Early Season ISO Leaps
This early in the season it’s easy to jump all over players who are putting up big numbers. But just remember, you drafted a team while considering their projected season-long stats and while it may be tempting to drop a poor performing player at the start of the season for a hot starter, take caution. Players who hit doubles and triples and home runs early in the season can make a lot of noise, as they’re likely to put up strong category stats. Isolated power is a nice statistic that allows us to see, “how often a player hits for extra bases”. But, ISO does not stabilize until around 16o at-bats, and it will probably take another two weeks or so before we can really call this a good sample size. Let’s take a look at players who have shown strong early season ISO, how it compares to the ISO they showed at the start of last year and how that compares to their career average. I’ve compared the first two and a half weeks of the 2021 season to the first two and a half weeks of the 2022 season. I’ve brought in a career average as well. Mostly what you should come away with after reading this piece is that we should expect most of these early season ISO hitters to come back down to earth.
You’ll notice that for most of these players that if you average the blue (2021 early season) with the red (2022 early season) you’ll get yellow (career average). That’s what we should expect. Here are a few notes on players that stand out to me in this visual:
A lot of people were excited about Cron’s arrival in Colorado and last season’s start was a little disappointing. What we’re seeing with Cron is a power hitter off to a good start. His 2022 max exit velocity is 113 MPH, in line with his 115 career high. That’s good news because it tells us a Colorado hitter is hitting the ball just as hard as we should expect. His barrel rate is high to start the year at 16.3% compared to a 10.8% career average, but his slugging percentage of .667 is a few ticks below statcast’s expected slugging percentage of .636. If you’ve rostered Cron, I think this is a good sign that he’s someone to keep on your roster. Just don’t expect this hot start to continue through the rest of the season.
Profar’s fast start and high ISO are likely due to an increased barrel rate (10.3%) compared to his career average (4.3%). His HardHit% is currently higher than ever at 35.9% (career 30.2%). He is slugging .531 and he is expected to be slugging .541! His wOBA of .391 is lower than his xwOBA of .412! He has an increased line-drive rate, and a decreased ground ball rate, and is pulling the ball more than he ever has, 64.1% compared to a career rate of 42.4%. What I should say is that this is a very small sample, he’s only had 49 at-bats, and that we’ll have to wait and see what his numbers look like in a few weeks. But, what I want to say is we could be watching a late-career breakout. Profar has been around a long time, he made his major league debut at age 19 back in 2012. But, he’s still only 29 years old and has the fourth most plate appearances on the Padres this year behind Manny Machado, Jake Cronenworth, and Trent Grisham. I’ll be keeping a close eye on Profar in the next few weeks.
Francisco Lindor
It should be no surprise to see Lindor on this list as his start to 2021 was so uncharacteristic. For those of us who are crazy excited to see Lindor surging, we should bring our expectations down, but only a little. Notice that his early-season ISO is not too far ahead of his career average. I think we’re seeing a regression in action early in the season and Lindor is getting back to what his true talent levels suggest. Expect him to come back down towards the yellow, but don’t go selling high, as I would suspect he continues to have success in his second year in New York. He is actually under his career HardHit% (38.3%) so far this season at 33.3%, as is his barrel rate (5.6% 2022, 6.4% career) and he is slugging higher (.563) than statcast expects (.495). Again, I think he’s getting back to career levels, but the underlying data does suggest this hot start is not sustainable.
To start the season, Crawford’s line drive rate is up at 27.5% compared to a career 23.1%. That’s a good sign. He is also pulling the ball a lot more at 41.2% compared to a career 34.8%. This stands out to me because it may be indicating an approach/swing change, but I would have to dig in deeper to get a better sense of if that is true or not. His statcast metrics indicate his early-season success has been somewhat based on luck as his slugging percentage (.574) is much higher than his expected slugging percentage (.499). His batting average and expected batting average, however, are much more in line (.352 avg. vs. .345 xavg.). Like Profar, I think Crawford will be someone to keep a close eye on and I wouldn’t go selling high just yet.
You likely didn’t draft Edman for his power. I know I didn’t. I was more interested in the stolen bases. Edman has had a hot start with the bat, but may be a sell-high candidate. Take a look at some of his statcast statistics versus some of his expected stats.
AVG .313 vs. xAVG .283
SLG .563 vs. xSLG .479
wOBA .425 vs. xwOBA .370
He only has one stolen base this season, but the average of all our projections systems on FanGraphs expects 20. If you are rostering Edman, you’re probably stoked to have the early offensive output, but shouldn’t expect it to be the norm.
How about Ty France?
Hard to say how long it will go. Last season he had dry and hot streaks too. One aspect to note is the LD%. At the moment 34% is too unstable to be held an entire season so there should be a nice regression. This would be a source of diminishing ISO. That and his home runs should not continue at 35 HR/FB (FB%–25%). His career is much closer at 14%, which indicates there will be a drop-off in the home run rate for Ty.
Ty France is certainly a fantastic player. I do love his game. But when things get tough, he goes for bloop liners and grounders in the gaps. This makes he that ultimate stability player, everything outside of stolen bases.