8 Hitters With Major HR/FB Upside – A Review

Yesterday, I review the five hitters with major HR/FB rate downside. Today, I’ll recap the list of hitters that would have been more actionable and beneficial for fantasy owners — the eight guys with serious HR/FB upside. As usual, I used my xHR/FB rate equation to settle on these names. Let’s find out how they performed.

Jonathan Lucroy’s 17.3% xHR/FB rate was a surprise to me, as he had never posted an actual HR/FB rate above even 12%. And given his friendly home environment, you’d think that he would be regularly beating his xHR/FB rates. Welp, I guess xHR/FB rate really knew what it was talking about, as Lucroy’s HR/FB rate more than doubled this year to easily set a new career high. Being in the American League should help as he could get at-bats out of the DH spot. Still, it would be foolish to bet on a 30-year-old catcher repeating his career high ISO and HR/FB rate.

Stephen Piscotty was a favorite of mine in the preseason and although he delivered a solid fantasy performance, the big breakout I thought his xHR/FB rate hinted at didn’t materialize. And given the overall HR/FB rate surge, he barely improved. He pulled a lot more of his fly balls this year, but still doesn’t do it enough. That’s some of the problem. I’m curious to see where my analysis leads me for his future power output.

Man, Matt Wieters has become boring. His HR/FB rate has now remained stuck in a narrow range between 11.6% and 13.5% since 2013. It’s unfortunate that he’s already 30 years old, because I still think of him as young with breakout potential any season now. That’s looking less and less likely, obviously.

Wil Myers! He was one of my favorite targets this year and boy did he deliver. A lot of that was from his surprising speed, yes, but also his power surged, as I predicted, and hey, he stayed healthy all year. I’m curious to see where he’s valued next year as I’m sure no one expects a repeat of the stolen base total.

Poor Giovanny Urshela never got a chance and came to the plate exactly zero times with the Indians this year. He showed absolutely no power at Triple-A and posted just a .302 wOBA, so he’s almost certainly not in the Indians’ short-term plans.

Gregory Polanco is another breakout hit! Unfortunately, the power spike coincided with a drop in steals, so I’m not sure he outperformed his 2015 value by all that much, if any. More pulled fly balls certainly contributed to the power surge.

Marcell Ozuna enjoyed a nice power rebound, but still wasn’t all that helpful to shallow mixed leaguers. Since he pushed his fly ball rate up, I think there’s probably additional upside here.

Mark Trumbo! xHR/FB convinced me that his power hadn’t gone missing at all and so he went out and posted a career high HR/FB rate. He posted a HR/FB rate above 20% both home and away, so this wasn’t just an Oriole Park thing. Sadly, because he’s not a batting average contributor, there’s real downside here. If a slump gets him dropped in the order, suddenly he’s just a two-category contributor, as he’s not going to be much of a positive in runs scored.

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This was a pretty darn good showing. Of the seven hitters who actually played, six of them enjoyed a jump in HR/FB rate, while the seventh was essentially flat. The list also led to several major rebounds/breakouts that delivered tidy profits to their owners.