Last Monday, I discussed Fernando Tatis Jr.’s odd season and the possibility that his missing power output is related to a stance change that hasn’t had the intended effect. I noted the natural next question at the end: what other players have made stance changes and what are we seeing from them? We’ll dig into that today.
If you read Mike Podhorzer’s article this morning (a thing you should have done – if you haven’t you should go do that, and then come back), you would have seen this post:
Fernando Tatis Jr. doesn’t have a power problem.
He has a fly ball direction problem.
MLB HR/FB by Direction: Pull – 30.7% Center – 7.8% Oppo – 3.7%
Fernando Tatis Jr.’s batted ball metrics on fly balls, with a red circle around his 2026 pull rate on fly balls, which is just 4.8%, well below his career norms.” width=”691″ height=”214″ />
When Fernando Tatis Jr. puts the ball in the air this year, he is going the other way more than half the time and up the middle almost the rest of the time. Pulled fly balls are where power lives and Tatis has none of those. Tatis has been a total power zero for fantasy and this might well be why. Figuring out if that will continue requires looking at why he might be pulling the ball less.
Like many of you, I fantasy baseball at multiple sites (Ottoneu primarily, but also FanTrax, CBS, and ESPN) and so I find myself navigating leaderboards at multiple sites. Kind of.
Yes, I do use the leaderboards at those other sites to find players, but that’s mostly out of laziness. When I have the time and the desire, my preferred way to find free agents and evaluate players is to come back to FanGraphs and use our player pages and leaderboards. CBS can tell me what a guy’s OBP is over the last 30 days; but it can’t tell me what has changed to drive that newfound on-base talent. So I identify free agents at one place, dig into them back here, and then head back to the other place to make FAAB bids or waiver claims.
The integration between Ottoneu and FanGraphs is one of the best and yet most underutilized aspects of the Ottoneu platform. And there are some little tricks you can use to make them even more powerful.