The Argument Against Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a great hitter. His strikeout rate is low and he hits the ball very hard. He was really, really good in 2022, but drafting him as the first first baseman in fantasy is risky.
That’s not to say that the other first basemen don’t carry risk. Freddie Freeman is 33-years-old, Pete Alonso hits in a pitchers’ park, and Paul Goldschmidt is 35. Confessedly, we’re gonna be picky with Guerrero in this space. Because of his ADP. When we’re talking about the top-25, scrutiny is a necessary part of the process. You may leave this post thinking Guerrero is worthy of being a top-12 overall pick and the top first baseman. That’s totally fine because Guerrero is fine for that draft slot. The argument here is that we can get a better outfielder or starting pitcher with that pick and wait for first base.
In 2021, Guerrero put together an excellent season. Especially for someone under 25-years-old, let alone just 22. He hit 48 home runs and the Blue Jays lineup helped him to 111 runs batted in and 123 runs scored. He slashed a godly .311/.401/.601 with a .417 xwOBA with a 55.2% hard hit rate and an elite 15.1% barrel rate.
But he came back to earth in 2022.
Guerrero slashed a very good (not-great) .274/.339/.480 with 32 home runs, falling just short of 100 runs batted in and runs scored. His BABIP fell from .311 to .289. His expected stats really took a tumble. That xWOBA fell to .348 with everything else. His 50.4% hard hit rate was still one of the best in the league, but his 11.2% barrel rate seemed to suffer from the dip.
That near-10% drop in hard hit rate could’ve been the difference between him being of the best hitters in the game to him being a really good hitter at a position stacked with power.
Is Guerrero the juggernaut we saw in 2021 or is he the version of him that we saw in 2022? As always, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. If the 2022 numbers are our floor, that’s great. but only if everyone else hits their floor. If we draft Elvis Andrus and he sucks, it’s of no consequence. But for a top-12 pick, we shouldn’t really care about floor when hitting that floor does damage to our squad because the opportunity cost is so high.
This isn’t just the cost of passing up on better first basemen for their price tag, but outfielders like Yordan Alvarez and his 21.0% barrel rate on a 59.8% hard hit rate or pitchers like Corbin Burnes.
Burnes is only 28 and just logged 10.83 K/9 with only 2.27 BB/9 and 1.02 for a 3.05 SIERA over 202.0 innings. He isn’t just a per-inning wizard like, say, Carlos Rodon. He can log the volume we need from a top starting pitcher.
The concerns about those aforementioned first basemen are legitimate — especially Freeman for the price — but we’re getting discounts on Alonso, Goldschmidt, and Olson.
If we’re gonna cling to 2021, here are the 2021-22 barrel rates for those five:
Alonso, 13.5%
Olson, 13.1%
Guerrero, 13.1%
Goldschmidt, 12.6%
Guerrero doesn’t have a significant lineup advantage over these three guys, either. The Braves are stacked, the Mets are stacked, and the Cardinals are strong.
Steamer has Guerrero’s projected .393 as the best at the position. They could be right. That’s a great reason to draft him in the top-12. I’d rather overdraft Burnes and wait for first base. In a 12-team league, we have both on the swing, but there’s no frickin’ way I’m passing up on Alvarez for Guerrero.
Alex Sonty is a professional DFS and poker player, while contributing to RotoGrinders and FanGraphs, as well as serving as a part-time political science professor in Chicago, IL. He’s been playing fantasy sports since 1996 and entered the DFS realm in 2014, currently playing high-stakes MLB and NFL cash games and GPPs. He is a Chicago Tribune and SB Nation alum, while holding a J.D./M.A. and L.L.M. from DePaul University.
Good stuff and I cannot dispute any of your logic. But I’m a gambling man. I think Vlad is hooked on running and is planning to make good use of the pitch clock/base size. So, 15 SB tips the scale for me. 🙂
Vlad did not come back to Earth in 2022, he just played all his games in MLB parks. His 2021 splits:
MLB parks: .292/.518/.893 with 27 HRs.
MiLB parks: .364/.827/1.296 with 21 HRs
Unless Vlad changes his approach at the plate, 2023 will probably fall between his 2021 MLB and his 2022 numbers.
He still underperformed that 2021 MLB park figure by 74 points of OPS.
For a guy who crushes balls like Vlad, launch angle is pretty relevant.
2020: 4.6
2021: 9.4
2022: 4.3
He basically took 6% of battled balls from fly balls and turned them into grounders. Less homers, more double play balls.
Are these splits BA/SLG/OPS? Once I saw that it couldn’t be BA/OBP/SLG, I assumed it was maybe OBP/SLG/OPS, and spent way too many seconds trying to figure out why 292+518=/=893…
This website also lists his 2021 away line at .295/.382/.503 (or .295/.503/.885 under your rubric), so I’m not sure if you’re citing a home/road split, or something else.
All that aside, I’ll point out that .292/.375/.518 (2021 “MLB Parks” line) is still much better than .274/.339/.479 (2022 line), which would support the statement that he “came back to earth in 2022”
its BA/OBA/OPS…bad copy and paste job.
The Jays played in 3 home parks in 2022, two of which were minor league parks. Baseballreference.com has splits by ballpark.
I understand the logic here, but I am faithfully inclined that Vlady is where he should be. He is very special and integral to the team no matte where he plays.He is the “Heart” of the team.
“But for a top-12 pick, we shouldn’t really care about floor when hitting that floor does damage to our squad because the opportunity cost is so high.”
This runs counter to everything I’ve ever read about drafting strategy, so I’d love for you to expand on this in another piece. Intuitively it seems like you want a very high floor for your first pick since ceiling-level performances are so unpredictable and the consequences of getting subpar performance from this pick are so damaging to your team’s prospects.
I think the classic assumption is that you draft for floor when the floor is already super high. Think Turner, Alvarez or Betts. What Alex seems to be warning is that Guerrero’s floor may actually be lower than we think and perhaps a negative compared to other potential first rounders, especially with 1B being reasonably deep. Imagine a season where he goes .285, 31, ~100,~100 and you pass up on a true ace to draft him, etc.
If his floor is .285/31/100/100 then that seems like a great reason to draft him!
As a first rounder? Sure second or third rounder! But that’s bad for the first round unless you add 15 to 20 SBs
Nobody is gonna lose their league because they got a second-round performance out of their first-round pick.
I think the writer agrees with you, but the sentence/para are confusingly phrased.
But to the larger point, yeah. You can’t win your league with your first round pick, but you sure can lose it.
Steamer projects Guerrero for a 161 wrc+, which is absurd. He had a 166 in his peak season and 132 last year. Effectively, Steamer thinks last year shouldn’t count.
I’m not trusting it at all.
Echoing what someone alluded to in an earlier comment, how can 2021 even really be factored when he so thoroughly dominated in the Buffalo Triple A “home stadium”?
Keep in mind that wRC+ does include a park factor adjustment, so that 189 Home wRC+ was in comparison to other hitters in that same park.
Steamer also looks at underlying skills, it’s not just a weighted average of wRC+.
So it appears that Steamer thinks he got unlucky with his outcomes as compared with batted ball results last year, while simultaneously thinking he didn’t get similarly lucky in 2021.
Steamer doesn’t think last year shouldn’t count, nor does it think that 2021 shouldn’t count. It thinks both should count, and Vladito’s true talent level is closer to 2021 than 2022. This is why projection systems are better than the vast majority of ad-hoc predictions. Steamer may not be correct, but at least it’s consistent.
Alex your last ‘graf is missing some info:
Is that wOBA? Would be helpful to compare it to the top 4 1B again for context.
I didn’t know that “confessedly” was a word, never mind a synonym for “admittedly”. Nice.
And yes, it really does seem that Vlad is trading on his name value when the other first basemen you mention can probably be had just a bit later. It’s tough to let go of the 40 HR dream, but I like the idea of ‘settling’ for a guy like Freeman who will never reach that dream but won’t hurt the lineup for the most part.
It’s almost entirely an opinion piece — sports arguing. Interesting read, but perhaps more Fangraphs than Rotographs material.
100% agree. I thought he’d stay on my $100 auction value keeper forever, but thanks to JRod, I’ll have to decide on keeping Vladdy or Tatis jr+ a few extra bucks. Leaning Tatis since I have extra picks and the power/SB combo of those two could be nasty.