Matt Davidson & Whit Merrifield: Deep League Wire
My condolences to myself and all you suffering Mike Trout owners. Since I have only had the chance to complain to one of my best friends, I’ll take this opportunity to whine about how it figures that the first year I ever own Trout he hits the DL for the first time. Cross your fingers that my AL Tout Wars team can hold its top position!
Matt Davidson | 3B CHW | CBS 10% Owned
I’m quite surprised that a guy with 10 homers and a .361 wOBA is owned in just 10% of CBS leagues. Sure, he has struck out a ton, but a .343 BABIP on its own isn’t automatically unsustainable, and with that mark, his average sits at .268. He’s essentially what we expected Miguel Sano to be this year. Davidson opened the year with the potential for DH at-bats, and he has been the last man standing.
The big flaw is obviously the swing and miss, as his SwStk% stands at an inflated 15.7%. And he isn’t exactly taking the free pass enough to offset all those at-bats that end in a strikeout. However, he has displayed immense power, with a 23.8% HR/FB rate driving a .276 ISO. And that’s totally supported by a monstrous 18.2% Brls/BBE, which ranks 10th on the Statcast Leaderboard. Of course, he’s typically been in the low-to-mid teens in HR/FB rate in the minors, so either this is just a hot streak of barreled ball action or his power is truly blossoming at age 26.
In addition to the homers he’s hitting on those fly balls, he’s hitting flies at an extreme rate. His 54.5% fly ball rate ranks fourth among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances. That’s fantastic for his future power potential, but it also makes it difficult to believe that he could sustain that .343 BABIP. So the bottom line here is don’t expect even a neutral batting average, but the power is for real. The only question is whether he loses playing time if he goes into an extended batting average slump, which is bound to happen sooner or later.
Whit Merrifield | 2B KC | 10% Owned
Merrifield opened the year in the minors, but when Raul Mondesi proved that he still couldn’t hit, it was Merrifield who was the beneficiary. Last year, he looked to be a fluke performer, mostly delivering an empty batting average, and even that average was propped up by a .361 BABIP. But this year, Merrifield has joined something. What’s that? The fly ball revolution, of course!
Merrifield’s FB% has spiked from 29.8% to 39%, which isn’t what you typically like to see from a limited power hitting middle infielder. But he’s taking full advantage of all those extra flies, as his Brls/BBE has surged from a poor 2.9% to a respectable 7.7%. He has already hit four more homers in about 200 fewer at-bats versus last year! But perhaps most exciting is the fact that along with this power surge, he has been able to cut his strikeout rate significantly. A peak at his plate discipline metrics don’t point to any obvious explanation, as his O-Swing%, Swing%, Contact%, and SwStk% are all nearly identical to last season. So this looks like an example of a batter who was unlucky last year and maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle of the two strikeout rates.
So even though his BABIP has plummeted, his batting average has actually risen because of the reduced strikeout rate and additional power. He also continues to steal bases and is on base for even more than last year, making him a potential double/double guy. And all this is only owned in 10% of leagues!
Mike Podhorzer is the founder of ProjectingX IQ, an advanced fantasy baseball analytics platform that transforms projection data and in-season performance signals into actionable intelligence. He is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
I’m trying to find away to get better plate discipline on count splits, so far haven’t found a good a way here or on brooks. But I think Whit has either improved his or developed a better 2-strike approach. Maybe it’s even just confidence but all I have is the results so I can’t figure out the process change. In the full-season stats you can see a slight increase in swing rate and out-of-zone contact rate and I suspect a lot of that may be coming on pitcher’s counts.
Anyhow, last year results-wise, if pitchers got him to 2 strikes, he was basically already finished. This year, he’s not only respectably protecting the plate but even working some counts into a walk:
http://www.fangraphs.com/splitstool.aspx?playerid=11281&position=2B&splitArr=62,65,71,70&strgroup=season&type=2&startDate=all&endDate=all&filter=
Nevermind… you were looking at Merrifield, not Davidson. And it looks like you have the correct Fangraphs splits. The splits for counts are also available on BBref… and I find those easier to peruse. YMMV
How fast would something like the Fangraphs Depth Charts RoS projections update for guys who have drastically changed their approach to fly balls?
You’d have to point your question toward Dan Szymborski (ZiPS) and Jared Cross (Steamer) as their magical computers are what’s responsible for the daily updated projections that drive the DC projections. Jared said Steamer does project fly ball rate, but I don’t know if ZiPS even does. If ZiPS doesn’t, it’s going to be wrong on all the FB% changers.
Merrifield has clearly made adjustments, but that 29% fly ball rate from last year is the outlier. His minor league fly ball rate is close to 40% over 3000+ PA.
He’s hitting the ball better than when he was in the minors, and I completely agree with the rest of your assessment, but I don’t think it’s simply hitting more fly balls.
Glad to hear about your success in Tout Wars Mike!
I’m doing okay too in my 10 team AL-only league—it’s a three way tie for first place. Just knocked off the defending AL champ.
Not so hot in my 16 team pts. league though. This is where H2H play rears its ugly head: just got knocked off by two teams with a cumulative record of 4-12. They saved their best point production weeks for matchups against my team.
So, having few starts this week—even with Paxton coming back—I opted for Skoglund on the waiver wire.
Needless to say, it worked out great! I figured he had three things working for him: 1) Judging from his minor league numbers, he’s a strike thrower so he’d force the Tigers to put the ball into play against a good defensive Royals team; 2) The Tigers batters wouldn’t have a book on him, having never seen him; 3) It’s Kansas City! Where long flyballs go to die on the warning track, so he can get away with mistakes.
Enough of the gloating! I have a question for you: I have a surplus of 1B/CI types in that league, but nobody wants to trade for any of them. Bour is a keeper, but you’d think Santana, Reynolds or Healy would draw some interest in a 16 team league (keeper league though).
What am I doing wrong in my trade offers? I even offered to throw in Skaggs with Healy in my latest trade offer and was still rebuffed by a team with a losing record. (I’ll try Healy for Wacha next, even though IMO Healy is more valuable than Wacha.)
Do you have any trading advice to offer me?
Trading is really, really hard. You gotta just keep throwing out offers hoping one hits. Kinda like you gotta date a thousand girls until you finally find your future wife…oh wait, maybe that’s just me.
I find as soon as you mention fly ball revolution and Brls/BBE, the check comes pretty fast. As with most things in life, that goes for fantasy and dating. A thousand is probably an understatement.
Lol! No, that’s not just you, that was me during my dating years too!
You know, I’d rather have Davidson’s teammate Frazier, who’s been cut in a lot of leagues. Where Davidson has had results (BABIP, HR/FB,) Frazier hasn’t… but Frazier walks a lot more, strikes out a lot less, and has the same EXACT batted ball profile that he did last year. I think Davidson craters and Frazier “rebounds” to 2016 performance.
Well, of course, but Frazier is owned in far more than 10% of leagues! And I agree, as I traded for him a week ago, though I wouldn’t consider it a real buy low since I gave up a good player.