It’s May 13th. We’re about a quarter of the way through the fantasy baseball season. At this point, you should have a good idea of whether you’re a contender or not. Of course, there is always time to fix a bad team and a good start could still be a mirage. But we have to start digging into what will be real in 2024.
Today’s topic is about frustrating hitters, expensive players who haven’t returned what we expected in March. I will try to give you an idea of why they are fighting and what their chances are of changing things.
As always, these are educated guesses. And it’s entirely possible that your educated guess is different than mine. We will disagree on some of these things; That’s why, first of all, we have a game.
March ADP: 3
Current rank: 182
Some things about Rodriguez are unlikely to change; The Mariners’ park will always favor pitchers, and Seattle’s lineup doesn’t offer much support. At least Rodríguez is still interested in running, already with nine stolen bases.
Rodriguez’s The expected statistics say that he has been a bit unlucky., although even if he had his expected .267 average or .407 slugging percentage, we wouldn’t be making a parade. His walk rate is stable, his strikeout rate has increased a bit. The only thing that surprises me is a drop in the attraction rate for July; has dropped to 29.7% in that area, after exceeding 40% in his first two seasons.
I guess Rodriguez is missing shots he can stop, but that will eventually take care of itself. I doubt anyone in his league is willing to panic and sell, but there’s too much class at the back here to not treat Rodriguez as a talented star in the future. And hell, he hit a home run on Sunday and just missed the second. Maybe the big boom is coming.
March ADP: 5
Current rank: 283
Carroll’s power dropped last year when a shoulder problem arose, and his lack of power this year (two home runs, .266 slugging percentage) makes us paranoid that the wind won’t correct itself. Although Carroll’s bat speed is good, all your most affected metrics They are nailed to the left, the danger side. His real-life average (.201) is unfortunate, but only by 36 points. Carroll has posted that .553 OPS to this point.
carroll Blame slow start on flat swing; after all, it’s a game of angles. Its appearance rate is more than double that of last year. Its affected rate has dropped approximately 10% compared to last year.
Injury speculation can be tricky. If Carroll really isn’t 100%, there isn’t much incentive to tell the world. Often these things come to light after the season, sometimes accompanied by surgery to fix a problem. Given that Carroll’s slugging percentage was about 100% lower in the second half of last year, I’m afraid his bad start is real enough for us to adjust to.
If I had a new draft today, I wouldn’t select Carroll unless the discount applied was significant.
March ADP: 77
Current rank: 473
This one hurts; Not in my teams (I don’t have Goldschmidt this year), but in my heart. Goldschmidt has long been one of my favorite players and has long been on a Hall of Fame track. He’s been a very good or excellent offensive player for his entire career, so a .197/.280/.279 line in 38 games doesn’t make much sense. His walk rate is down a bit and his strikeout rate is 31.9%, the worst of his career.
Goldschmidt homered Sunday and drove in two runs, much needed after a prolonged slump. His streak went 0-for-32 the night before, and he struck out four times in that game before a late hit.
While we accept that player development is often non-linear, player decline almost always is. Goldschmidt’s bat speed is simply league average this year, and this is an age-36 season. Even if Goldschmidt’s plate discipline improves (one of his problems so far has been passing up good pitches and swinging at bad ones), I don’t expect him to be any better than a league average hitter.
It’s not fun to play fantasy baseball like an actuary, but it’s often the wisest thing to do.
March ADP: 14
Current rank: 361
Somehow, the Braves are fifth in runs per game despite most of their core players getting off to slow starts. Ronald Acuna Jr. and Michael Harris II have been mild disappointments, Austin Riley is slumping (and now injured) and then there’s Olson. After hitting 54 home runs last year (the most in franchise history, which is saying something given who played for these guys) Olson is floundering with a .200 average and four home runs through mid-May.
Olson is the type of player who will likely be up and down as a high strikeout and fly ball hitter. And his batted ball profile offers a lot more optimism than the other names on this list: Statcast data says he should hit .254 and slug .461. I’m not sure how accessible Olson is in a buy-low trade (he may be impossible to get in a competitive league), but I suspect most of this offense will heat up as the weather does and make pitchers pay for the slow start. We have seen.
I don’t know if I can get it, but I would love to get some Olson stock before the story changes.
March ADP: 94
Current rank: 335
The Red Sox routinely get crushed when they don’t retain one of their star players, but the franchise probably did the right thing when it didn’t open the vault for Bogaerts. The Padres likely got some eventual ballast when they signed Bogey to an 11-year, $280 million contract in December 2022.
Unfortunately, no one thought that air would escape from the balloon so quickly. Bogaerts’ hard-hit rate has plummeted to 23.8% (his career norm is in the 30s), and his batted-ball sliders are all on the wrong side (exit velocity is in the ninth percentile and the barrel rate is far away). low code).
When Bogaerts was in his younger days in New England, he always had the backdrop of Fenway Park to bail him out. That’s not the case at Petco Park. while his expected slugging It’s a bit unfortunate at this point, a .371 number is far from a star. Bogaerts is only 31 years old and can be a respectable veteran for the Padres for a few more years, and hopefully, he will return to last year’s baserunning nerve. But you expect a boring floor to be restored; I don’t see much potential for a bullish breakout.