Underrated and Overrated: Marwin Gonzalez and Chris Taylor Edition
So far in 2018, the hot stove has been more of a cool counter, leading to a dearth of enjoyable “change of scenery” fantasy baseball topics. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of fantasy fun to be had, because the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) has draft data ready to roll. I’m going position by position through this slow offseason, picking out players with an average draft position (ADP) significantly higher or lower than I expected.
Today, it’s time to discuss the shortstop position — namely Chris Taylor and Marwin Gonzalez. Neither guy is a full-time shortstop in real life, but in fantasy that’s where the vast majority of owners will play them in 2018. (The player pool I used included all players with at least 10 starts at short in 2017.) One of the main commonalities between Gonzalez and Taylor is that they’re both eligible to play several positions (1B/2B/3B/SS/OF for Marwin, 2B/SS/OF for Taylor).
Both players also experienced shocking breakouts in 2017, so it’s probably a good idea to see where they stand heading into the 2018 fantasy season, correct? I sure thought so.
| 2017 Overall Rank | 2018 Overall ADP | 2017 SS Rank | 2018 SS ADP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Taylor | 69 | 91.8 | 4 | 8 |
| Marwin Gonzalez | 85 | 114.6 | 7 | 13 |
I’ll get this out of the way right now: this post is more about Marwin being underrated than it is Taylor being overrated, although I do believe both statements to be true, simply to differing degrees. Essentially, when I looked through the ADP data for shortstop, Marwin leapt off the page as being obviously (to me) underrated by fantasy owners. After all, I wrote about him last May, referring to him as “The Mostly Legit Marwin Gonzalez,” and my opinion hasn’t changed. I still think he’s mostly legit. Scanning the rest of the shortstop list, I decided I would rather have him than Taylor despite the relatively significant gap between their respective ADPs.
It’s not just fantasy owners who are underrating Marwin, as a look around the industry confirms — it’s analysts too. In fact, I think many fantasy outlets are underrating Gonzalez even more than fantasy players are. While several experts had these two pretty close in the rankings, the only major analyst in the industry I could find who ranks Gonzalez ahead of Taylor is Scott White over at CBS. And that’s fine, the entire point of these “underrated and overrated” posts is based on presenting my unpopular opinions at each position, in a manner that I hope at least makes you think twice about the players discussed.
Some outlets are really not buying Marwin’s breakout though. For example, Fantrax has him as their No. 19 shortstop, which is a full five spots behind Gleyber Torres! What?! ESPN has Gonzalez ranked behind Andrelton Simmons, which is also pure unadulterated insanity, in my opinion.
Let’s get to the core of the issue here, which is my assertion that Marwin will be a more valuable fantasy asset than Chris Taylor in 2018. Both of these guys were entirely different players in 2017 than they had ever been previously, so I feel like they’re on relatively even footing regarding the “was it a fluke or a breakout” question. I personally think both players were closer to the breakout side of things, as they both made some concrete adjustments that made sense within the context of their production levels.
Taylor seems to have followed the Justin Turner model for success, working with the same hitting consultant that teammate Turner did before his own breakout. Taylor reinvented his swing to improve his ability to drive the ball in the air, and the results were both immediate and significant. If you want to read more about it in detail, I invite you to read Travis Sawchik’s post from October that I linked above, but this synopsis gives you a good idea:
Taylor’s average fly-ball distance jumped to 323 feet this year, up from 314 combined between the 2015 and 2016 seasons. From 2015 to -16, his average exit velocity on fly balls was 90.2 mph; this season, it increased to 91.1 mph. His ground-ball rate declined by the three percentage points.
As for the switch-hitting Marwin, he was also a new man at the plate last year, with major differences in both his lefty and righty swings. For the full story, check out my post from last May that I referenced earlier, but for a brief synopsis, it’s almost like he found a happy medium between the extremes of his former swings from each side of the plate. As a lefty swinger, Gonzalez opened up his closed-off stance and stood up straighter. From the right side, he closed off a previously wide open stance, while also dropping his hands from shoulder-high to chest level. For what it’s worth, he also hit the ball in the air more than ever before last year, with a 36.2% FB% a few ticks above his career 32.1% mark.
Aside from the mechanics, Marwin became far more selective at the plate, an aspect of his game that led to our Jeff Zimmerman naming him as one of the most-likely players to maintain his major plate discipline changes from last season. The fact that Gonzalez swung at 8.2% fewer pitches outside the zone in 2017 than he did in 2016 is truly impressive.
As you probably gathered by now, I do think both Gonzalez and Taylor are “for real,” insofar as I think they will both produce at a high enough level to maintain full-time jobs on their highly competitive teams. The reason I’m higher on Marwin is because of that plate discipline I just mentioned, and conveniently, it’s the reason I’m a bit wary of Taylor as well.
I know it seems like players strike out all the time these days, but there were still just 18 qualified hitters who struck out in at least 25% of their plate appearances last season, and Taylor was one of them (to be fair, his rate was exactly 25.0%). Of those 17 other players, only five (Tim Anderson, Javier Baez, Tim Beckham, Byron Buxton, Adam Duvall) walked less frequently than Taylor (8.8%), and all but two of them (Anderson and Buxton) hit more homers than Taylor’s 21. Every single one of those 17 other 25%+ K-rate hitters hit for a lower batting average than Taylor’s .288.
What I’m trying to say here is that Taylor doesn’t have the typical mediocre-AVG, high-power profile you expect from a guy who strikes out so much, and that’s troubling to me. If he maintains a 25% K-rate, his BABIP would only have to drop from last year’s .361 to around .320 to stick his AVG in the .250 range. I’m not saying it’ll happen, but I am pointing out that it wouldn’t take much.
Before we wrap things up, let’s take a look at how their numbers from 2017 look side by side:
- Taylor (568 PA): .288/.354/.496, 21 HR, 17 SB, 157 R+RBI, 25.0% K, 8.8% BB
- Gonzalez (515 PA): .303/.377/.530, 23 HR, 8 SB, 157 R+RBI, 19.2% K, 9.5% BB
The value of these thought exercises for me is that it highlights players I should target in my drafts. I don’t like to set hard targets for which players I want to draft, because this has bitten me in the past as I’ve overpaid due to tunnel vision. Instead, I like to group players by position into tiers, then target the underrated players in each tier.
Along those lines, I would like to have Chris Taylor on my fantasy rosters, but due to my concerns about his plate discipline, I would be more comfortable spending, say, an 11th-round pick on him, instead of the 8th-round pick it’s currently costing to acquire him. As for Marwin, I wouldn’t have had any problem burning an 8th-round pick on him, but I can probably snag him at least a round or two later than that.
And that’s why I’ll probably own a whole lot of Marwin this year. When it comes to Taylor, I have a sneaking suspicion other owners in my leagues will be willing to spend a higher price than I will.
Scott Strandberg started writing for Rotographs in 2013. He works in small business consultation, and he also writes A&E columns for The Norman Transcript newspaper. Scott lives in Seattle, WA.
One of the great things about Marwin Gonzalez is that not only did he cut his strikeout rate in 2017, but he also doubled his walk rate
I agree. Anyone talks about marwin getting lucky and being bound to regress and that is probably true but Taylor also outperformed his xwoba quite a bit.
Wrote an article about that couple months ago https://www.fangraphs.com/community/chris-taylor-has-been-great-but-expecthim–to-regress/
Sure it is great that he improved his LA but he still is a guy with below average K%-BB% and around average power. With good LA that is good for 20+ homers in these days but he still isnt Turner, altuve or Murphy. Those 3 guys also learned to elevate without great raw power nd it sounds like a nice similarity but those 3 guys had a excellent K-bb and the power was just a bonus turning average hitters into stars, while Taylor needs most of his 25 bombs or so to get to average unless he runs a 370 babip.
Don’t get me wrong, he had a great breakout, and I expect him to be ok and a valuable fantasy asset with position,power and speed (which marwin doesn’t have) but don’t expect him to be a 120 wrc+ guy. If he posts a 100 wrc+ that would be great.
Marwin had BY FAR career highs in wRC+ and HRs. Are these sustainable? Its great that he showed better plate discipline but will the power stick? Will he maintain a .343 BABIP? 90 RBIs batting 7th? Many of the projection systems say otherwise.
Gonzalez had a .318 xwOBA last year per Statcast vs. an actual .387 (per Statcast – their wOBA always differs from fangraphs by a few points). THat was the 2nd most of anyone with more than 250 PA (Eduardo Nunez was 1st). That’s a big difference.
Taylor has two paths to producing value – power and speed. Gonzalez has one – power. And it’s not even very much power when you consider it comes with maybe 5 or 7 steals. You’re looking at a ceiling of about 30 HR+SB whereas that’s Taylor’s floor. That’s why Taylor is going higher. But go ahead and take Marwin first. I can confidently predict that you will be sorely disappointed.
Do you play in a two-category league? There’s a reason I discussed their significant plate discipline differences, and thus how Marwin is *much* more likely to maintain a high batting average than Taylor is. It’s funny how the most arrogantly written comment is usually the most reductive argument.
Do you play in a one category league? R+RBI is almost entirely dependent upon team and lineup position. Taylor is projected to bat leadoff and Gonzalez 7th. Another big advantage to Taylor, who will not only see more R+RBI but also a significant amount more PA. Yes, you are correct on one point. Gonzalez has better plate discipline and is much more likely to post a high AVG. He’s also projected for just 24 HR+SB, which is… not good.
Look, if Taylor was going 70 spots ahead of Gonzalez then you would have a point. But the difference in ADP is just not very much, and as I said, Taylor has two paths to fantasy value (power and speed) whereas Gonzalez only has one (power). These are the two main sources of fantasy value. If you disagree with that, then clearly we have very different opinions on how fantasy baseball works. Good luck to you.
You’re cherry-picking so many of your personal assumptions and then passing them off as facts. Your argument is essentially a textbook definition of confirmation bias. You’re looking for things that will tell you you’re right, and ignoring everything that suggests you might be wrong.
For one example, Taylor had 53 PA more than Marwin last year, yet they had *exactly the same* number of R+RBI, so you can’t just bluster “Taylor will have more R+RBI” as if I’m some idiot for not pointing that out, especially when Marwin has better on-base skills. Even more important than that is that I would argue that AVG is at least as scarce, and possibly even more scarce, than SB in the modern fantasy landscape. (If you would like to learn more about that, I believe it’s Jeff Zimmerman who’s written about that recently here at Rotographs.)
Will Taylor be more valuable than Marwin in 2018? Sure, it’s entirely possible, and according to both ADP and most expert rankings, the majority of people seem to believe that. But as I said in the post, “the entire point of these “underrated and overrated” posts is based on presenting my unpopular opinions at each position, in a manner that I hope at least makes you think twice about the players discussed.”
I’m with Scott here; I’d value BA over SB in general, and especially when Taylor is going 10-20 picks higher
Marwin turned into somebody I believed in upon researching Daniel Castro. I mention that only because it’s silly.
You can see his year to year growth as he tried different things then finally put it all together. Probably prone to volatility, but few utility guys aren’t.
One of the great things about Chris Taylor is that he played 14 games at SS and isn’t even eligible there in most leagues. 🙁
I have both, which one should I keep for $1?
I would also note that Gonzalez’s job seems a little bit more secure that Taylor’s. The Dodgers have a bunch of OF – Joc, Puig, Hernandez and Verdugo, plus Kemp if they actually keep him around (may be forced to with his contract). You also can’t discount the possibility of them putting Bellinger back in the OF if they find a good 1B trade/FA. Guy can unquestionably play out there. In the IF, there’s not much room at 3B or SS and 2B has both Forsythe and Barnes. As for utility, Hernandez can also play all over having started at 7 positions last year.
Taylor was great last year and no question that if he hits anywhere close to like he did last year he’s going to get PT. But it wouldn’t take much of a slump for him to suddenly find some time on the bench. He’s far from a sure thing
Gonzalez OTOH has a lock on the super-utility role. The Astros have a number of exciting young prospects who are probably ready for a shot at the majors, but they are all OF or corner IF guys. None of those guys are covering 2B/SS. I suspect that Gonzalez gets his 500 PA playing 5 positions again, giving everyone a blow every 6 or 7 days. I mean HInch has used him pretty much the same way for 2.5 years now, ever since the middle of the 2015 season.
Not sure I agree here. Houston has tons of outfield depth in the way of Reddick, Marisnick, Fisher and potentially Tucker if he performs well in AAA.
Both these players are at a major risk for losing playing time as 2018 progresses.
No, you’re right. My post probably overstates it a bit. I do think Gonzalez is more locked in though. He was terrible in 2016 and Hinch still ran him out there for 500+ PA. I also think that if the Astros are as good as everyone thinks they are, they might have a really healthy lead by mid-summer and have absolutely no incentive to call up the kids and start their service clocks before they need to.
Eh. Be wary of Marwin for 2018
Marwin was buoyed by a 22.4% Hr/Fb rate in 1st half.
Fell back down to earth in 2nd half at 11.5
Previous three season Hr/Fb rate
2016 = 11.6
2015 = 13.8
2014 = 9.0
Also has pretty big platoon split vs. lefties
vs. RHP: (Wrc+ = 154)
vs. LHP: (Wrc+ = 115)
Also, take a look at his batted ball numbers. They are almost identical to previous years. Only thing besides plate discipline that really changed was his Hr/Fb% in the first half. For fantasy purposes, and using previous year’s stats, and 2nd half of 2017, he starts to look like a 14 hr, 8 sb guy. Plate discipline may stick so he could repeat avg. and obp. Unless you’re starving for avg. or obp., you can get roughly the same counting stats (minus avg. or obp) in Jose Reyes wayyyyyyy later.
Not a fan of either of these players for fantasy purposes. Both had crazy BABIPs in 2017 that are unlikely to be repeated. But, perhaps more importantly, both play in deep lineups that will quickly see them to the bench if they have a couple bad weeks.