Why We Missed: Mitch Haniger
Mitch Haniger surprised about everyone this season with top-25 production when his average draft position was over 200 in NFBC leagues. In all fairness, he should have made several sleeper lists but the industry failed to pick up on his productive but ignored 2017 season. He’s the type of hitter owners need to focus on rostering, late-round injured hitters.
His stats speak volumes. Here are some of Haniger’s projections and results over the past two seasons.
| Stat Source | PA | AVG | OBP | SLG | HR | SB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 Steamer | 470 | .249 | .315 | .413 | 15 | 6 |
| 2017 April | 95 | .342 | .447 | .608 | 4 | 2 |
| 2017 April – June | Strained | Oblique | ||||
| 2017 June | 65 | .231 | .367 | .354 | 2 | 1 |
| 2017 July | 68 | .176 | .233 | .279 | 1 | 0 |
| 2017 August | 38 | .211 | .250 | .474 | 2 | 0 |
| 2017 Sept/Oct | 119 | .353 | .374 | .613 | 7 | 2 |
| 2017 Full Season | 410 | .282 | .352 | .491 | 16 | 5 |
| 2018 Steamer | 536 | .253 | .324 | .433 | 19 | 7 |
| 2018 Full Season | 683 | .285 | .366 | .493 | 25 | 8 |
His projection coming into 2017 was decent with a 20 HR and 8 SB profile when prorating to 600 PA. The season started out great until he went on the DL with an oblique injury which lasted for over a month. He came back from the DL, struggled, got hurt a coup of times (finger and face), and finally turned it on over the last month. This profile screams sleeper and everyone slept on him.
By just prorating his 2017 season to 600 PA, he would be at 23 dingers and 7 bags with an acceptable .282 AVG. His results were similar to another pre-season unknown, Marwin Gonzalez (23 HR, 8 SB, .303 AVG). Gonzalez’s average ADP was 123, about 100 picks before Haniger went off the board.
As for Haniger’s 2018 season, he showed the value of a well-rounded player. A near .300 batting average, over 20 homers, and about 10 stolen bases placed him as a top-25 overall batter. Unexciting stats can still be good.
Going forward, owners can take several lessons from this failure. First, dig into hitters after pick 100 who struggled with injuries but showed positive production when healthy. Most owners are going to hope the top names like Kris Bryant and Jose Altuve will rebound. They aren’t going to surprise anyone. Instead, players like Kyle Seager (toe), Steven Souza Jr.(pec), and Jorge Soler (rib) might be acquired for nothing and end up being a top-50 player.
Another item is to prorate each player’s previous season to 600 plate appearances to see if anyone pops up if given more playing time. With Haniger’s nearly identical pro-rated 2017 and 2018 seasons, his 2017 season would have stood out and owners could have taken notice. Instead, he was relegated to the reserve rounds.
Missing on Haniger’s points to some obvious projects for me later in the offseason. Until then, let me know of any players who the industry missed on and there was no obvious cause.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
The “other Jeff” highlighted Haniger to Fangraph’s readers 2 Springs ago. I got him in my auction then for $15. Now trying to decide if he warrants an extension.
The 10 HR April is clearly an outlier for the season, so the question with Haniger is which is – do you think his power is closer to that 10 HR month, or closer to the two 1 HR months he put up?
Nice full season stats, but I didn’t really come out of 2018 thinking I know what kind of player Haniger is going to be next year. Having owned him all season in some weekly dynasty leagues, I can say that if I’d sold in April I’d have ended the year happy with having done so. Since OF is so deep betting on getting a top 60 or so player out of him seems unwarranted, particularly since at 27 we can’t expect a significantly higher ceiling.
Look at the ‘too early’ mocks…are you confident about Haniger at pick 70ish over other OFers you can get in that range (Rosario, Pham, Myers). Heck I’d rather roll the dice on Ozuna or Pollock’s top 10 OF upside with the same pick.
I am with Kyle here. He actually hit the wire in a few of my 250+ entry leagues. I wish I had grabbed him since he finished strong, but I was actually not buying at all , and even being a Mariners fan I am not buying in at his current adp for 2019. Too much of his value was tied to batting average, which is much too hard of a stat to repeat.
As an M’s fan, I remember being very excited for the Segura/Haniger trade, and was able to pick Mitch up quite low in the draft, and stuck with him all year last year and was very rewarded. This year I was able to get him quite low again, and he was a great player all season long. Don’t think I’m going to be able to snag him so low three years in a row after his production this year, though.
I missed him cause I worried about the injury risk. But, your right he deserved a late round pick, but nonetheless went undrafted in my shallow league.
I generally believe that staying healthy is a skill, and so the issue with injured players is determining whether or not they have the “remaining healthy” skill. Along these lines, I would be more optimistic about Kyle Seager than I would be about Jorge Soler in 2019.
That said, taking appropriate calculated risks is a big part of fantasy baseball success.