Passing the Whiff Test: Early K% Improvements
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.
Matt Chapman, OAK | -14 points to 10% K% in 63 PA
Chapman had a small improvement in strikeout rate last year, slicing four points down to a 24%. That works for a power hitter, but he’s dialed in so far this year with just six punchouts. In fact, sixes are wild for stud 3B as he also has six walks, runs, and RBIs. Three-point improvements on both his swinging strike and chase rates to 5.5% and 22%, respectively, are supporting Chappy’s gains. The hits aren’t quite falling yet (.261 BABIP), but as long as Chapman holds some of these gains, he has a good shot to best last year’s .278 AVG.
Cody Bellinger, LAD | -13 pts to 11% K% in 56 PA
Belly’s been the best in hitter baseball early on and like Chapman he has matching strikeout and walk rates. He has damn-near halved his swinging strike and chase rates in the process. His swinging strike rate is a very nice 6.9%, down 5.4 points from last year, while his chase rate is down to a brilliant 15% clip (-13 pts), 4th in the MLB. No one stays this hot, but Bellinger could be on his way to a new career year, which is saying something given his electric rookie campaign when he clubbed 39 HRs with a 138 wRC+ and even chipped in 10 SBs to establish his fantasy superstar status.
It’ll be interesting to see how he holds up when divisional games start to ramp up as the NL West has the most lefty starters in rotations. For now, he’s got back-to-back weeks of all righties and won’t face a lefty-heavy rotation until a 3-game set in Chicago starting on April 23rd. Currently both Jose Quintana and Cole Hamels are slated to pitch in that series.
Joey Gallo, TEX | -10 pts to 26% K% in 42 PA
You know you’re a brutal batting average hitter when people say stuff like “well, if he can just surge up to .230, that’d be huge”. We know what we’re getting with Gallo, though. For his career, he has more homers (92) than singles (84) and he’s never come close to hitting his weight, checking in at 235 lbs with a career .204 AVG. He’s the only guy on this list whose improved strikeout rate is still pretty poor, but when you have a career 38% mark, then your early season 26% rate is notable.
His swinging strike rate improvement is just four points to 15%, though the 19% chase rate is really nice for him. It’s 13 points better than his 2018 mark and even 10 points better than league average. Walk rates don’t start stabilizing until about 120 plate appearances so I’ll check in on those after another 10-12 games or so, but Gallo has doubled his 2018 rate to 24% early on, aiding him to a .405 OBP thus far. Unfortunately, smacking the hell out of the ball (66% Hard Contact rate), trimming his whiffs, and amping up his walks still hasn’t helped the hits fall as he’s toting a .219 AVG, thanks in part to a paltry .176 BABIP. I’ll tell you what, if he can just surge up to .230, that’d be huge!
Domingo Santana, SEA | -10 pts to 23% K% in 64 PA
One of the best early season standouts has definitely seen plate approach improvements underneath the gaudy .417 BABIP and 31% HR/FB. If the 23% K rate stuck, it’d easily be a career-best as even his breakout 2017 season saw him at 29%. His swinging strike rate is half his 2018 mark at 8% as he’s making a ton more contact in and out of the zone and chasing at just a 21% clip.
The opposition has shifted their approach, giving Santana a career-low 49% fastballs (career .907 OPS against heat), but he’s pummeling off-speed with a 1.230 OPS against breaking balls and changeups. He’s already 3-for-3 on the bases, too. Even accounting for the fact that he will come down off this 1.047 OPS pace, this is one of the early surges I’m buying. I think with free and clear playing, the 26-year old can approach the 30 HR/15 SB line from 2017 again.
Ozzie Albies, ATL | -9 pts to 8% K% in 49 PA
The rest of this group has been power hitters so I wanted to shine a little light on a contact-first guy shaving his early season strikeout rate down. I think Albies was feeling himself a bit on the early power surge in 2018 (9 HR in April) and wound up hitting just .254 from May on with a 17% K rate. That isn’t such an awful rate, but he also walked just 5% of the time after an 8% minor league rate and 9% in his 244 PA sample of 2017.
He just seemed to lose his patience a bit after hitting those early homers. So far this year he has more walks (5) than strikeouts (4) and he’s out to a quick .364 AVG. I can’t complain about the 24 HR/14 SB from last year. I just think for fantasy he’s better off flipping those numbers, hitting .290+, and scoring a bunch of runs (although, he’d likely have to get out of the 6-spot for that part to happen).
Yoan Moncada, 2018: 33.4% K
Yoan Moncada, 2019 so far in 46 PA: 23.9% K
Virtually the same SwStr%, a worse Chase%, and a worse BB%. Keeping an eye on him, but didn’t really see his K% improvement as similar to the others.
He’s been quoted as trying to be more aggressive this season, to avoid being rung up like he was last season from being too passive. It makes sense that he has worse chase% since he is swinging more. And maybe the improvement in K% is simply due to not being rung up so much.
Ya I believe there was something where he had the most called 3rd strikes that were bad calls last year or something? At any rate, he didn’t quite standout for what I was looking at in this piece, but generally, he’s an intriguing fast start
he set the record for called 3rd strikes taken at 85, accounting for 39% of his total strikeouts. this year so far all of his strikeouts have been swinging. i’m not concerned about the BB% bc it’s still too early for that to stabilize. also, his exit velo is up 5.1 MPH from 2019 to 95.7 MPH. still early of course though
Chapman’s progression reminds me a lot of Nolan Arenado. Early in his career Arenado was “must see” just for his glove, but then developed his plate discipline and power and became a top hitting 3B. Similarly, last year Chapman was worth the price of admission just to watch his defense, but he’s gonna be a top 5 hitting 3B very soon.
(today)
Chapman’s exit velo is currently down almost 3 mph and he is lifting the ball less so far as well with a reduced FB rate. His HR/FB rate is up, masking this. The sample sizes are currently small, but exit velo supposedly evens out pretty early too just like K rate. The Arenado path to stardom would be nice, but I’m a bit concerned he’s taking the Kris Bryant evolution at the plate, trading power for less Ks; which in his case was an exchange I wish he didn’t make. Only time will tell which is true.
I still think the Donaldson is the easiest, best one to give Chapman. As for KB, though, he didn’t really consciously made the trade so much as his shoulder injury sapped the power.
It’s still early April. Not to mention his xBA, xSLG, and xwOBA are all higher than they were at the end of last year. His LA is probably down because he’s not hitting LD’s or pop ups, his GB% is 51.0%, but his FB% is up over 8 points at 30.6%, meanwhile his LD’s are down 10 points to 16.3% and his PU’s are down 8.7 points to 2.0%. In the end, I’m not worried about his current launch angle, and as his GB/FB/LD/PU percentages stabilize, I’m sure that we’ll see his launch angle creep back up and we’ll get a few more MPH on his EV.
Give him time to adjust to the increase in off speed stuff he’s been seeing, he’ll be fine.
I know it’s probably just piling on at this point, but Mike Trout has dropped his K rate 12.2%, along with more than halving his swinging strike rate to an insane 2.8% (best in MLB last year was Michael Brantley at 4%).
So much this. Trout’s profile is really beginning to resemble peak ‘roid’ Bond’s this year, something I’m not sure I ever thought I’d see again, especially un-enhanced (to the best of my knowledge). Small sample size alert for sure, but it’s still fun to think about.
Exactly what I was thinking. Pitchers were throwing strikes to Bonds about 48 to 52% of their total pitches during his peak years. Right now, pitchers are throwing strikes to Trout only 50.0% of the time. They seem scared to come over the plate but Trout is not offering on anything off the plate lowering his o-swing from an already low 20% to a super low 11%.
I’m sure it’s way too early in the season to have a meaningful sample yet, has anyone ever looked at swing rates as a function of the count? can we tease anything out of a guy’s first pitch approach vs. his two strike approach versus his overall strikeout and walk rates?
On the other side of things, things are weird about Justin Turner’s K% – it basically doubled since last year’s 12.7% to 24.5% this year, but his chase rate only increased from 25.8% to 27%. His sing% is overall down by 3% from 43.3 to 39.9, and his Z sing% is down. So he’s chasing slightly more pitches but not swinging at some pitches in the zone, and his z-contact% is still teh same but his O-contact% is down over 10%.
Overal, he swings less at pitches in the zone, and is taking more pitches in the zone.
Still has an elite walk rate but should be interesting if he keeps his K% up so much from last year
The Dodgers are a small sample size nightmare. Not only is it still WAYYYY too early in the year to be drawing any real conclusions, the Dodgers have faced:
– the Dbacks’ mop-up guy twice in the 1st 3 games. Matt Koch went 4.1IP and 62 pitches on opening day giving up 5 runs and then was brought back 2 days later to throw 27 more pitches and give up another 3 runs while only recording 2 outs.
– John Ryan Murphy (a position player) in that 3rd game for 2 full innings and 7 runs.
– They faced 5 lefties in their 1st 8 games.
– They’ve also made a trip to Planet Coors piling on 29 runs in 3 games.
Heck, because Murphy was allowed to go almost 2 times through the order throwing 59 mph “sinkers”, there are still 3 Dodgers (Barnes, Pederson, Freese) whose average FB velo faced is still under 90 with Alex Verdugo at 90.6 and Bellinger, Muncy and Taylor all still under 92.
No Franco? Guy hasn’t struck out in 35 straight at bats, and is under 5% on season.
Supported by a SwStr% drop from 10.3 to 6.4% so far, too.
He’s been v good, but I didn’t include him bc I’ve fallen for him a million times before and I’m not sure how much is skills improvement and how much is batting 8th and being pitched around. He has taken advantage of some mistakes to hit 4 HRs and post a nice OPS even outside of the BB, but I’m playing a little wait-and-see with him.
Paul, I hate to be that guy, but I seriously need an SP rankings update.
Will Sale be in the top 20? I’ve gotten sale (my share) for berrios and Castillo both turned down.
No Mike Trout?! He of the 3.25 BB/K rate?! He who has struck out only 8.2% of the time?! Man, talk about underrated!
All (half) joking aside, this is super interesting, and I’m excited to see how these guys pan out.
Paul, how do you feel about Chapman’s teammate, Pinder? 2018 – 26.4% vs 2019 – 10.6%. Looks like he’s swinging less outside the zone (36% v 32%) and more in the zone (77% vs 85%) but his walk rate has decreased perhaps due to making more contact. With more playing time I was thinking (maybe hoping) a breakout is possible.
Any headline with “Whiff Test” in it is going to pique my interest