Evaluating Above Average Hitters With Low YTD Fantasy Value

It must be nice to be above-average at a lot of things in baseball. Hitters who find themselves above average at any one statistic should be recognized as having accomplished something spectacular. When your work colleagues are the best baseball players in the world and you are better than the average at, say, making hard contact, then that’s pretty cool. You could also be below average at striking out and that would be cool too.

Fantasy baseball, when boiled down, is really all about selecting a team of players who are well above average in certain categories. You want base-stealers who steal more than average, home run hitters who hit more home runs than average, and hitters who come to the plate with more runners on base than average. We constantly sort, and click, and scroll, looking for players who are suddenly doing things better than the average. Let’s look at two collections of statistics. First, here is a list of hitting statistics on which a batter wants to be better than the MLB average:

BB%, LD%, FB%, HR/FB, IFH%, BUH%, wOBA, Z-Swing%, Z-Contact%, Contact%, BsR, Hard%, EV, LA, Barrel%

You could argue a few of these. Contact%, for instance, is baked into Z-Contact% and just because you have a high FB% doesn’t always mean you’re crushing the ball. However, a hitter probably wouldn’t look at this list and say, “No, I don’t want to be good at that.”

On the flip side, batters also want to be under the average on the following:

K%, GB/FB, GB%, IFFB%, O-Swing%, SwStr%, Soft%, Med%, CSW%

From a fantasy baseball perspective, this leads to the question:

“Which qualified hitters have displayed many above/below-average skills stats, yet have returned little or negative value from a fantasy perspective?”

Answering it may help us identify players who are showcasing above-average skills but have not yet produced results, the key word being “yet”. Here are the qualified hitters with the most above/below average marks on the stats listed above, yet have accumulated less than $1.50 according to the FanGraphs auction calculator (default settings, 2023 season YTD):

Justin Tuner’s value has been getting on base (.353 OBP vs. MLB league average .320 OBP) and he is on a Boston Red Sox team that currently ranks 4th in runs scored and runs batted in. He’s hit six of his projected ~10 home runs this season, but you have to figure that mark will increase if he stays healthy. Most projection systems have him around 350 PAs, but he’s already at 232 on the year.

Charlie Blackmon has always been a good hitter. He walks, he doesn’t strike out and his batting average currently sits at .284, which means he also gets on base more often in order to score runs. He has positive value marks in both the mR and mAVG, yet his lack of power and loss of speed has decreased his value over time.

Jake Fraley’s playing time suffers due to his platoon position and he’s struggling to produce results this year offensively. Keep an eye on him because he is still displaying solid skills. Besides slugging, Vinnie Pasquantino’s x-stats are better than his actual stats:

wOBA: .350 xwOBA: .363
AVG: .267 xBA: .290
SLG: .471 xSLG: .471

But, slugging .471 and deserving it is a great accomplishment. The Royals’ poor-performing offense has hurt Pasquantino’s ability to score runs and knock in runs, but if they can get a little more offense going, Pasquantino could see a value boost.

For more information on LaMonte Wade Jr., look no further than Michael Bauman’s mid-May write-up on the Terp Alum. All of his standard 5×5 auction calculator values are negative, but mAVG, mSB, and mHR values are all just slightly negative.

No, Seiya Suzuki is not available in your league. But, perhaps managers who drafted him are disappointed with his output so far and are not noticing this:

J.P. Crawford is going to play. He’s a good fantasy player in deep leagues where plate appearances are important. He’s solid, and steady, but won’t be winning you your league on his own.

Ryan Noda. I’ll be honest. I didn’t know who Ryan Noda was before running this analysis. That’s what makes it fun. But, he’s a qualified hitter who has played 47 games at first and one game in the outfield. His wRC+ currently sits at 143 and he is walking nearly 20% of the time. He is also striking out 33% of the time, so tamper your expectations down a bit.

Kris Bryant has been disappointing, but his batting average, wOBA, and slugging stats are all expected to be higher than they actually are. His SLG and xSLG are almost 60 points apart. He’s keeping the ball off the ground, making good swing decisions, but isn’t hitting it as hard as he used to, as was pointed out by another mid-May Bauman piece.

When will Spencer Torkelson put it all together? His fantasy value is very negative according to the auction calculator and he may not even be rosterable. He has the most negative value out of everyone in the table above. Yet, having above-average Hard%, EV, LA, and Barrel% marks makes you think he’s just one or two tweaks away from breaking out. He’s 23 years old, his xwOBA is over 40 points higher than his wOBA. Take a look at his other expected stats:

AVG: .237 xBA: .274
SLG: .364 xSLG: .442

Usually, articles like this have a real, “Quick, run to the waiver wire!” type of vibe. Not today. I would recommend checking in on these players’ trade status or waiver status and click the “Watchlist” button next to their names.