-riddled finale that pulled the curtain on Prince Fielder‘s career: a season in which the former 50-homer hitter scraped up a putrid .626 OPS, and tacked on exceptionally poor defensive measurements to finish with the second worst Wins Above Replacement that year.
After looking at his swing and making a few adjustments later, however, it seems he’s come a long, long way from that. Last Spring, I concocted a very in-depth, very long-winded explanation for the newfound power and how he found it, and you could find that here. What I’ll be doing today is justifying its stickiness, because not even a Home Run Derby hangover could slow this Texas fella down. If you owned him last season, you might know exactly what I’m referring to: a month of August in which Muncy drove in just 11 runs, and struck out almost 40% of the time.
I’m here to tell ya that’s nothing to be concerned of, for various reasons – but I’ll start with a big one:
In 225 plate appearances prior to the 2018 season, Muncy barreled the baseball just six times for a 2.6% barrels-per-plate-appreance rate. Thanks to a new, power-oriented swing, that mark catapulted up nearly seven percent, good for 10th in all of baseball last season. But that’s not even the best part of the table above; Muncy measures far greater with the rest of the league when we look at his barrels per batted ball event – at 16.9%, his mark was above that of the 48-homer, .300-ISO season of Khris Davis.
Using my Best Forms of Contact (BFC) formula to focus squarely on hard hit balls (flares, burners, barrels, and solid contact), Muncy was only slightly above average with an average exit velocity mark of 97.4 MPH (Top 62nd Percentile, minimum 100 batted ball events), but even that is an accomplishment considering his average distance on those (260 feet) was higher than that of Paul Goldschmidth, Christian Yelich, Nolan Arenadho, and – because, of course – J.D. Martinez.
Especially for a multi-positional corner infielder, Muncy is a Statcast darling, ranking in at least the top 90th percentile in Hard Hit rate, xSLG, xwOBA, and xwOBA on contact. Despite his strikeout-riddled August dampening his overall numbers, he still managed a .986 OPS and a ridiculous .411 wOBA that month, while finishing 5th in BB% and 46th in BB/K ratio for the season.
With one of the lowest chase rates in the league, Muncy is a great bet to continue marching onwards with a BB rate north of 15% – which is the least of his capabilities in fantasy leagues. His ability to cover the entire plate with consistent amounts of elite power is no fluke, and the home run barrage we witnessed last Spring feels more like a prelude of what’s to come. Currently ranked below the top-15 in first baseman rankings, I think he’s worth a reach two rounds before his draft value in both Yahoo and ESPN leagues – but if you’re specifically in a Yahoo league that counts BBs or OBP, or a points league, then Muncy has to ABSOLUTELY be a priority for you, considering his second base eligibility there.
Jurickson Profar, SS, Oakland Athletics (#168 in Yahoo, #122 in ESPN)
Despite destroying pre-season projections and finishing with the 2nd highest offensive WAR in all of baseball, projection systems like PECOTA expect the Oakland Athletics to throw out a mostly mediocre starting nine in 2019. This should be great news for you if your league mates happen to already doubt the legitimacy of the A’s lineup (which in fairness they do have a bit of a right to, considering most hitters are coming off of career years). But, like with their recent addition of Jurickson Profar via three-team trade, they wouldn’t be seeing the forest for the trees.
The A’s are one of those strange ball clubs riddled with talent that you really need to dip skin deep to find: Matt Olson is primed for a big year after experiencing severe amounts of bad luck on batted balls, Stephen Piscotty secretly began lifting the ball to elite levels and has become one of the best flyball hitters in the league, and Matt Chapman uses remarkable plate discipline skills to widen his success at the plate and maintain consistently solid power over long stretches of time. Jurickson Profar should fit right at home here.
At just 25 years of age, it’d be a fool’s errand to write off Profar’s strong 2018 campaign as a stroke of good fortune. Of course, his career trajectory wasn’t exactly optimistic following a string of underwhelming performances in Texas, but his final season over there screams of a major post-hype breakout.
Of all the surface stats available to us, weighted on-base average is my favorite because it’s virtually an overall performance grade: you could be among the league leaders in homers but barely get on base elsewhere and wind up being just above league average, and your wOBA will tell you as such. For Profar to finish 7th on this list after never finishing inside the top-20 at the position suggests he was doing a lot of things right.
Here’s one thing he did pretty well:
Granted, Profar was never very good against pitchers from either side of the plate – but prior to last season, he was borderline terrible against southpaws: in 182 career plate appearances versus left-handed pitching between 2012 and 2017, Profar hit .177 with just six extra base-hits (one home run).
As such, his .269 batting average and .449 slugging percentage (.795 OPS) against them in 2018 could be considered an otherworldly evolution in the least sense. As you can see above, he covered the bottom half of the strike zone with power, countering the fact that almost 75% of pitches offered to him were either down there, or sitting in the middle of the zone.
Despite a comparatively slight dip in batting average against righties, Profar slugged better from the left side of the plate (.462), combating a rough .255 BABIP with a .792 OPS; stats that receive a significant leap forward when we narrow them down to his second half. Profar gradually hit the ball harder and harder as the season progressed, finishing with a 46.9% clip against right-handers in that time frame, with nine homers and a .289 ISO.
Profar’s strong side is most certainly there, and I believe he’s become a very viable threat in that regard, but we can’t overlook the way he’s overcoming southpaws at his young age. Additionally, he’s made considerable gains against breaking balls, slugging .474 against them with a decent-but-improving launch angle of 89.2 degrees.
Overall, Profar saw noticeable jumps in barrel percentage (2.2 -> 5.0), average exit velocity (83.1 -> 87.3) and hard hit rate (26.1 -> 31.6, according to BaseballSavant), while holding on to a strong contact rate and an above-average BB/K ratio. Furthermore, his BFC-weighted average exit velocity went up almost three points between halves, with a strong 97 MPH clip that ranked 10th among all shortstops.
That being said, I personally don’t believe his multi-positional eligibility boosts his draft value, and I think Yahoo’s more conservative ranking at 168 is just about right, as Profar doesn’t hit for a particularly high average and doesn’t swipe enough bags to stand out beside other shortstops. You’re still likely to get solid across-the-board production from Profar – especially in Points leagues – and the move to Oakland and it’s ridiculously underrated offense should help him get one step closer to fantasy stardom (or maybe even super stardom).
Michael Brantley, OF, Houston Astros (#108 in Yahoo, #91 in ESPN)
One particular thing I LOVE about Michael Brantley is that he’s always putting the ball in play. He walks a decent amount and doesn’t strike out, which is great, but almost 83% of his plate appearances last year ended with a ball in play: something that’s easy to digest with an average exit velocity of 89.9 MPH, and a 24.7% Line drive rate.
Dude is hitting the ball harder than he ever has, and although he’s not exactly falling in line with the conventions of the fly ball revolution (his average launch angle has always been terrible for home runs, and it was actually worse this past season!), he’s doing whatever it takes to find green in the outfield. It certainly helped whenever he was home (.333/.379/.507 slash line, .380 wOBA, 40.8% hard hit rate at Progressive Field), and now he gets to take on the short right field porch of Minute Maid Park with the fourth-best offense in baseball since 2016.
Brantley’s outlook for 2019 is simple: there’s absolutely nothing to worry about from a contact/plate discipline standpoint, but the bulk of his fantasy value will be contingent on his health. I’m pretty confident in Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and George Springer all bouncing back from what you could consider down years for them, which in turn would give Brantley plenty of run scoring opportunities in the middle of the lineup (theoretically speaking at the moment, since we don’t know exactly where A.J. Hinch will slot him). Ballpark factors could betray him a bit, as Minute Maid Park seems to have not been doing hitters many favors over the years, but Brantley helped bolster an Indians lineup that’s not exactly as great as Houston’s in a more favorable hitting environment, so I figure the two situations will cancel each other out and we wind up with another .300-hitting, 160 R+RBI season with double digit swipes.
Tim Anderson, SS, Chicago White Sox (#125 in Yahoo, #105 in ESPN)
How much are you willing to sacrifice for stolen bases? How are you forecasting the shift in paradigm at the shortstop position? How confident are you in across-the-board production from a mid-round pick who strikes out more than five times as much as he walks? These are the questions you must ask yourself when evaluating Tim Anderson. I’ve never particularly been a fan of him because of how poorly he distinguishes balls and strikes, but it’s hard to deny the value he provided last season: 20 homers, 141 R+RBI, and a whopping 26 stolen bases.
He still needs to drastically change his approach at the plate to offer any value in his slash line (.240/.280/.406), which puts me at a bit of an impasse. Which side of the coin do I trust, if I’m interested in throwing shares at him?
Let’s start with data from Baseball Savant. Unfortunately, unlike fellow rising shortstop Adalberto Mondesi who’s also having trouble chasing way too many pitches, Anderson’s batted ball figures leave very little to be desired. He upped his average launch angle to a modest 10.5 degrees, but everything else is pretty mediocre. He had the 6th worst average exit velocity among all qualified shortstops last season, with a 30.3% Fangraphs-adjusted hard hit rate that was tied with Alcides Escobar for 5th worst at the position. His barrels-per-plate appearance ranked 97th lowest in the league (tied with Matt Weiters and Cory Spangenberg – yuck!) and his xwOBA (just 23 points shy of the actual mark in 2018) has been in the bottom 5 percentile for two years straight now.
Conversely, Anderson has made a few slight improves elsewhere, according to data provided by Brooks Baseball. He cut down his whiff rates on fastballs (24.5% to 20.3%) and curveballs (35.75% to 21.9%) significantly, while experiencing large gains in flyball, line drive, and home run rates against them. Additionally, his sprint speed is in the top 85th percentile of all players – so a steady stream of 25-30 swipes should be considered his floor at this juncture.
However, that’s not enough to hide the fact that Tim Anderson lucked his way into such a high draft price this year. Considering the shortstop position has only deepened over the years with a number of elite bats at the top, it’s not nearly as customary to punt batting average at the position for power and/or speed – especially in Anderson’s case, as his power appears to be rather fluky right now. Seeing as how he’s still just 25 years old, I wouldn’t banish him from memory; I just wouldn’t touch him in the middle rounds of a fantasy draft right now (unless we’re talking AL-Only).
Willians Astudillo, C, Minnesota Twins (Fantasy Pros ADP of #328, #297 in ESPN)
Allow me to introduce you to Willians Astudillo with a series of wonderful clips presented for your enjoyment:
That was fun, right? Here’s some more eye candy for you – although this is a bit more stationary:
Willians Astudillo swings at everything under the sun, but doesn’t miss. in his 97 plate appearances with Minnesota, he chased over 40(!) percent of pitches outside the strike zone, and made contact with over 85(!!) percent of them. Joey Votto‘s overall contact rate is lower than that, at 84.8%!
Astudillo has made a career of his otherworldly ability to hit a baseball. In 2,265 Minor League at-bats, he’s only struck out 81 times; that’s a 3.5% strikeout rate. Of all the pitches he swing at as a Twin, only 3.3% of them were missed. Normally, these are the kinds of stats you’d expect to see from top-ranked MLB the Show gamers in the World Series division, but here we are watching a 5’9, 225-pound utility player put up out-of-this-world video game numbers in perhaps the greatest age of high strikeout rates across the league.
Even when we single out Astudillo’s already-illustrious plate discipline performance, we have a really solid contact hitter in our midst. He’s not at all someone I’d imagine hitting for power like Gary Sanchez or Wilson Ramos, but there’s a lot of that Michael Brantley syndrome in his numbers, which makes me a huge fan. His expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected weighted on base average all fall directly in line with the actual numbers he produced, and I think that’s the product of a healthy 23.1% line drive rate and 87.1 MPH average exit velocity.
Because he doesn’t hit the ball particularly hard (BFC-weighted 90.2 MPH average exit velocity) or very far (271 ft. average flyball distance), I’d expect there to be some frustrating power droughts sprinkled in throughout a full season. Which takes me to my next issue with Astudillo: getting to a full season of ABs in the Majors. The gameplan for the Twins’ backstop situation behind manager Rocco Baldelli has not yet been identified, and will definitely become a focal point during Spring Training. Jason Castro probably has the clearest path to everyday playing time, given his veteran experience behind the plate, and Mitch Garver graded out as a 1-win replacement with decent hitting skills for a catcher. Both those gentlemen currently hang ahead of Astudillo in Fangraphs depth charts, although that could obviously change with injuries or prolonged ineptitude.
Either way, Willians Astudillo is a remarkable study: a developing superstar to the mainstream eye, and a historical anomaly wrapped around a potentially sneaky fantasy steal if the playing time is there and all the stars align. It’s hard for me to recommend doing everything in your power to draft him given the current landscape of his own team, but with the catcher position being so scarce I’d say he’s worth a dart throw gamble at the very end of drafts – so long as someone else doesn’t beat you to him, first.
What players would you like me to cover next week? What are your thoughts, questions or concerns about the players I talked about here? Feel free to leave a comment below with suggestions, or to get the discussion going on the five guys I’ve mentioned today. Stay tuned for more Five For Friday as we continue to approach Spring Training (hopefully, I could post another F4F tomorrow as well. Fingers crossed!!)
Hello Brooklyn! 