We’re still not a full month into the season, but a group of hitters are standing out atop the leaderboards ranging from superstar to fill-in. This week the “The 10” looks at a group that is reaching a level well beyond expectations thus far to see how they’re doing it and whether or not it can sustain at a fantasy-relevant level.

Yoan Moncada, White Sox | .314 AVG, 19 R, 6 HR, 18 RBI, 2 SB in 93 PA

Moncada’s first full season didn’t exactly live up to expectations as he hit just .235 with 17 HR and 12 SB while leading baseball with 217 strikeouts. A breakdown of his bountiful strikeout rate showed that he had the most called third strikes last year (85), just a stunning amount. Jeremy Frank of MLBRandomStats highlighted this fact as well as the fact that Moncada hasn’t struck out looking yet this year:

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Last week, I quantified a famous quote by Hall of Fame pitcher, Greg Maddux. He preached that the key to pitching is to throw a strike when the batter isn’t going to swing, and to throw a ball when the batter will [swing].

The introductory article to wPDI, the Weighted Plate Discipline Index for pitchers, can be found here.

Today, let’s turn the tables around and jump into the hitting equivalent. We can enumerate the offensive parallel of the quote – and evaluate what would be the “Maddux keys to hitting.” A Maddux hitter would swing at pitches when they are thrown in the zone and would lay off of pitches thrown out of the zone.

We will use the wPDI framework to help us quantify what we will call a “Maddux hitter.” For the hitting version of mPDI – the weights of the outcomes will be the exact inverses of the pitching indexes.

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About two and a half weeks in, we know it’s way too early to panic about slow-starters, yet many of you are itching to click that drop button. While I won’t be advising you to drop any of the players I discuss here, let’s evaluate their skills during their slow starts to see if there’s anything worrying to monitor over the next couple of weeks. I’ll stick with hitters that CBS ranked within its top 100 in the preseason.

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This is a tough part of the season for fantasy analysts. There just isn’t a ton to go off with the small samples making it difficult to come up with useful content. However, just saying “it’s a small sample, don’t worry; it’s a small sample, it doesn’t mean anything; it’s a small sample, just wait” doesn’t do anyone any good. We no longer play in an era of fantasy sports where you can wait for data to stabilize before making moves.

One of the quickest stats to “stabilize” is strikeout rate at 60 plate appearances. Now just because it stabilizes around that point, doesn’t mean it’s the new level for that player, it just means that what we’ve seen in those 60 PA has some legitimacy. Only five guys have reached 60 plate appearances through April 9th, but many are just a game or three away so I felt like we could check in on some these early strikeout rate improvements.

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Yesterday, I identified and discussed seven hitters who have enjoyed Z-Contact% spikes compared to last year. Do such gains portend a breakout? Only time will tell. Today, I’ll dive into the players on the opposite end of the spectrum — those who have suffered the largest declines in Z-Contact% versus last season. Is this an early warning sign of a disappointing campaign?

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I don’t need to convince you that improving your in-zone contact rate (Z-Contact%) is a very, very good thing. It could result in more balls in play, which leads to potentially more positive outcomes, whereas strikeouts rarely do. So let’s identify and discuss the fantasy relevant hitters who have enjoyed the biggest spikes in Z-Contact% marks so far over this tiny sample size.

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Need reinforcements for a team that is off to a rough start or beset by injuries? You’ve got something in common with the Yankees.

Entering their three-game series with the Tigers on Monday, the Yankees found themselves short-handed, adding Giancarlo Stanton (strained biceps) and Miguel Andujar (shoulder, labrum tear) to an already crowded injured list. They called up Clint Frazier and Tyler Wade to take their places on the roster. Much to the chagrin of Alex Chamberlain, Frazier — and not the recently-acquired Mike Tauchman — is expected to be the main playing time beneficiary during Stanton’s absence. Wade, on the other hand, will fall behind DJ LeMahieu on the third base depth chart.
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It’s easy to dismiss Spring Training stats. Heck, I used to vehemently deny they had ANY value. They are small samples against a wide variety of competition so how valuable can they truly be to what’s about to take place in the upcoming season? Pretty valuable it seems, if you’re looking at the right ones. Many studies have been conducted on spring stats and they have found that certain stats are indeed useful. The consensus is that strikeouts, walks, power, and stolen bases can be meaningful. With that in mind, here are five stats that stood out to me from the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues.

Jung Ho Kang: .548 ISO in 45 PA

Kang is back in the States and grabbed hold of the 3B job with a massive spring. His .548 ISO was an MLB-best among the 250 players with at least 41 PA. Of his 10 hits, seven left the yard and two others were doubles. He did fan 18 times (40%) so he seemed to sell out for the power and maybe he ups his 21% K rate, but I’d gladly take a 25-27% K rate if he’s going to chase down 30+ HRs.

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3/19/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – PRE-ORDERS AVAILABLE NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms for the March 22nd release! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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Late Hitters I Like

ADP (select Main Event in the second column)

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A few weeks ago, we quietly rolled out our FanGraphs-Plus (FG+) player captions. These are located on most major league player pages, sandwiched between the most recent links and the data tables. We don’t do enough to promote these often insightful and frequently humorous write-ups. And so, I asked my colleagues to identify some of their favorites for inclusion in this article.

My favorite part of this process is everybody’s approach to the prompt. I tend towards the absurd, such as prior to 2017 when I “mistook” Rougned Odor for his brother by the same name (the resultant caption was NSFW). Others like Jeff Zimmerman prefer very straight takes.

For more player caps, search literally any player. You can also read past seasons.

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