Three Big Second Halves You May Not Have Noticed

Here’s one you haven’t heard before: the baseball season is long. (Who knew?) One potential downside of the six-month grind is that it’s hard to follow everything. My work is baseball – watching it, writing and talking about it – and I still can’t possibly follow everything that is going on in this great game. It’s impossible to miss the historical seasons that Zack Greinke and Bryce Harper are having. Even a breakout season like A.J. Pollock’s is rather prominent. What I find getting lost in the shuffle at times are strong second halves that follow a down or injury-riddled first half.

The underperformance or injury sets the tone for the perception of that player’s season and it can carry throughout the season even in the face of high-end performance refuting the initial look we got at that player. Here are three strong second-half performances that you might be missing:

Travis d’Arnaud [C, NYM]

A solid second half last year plus the rich prospect pedigree of this former first-rounder was enough to make him one of the more appealing C2 options this year sitting 13th among backstops by ADP according to FantasyPros. He came out of the gates firing with a .317/.356/.537 line including 2 HR and 10 RBI in his first 11 games before a fractured right finger sent him to the DL.

He returned a month and a half later and continued to produce (.846 OPS, 2 more HR) before another injury sent him right back to the DL, this time a hyperextended left elbow. He’s been back since July 31st and hit better than either of the first two tiny samples with a .291/.372/.559 line including 8 HR and 24 RBI in 35 games (145 PA).

Unfortunately with just 54 games played all year, he won’t show up on any full season leaderboards unless you sharply adjust the PA/AB qualifications way down. Hell, he doesn’t even show up on the second-half catcher leaderboard because he returned two weeks after the second half started. But once you do adjust down to a 140+ PA threshold, his wRC+ jumps to the top of the class among catchers at 158. His eight second-half homers are tied for fourth-most despite him having 14 and 43 fewer PA than the other guys with eight (Russell Martin and Yan Gomes).

d’Arnaud is single homer shy of matching his HR/RBI totals from 2014 in exactly half the game. He has career-highs in flyball rate (42%), pull rate (43%), and HR/FB rate (17%) while his soft contact rate dropped from 20% to 17%, matching his career-best. The HR/FB rate is definitely above the 11% league average, but not so far above that he can’t maintain some semblance of it. Plus, this has him as like a 35-HR hitter which is super-elite, so even some regression back toward the 11% mark he showed last year would be fine and likely have him around the low-20s in HR total over a full season.

Jonathan Schoop [2B, BAL]

Do you remember seeing Schoop late in your drafts this year? You’d be searching for a player and see Schoop with his 16 HR and wonder “why is he still here this late?!” and then you’d vomit all over your computer after seeing the .209/.244/.354 line he had while accumulating those 16 bombs clocks. Even with the ugly triple slash, there was reason to like a 23-year old with that kind of pop as a late-round pick. His season has played out somewhat like d’Arnaud’s in that he looked good right away before and injury cost him most of the first half.

He clubbed 3 HR right out of the gate posting a .940 OPS in nine games before suffering a knee injury on a takeout slide that would end up costing him 2.5 months. He returned just before the All-Star break and popped two more home runs in six games which would serve as a prelude to his big second half. Schoop has put up a .297/.323/.488 line in 221 PA with 9 HR and 27 RBI.

His 119 wRC+ is ninth among 2B, HR are third-most, RBI are seventh-most, and his 23 runs scored are 16th-most. His baseline skills aren’t really any different as he’s walking and striking out more, but neither difference is all that tangible. The real big shift has been his BABIP, going from .249 to .345. Some of that is definitely a shift in fortune. He was likely unlucky last year to have such a low figure and there’s likely some good luck going his way to be 42 points north of the 2B average this year.

Schoop smashes the ball, though, so I could see him maintaining a rate north of .300. He isn’t a finished product, but it’s been a really impressive season and like d’Arnaud, I think a low-20s HR output in 2016 is quite possible. Schoop had 16% K and 8% BB rates across his 2,017 minor league PA and if he can start to push his 25% K and 3% BB rates as a major leaguer closer to his work as a prospect, we could see a full-blown breakout next year.

Franklin Gutierrez [OF, SEA]

I’ll give you a break on this one, it’s easy to have missed what Guti’s doing as he’s only played 48 games (a four-year high after 40, 41, and 0 the last three seasons), 36 of them in the second half during which he has a .324/.387/.731 line in 119 PA. He’s done his best to make up for the lost time with 13 HR (12 in the 2H), two shy of what he did in his previous 173 games from 2011-2013 and tied for the second-most he’s ever had in a single season. Gutierrez rose to prominence because of exemplary defense in centerfield, but he developed into a solid power-speed combo for fantasy with an average of 13 HR and 14 SB from 2007-2010.

But then a relentless string of injuries limited him to that paltry 173-game total from 2011-2014 including something called ankylosing spondylitis costing him all of last year. Hamstring, oblique, groin, stomach, chest, and concussion helped him run up seven DL stints (including thrice hitting the 60-day DL) the last four years.

It’s one of my favorite stories of the year as I’ve always like Gutierrez, but I’m not sure it’s actionable beyond 2015. He’s obviously riding an obscene .365 BABIP and 38% HR/FB rate to be this hot. There aren’t any skills changes that explain something like this because it’s obviously unsustainable. Plus, the injury issues haven’t disappeared and aren’t going to get better as a 33-year old.

He recently missed six games with a groin issue. Of course, he has hit homers in both games since returning so maybe not even injuries can slow him, at least not in 2015. I’m definitely riding the wave the rest of the way, but let’s see where he winds up in 2016 before deciding how much we want to invest. Even if he’s $1 or whatever the free agent pickup draft round cost is in your AL-only, I still don’t think he’s worth keeping so don’t go out trading for him with that in mind.