Reviewing The Hitters that Baffle the Rankers: The Top 100

Let’s take a short break from the starting pitcher reviews and move onto recapping something I did for the first time this year. Since we had five rankers for our preseason consensus, it was only natural that there would be some players we disagreed on. Sure, we didn’t rank everyone exactly the same, but most were in the general vicinity. For these players that were part of our preseason top 100, our opinions were all over the map. Let’s find out who got it right.

Comparing the Rankers: Evan Gattis

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Evan Gattis	30	154	44	84	110	77*

*Gattis was lumped in with the OFers in Zach’s top 300, ranking 94 there. However, he was catcher eligible, where his value would have been higher. I figured he performed just a bit better than Brian McCann, but slightly worse than Russell Martin, and so arbitrarily slotted him in at 77

When Gattis was traded to the Astros, he was expected to rotate between the outfield and DH. There was promise of a full-time role and a new career high in plate appearances. He also moved to a better hitting environment. The extra playing time was there, but his performance actually dipped, as both his BABIP and HR/FB rate slipped. He wasn’t as valuable as I projected, but significantly better than the rankings outside the top 100.

Comparing the Rankers: Ben Revere

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Ben Revere	40	158	66	104	99	45

Revere did what he normally does, though took an 18 stolen base hit. Yet, he still finished 45th overall in value. It proves yet again thtn those one-trick stolen base ponies are usually severely undervalued. I can’t imagine we differed drastically on the projection here, so it simply had to be a valuation issue that caused such discrepancies in ranking.

Comparing the Rankers: Chris Carter

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Chris Carter	82	116	173	111	69	Outside top 300

I single-handedly caused Carter to be included in this article, as my ranking was the outlier. I was concerned about Carter’s power given some red flags, plus the Astros glut of first base and designated hitter candidates that had the potential to cut into Carter’s playing time. Both concerns proved warranted as Carter’s HR/FB rate dropped to a career low and he failed to reach 500 plate appearances.

Comparing the Rankers: Brandon Belt

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Brandon Belt	96	139	81	156	76	124

Belt was coming off an injury-plagued 2014 and still hadn’t lived up to the expectations many of us had for him upon his debut back in 2011. So it’s understandable that the rankings were all over the place. Looking at his final stat line, I’m rather shocked that he still underperformed my ranking, as I cannot imagine being any more optimistic. A quick look reminds me that I was, in fact, slightly more bullish, particularly with the home run power. In 2014, he broke out over a small sample with a surging HR/FB rate, but he wasn’t even able to sustain half those gains. He also lost some fly ball percentage, which further hurt his home run total.

Comparing the Rankers: Hanley Ramirez

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Hanley Ramirez	42	21	9	19	82	179

Yikes. Things were looking fantastic after April, but then it was all downhill from there. He launched 10 home runs that month, then just nine over the remainder of the season. As usual, he battled a litany of injuries including one to both of his shoulders. Ramirez is used to being bitten by the injury bug, but you have to figure it hampered his performance. Dare I call him potentially undervalued next year?

Comparing the Rankers: Christian Yelich

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Christian Yelich	34	39	92	75	41	110

Yelich was one of those trendy sleepers who got so hyped as a sleeper that he was no longer one. Paul and I didn’t fall for it as we were both significantly more pessimistic than the other three rankers. Clearly, not bearish enough! Of course, back and knee injuries cut into his playing time, so that would explain both his reduced plate appearance total and ranking outside the top 100. But this is still a hitter who has zero power upside given that pitiful mid-teens fly ball rate and without blazing speed to be a strong asset in stolen bases, you’re left relying on him to sustain a huge BABIP.

Comparing the Rankers: Todd Frazier

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Todd Frazier	87	47	89	54	103	63

The questions were — how far will his steals total slide and how sustainable was his HR/FB rate spike? Depending on how you answered those questions, your ranking was either around 50 like Dan and Paul or near 100 like Jeff, Zach and I. His steals total fell exactly halfway back to 2013’s level, while his HR/FB rate slipped marginally, but was made up for by a huge surge in fly ball rate. If it wasn’t for that increase in fly ball rate, he would have likely ranked closer to the trio of pessimistic rankers.

Comparing the Rankers: Jay Bruce

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Jay Bruce	88	85	101	59	42	86

Once again, we find two optimists and three pessimists. We all figured there had to be some dead cat bounce in that bat, but how much? His HR/FB rate actually declined for a third straight year to hit a new career low, but a strikeout rate improvement to his second best mark offset the damage of the loss of home run power. He also reversed his tumbling fly ball rate trend, pushing it back above 40%. With trends all over the place, I’m at a loss of what to make of him in 2016. We’ll first have to see if he remains in a Reds uniform as a ballpark switch is likely to hurt.

Comparing the Rankers: Michael Brantley

NAME	Jeff	Dan	Mike	Paul	Zach	Actual
Michael Brantley	36	27	19	9	8	36

Brantley battled back issues throughout the season, but only missed a couple of games here and there. Still, he missed enough time that he lost 80 plate appearances, which certainly hurt his ultimate fantasy rank. The back issues didn’t seem to matter to his offensive game though, as his ISO barely regressed and his HR/FB rate remained high enough to sit at the second best mark of his career. But as we had to expect, he got a bit worse everywhere and 2014’s surprise breakout fell back into more sustainable fantasy value. Normally, I would proclaim this a safe level to project going forward, but now that he’ll miss time in the early going recovering from shoulder surgery, it’s anyone’s guess how he’ll fare.