Hitter xwOBA Underperformers — June 29, 2021

It’s been nearly two months since I reviewed xwOBA and listed and discussed both the underperformers and overperformers. So let’s get back to it as we near the halfway point in the season. Obviously, xwOBA isn’t perfect. No expected metrics are and they never will be. However, it does a better job of predicting future wOBA than wOBA itself, even though it’s not even built as a predictive stat (it’s backward looking). So with that in mind, let’s investigate the hitters who have most underperformed their xwOBA marks so far.

I decided to use a 200 PA minimum to make the list.

Generally, a hitter’s wOBA is going to differ from his wOBA if either his BABIP, ISO, or both are higher or lower than Statcast calculates these two metrics should be. Essentially, either more or fewer balls in play should have fallen for a hit (BABIP and resulting batting average change) and/or those batted balls should result in more total bases than they have (ISO). Whether it’s a higher BABIP or ISO, fantasy owners would certainly welcome the second half improvement.

Kyle Tucker has both increased his walk rate and reduced his strikeout rate, both to MLB career bests (over his small historical sample), which is typically a very good thing. His HR/FB rate remains in the mid-teens, while his ISO sits well above .200 again. Yet, his BABIP has fallen well below .300, which isn’t that shocking given his fly ball tendency. That said, Statcast is drooling over his batted ball quality, suggesting Tucker deserves far better than his current .347 wOBA. Statcast actually calculates an expected batting average over .300, plus an expected slugging percentage just over 100 points higher than his actual mark. This is no surprised given his strong HardHit%, maxEV, and Barrel% marks. I think he’s a darkhorse candidate to earn top five hitter value the rest of the way.

While I thought Juan Soto was a bit too hyped up after posting a 36.1% HR/FB rate last year that would be very, very difficult to repeat, it’s still pretty surprising to see his HR/FB rate cut by about half so far. What’s making his power output even worse is that his batted ball distribution now looks more like Eric Hosmer’s than the 22 year old with elite power, the version we saw in 2019. That year his FB% was 37.2%, but this year, it has dropped to just 24.9%. Soto can’t be an elite source of home runs if he’s hitting such a low rate of balls in the air. I’m pretty confident the home runs on those flies will come and it’s likely his BABIP increases as well. What I’m less confident in is that FB%, as it was just 28.6% last year as well. While he doesn’t need to get his FB% over 30% to deliver strong fantasy value, he does need to in order to deliver the top five value he was paid in drafts.

Freddie Freeman has been underperforming his xwOBA all season long thanks to an uncharacteristically low BABIP. His LD% isn’t nearly as high as it typically is, but still remains well above average and he still rarely pops up. So in other words, his batted ball profile is still pristine and his BABIP should continue to rise. Statcast also calculates an xSLG more than 100 points higher than his actually mark, but a lot of that is from the missing hits due to the low BABIP. I’m not sure we should expect any better than his current 21.5% HR/FB rate given that this represents the second highest mark of his career. Perhaps more doubles could be in his future though as not all of that BABIP increase will come from singles, and his ISO sits at the second lowest mark since 2016.

A .410 BABIP last season definitely inflated expectations for Alec Bohm, and sure enough, that BABIP has tumbled exactly 100 points. Combined with a spike in strikeout rate, and his batting average has declined by just over 100 points. Surprisingly, his LD% is actually higher than last year and he has traded fly balls to get there, so his batted ball profile actually looks better for BABIP than it did last season. Statcast is bullish on both his batting average and slugging rate, as his HardHit% and maxEV suggest there’s much more power potential in his bat than a barely double digit HR/FB rate would have you believe. That said, the lowly FB%, while good for BABIP, ain’t good for his home run potential, just as I discussed above with Soto.

Amazingly, Paul Goldschmidt has posted a BABIP over .300 in every single season of his career. This year, it has dropped to .288, as his IFFB% has jumped to the second highest mark of his career, while his LD% has also declined. While Statcast calculates he’s deserving of a bit better of a batting average, it’s more about the power here. After consistently posting HR/FB rates in the high teen to low-20% range every year since 2013, last year was the first that barely hit double digits. It hasn’t rebounded off that low much this year, but Statcast thinks the rebound should have been more pronounced. At age 33, Goldschmidt is now firmly in the “boring” group of veterans that doesn’t excite anyone to roster, but he looks like a decent target who could potentially be had at a good price.

I’m not sure what’s more surprising — that at age 37, Jed Lowrie has come to the plate 286 times this year and hasn’t gotten hurt or that he’s posted an acceptable .309 wOBA and strong .360 xwOBA. Statcast loves the power potential he has shown, even though the results show limited power, with just a 7.7% HR/FB rate and .129 ISO. In a deeper league, you likely have no choice but to keep playing him and as long as the Athletics do and he remains healthy, the possibility of better production is there.

After a miserable April in which he batted just .151, Elvis Andrus has been back to himself in May and June. Unfortunately for fantasy owners, he still hasn’t homered and with his days of stealing 30 bases over, he almost feels like a zero category contributor. He’s actually the only hitter on this list who even with expected improvement in wOBA, would still be a below average hitter (actually, Bohm is just below the xwOBA league average). With a .271 BABIP currently, it doesn’t scream significant improvement from here, but he does own a 26.1% LD% and Statcast thinks his batting average should be significantly better. With more hits comes more stolen base opportunities, so even if he only knocks a couple of homers, perhaps he’ll get on base at a high enough rate to go on a 20 steal pace the rest of the way.