Yasiel Puig Excels, Disappoints

In many ways, Yasiel Puig was sensational this season. His .296/.382/.480 line in 640 plate appearances marked him as one of the best hitters in the game. He posted a 92/16/69/11/.296 fantasy line worth $22 per Good Man Sanders. Puig averaged a $26 draft price according to FantasyPros, so he did represent a slight loss. That’s fine, you’re usually going to lose a few dollars when you purchase top talent.

In some other ways, Puig left his owners with a bad taste. Nagging injuries compounded throughout the season, leading to a lost month of August. For those who relied upon him in H2H leagues, his .216/.296/.247 performance in August might have sunk your playoff hopes. While he did rebound in September, it’s still uncommon for an elite player to be so thoroughly miserable for an entire month. Not unheard of or even rare, just uncommon.

The core paradox of Puig is that he combines a high whiff rate (11.5 SwStr%) with a strong average and on base percentage. Initiates of FanGraphs will recognize that there is only one way all three conditions can coexist – a high BABIP. Indeed, Puig’s career BABIP is .366. Last season it was .356. How he’s doing it is kind of weird.

There are three common ways to post a high BABIP. A hitter could have a high line drive rate, low infield fly rate, high infield hit rate, or some combination of the three. Puig gets his share of infield hits,  but his line drive rate was very low – under 15 percent. His infield fly rate was pretty standard at 7.6 percent. Line drive rate is supposed to account for most BABIP success, so clearly we have something unusual on our hands. Perhaps, as I hypothesized with Carlos Gomez, Puig simply hits the ball unusually hard.

His plate discipline is actually quite good for a high-whiff hitter. He’s slightly more patient than the league average batter on pitches outside of the zone but swings nine percent more often when pitchers hurl strikes. He saw the seventh lowest rate of pitches in the strike zone last year. Combined with his ability to spit on pitches outside of the zone, that led to his stout walk rate. Similarly, his strikeout rate isn’t as bad as his whiff rate would suggest because he’s attacking pitches in the strike zone.

Jeff Sullivan already did the analysis of Puig’s mid-slump swing. Basically, Jeff found that a 74 percent ground ball rate on fastballs did him in. The article has some GIFs that show good and bad results in sequence. What you’ll notice is that he’s duffing hittable pitches. Moreover, he became a little pull happy when his major league success has come from spray hitting (incidentally, spray hitting is another explanation for an above average BABIP).

Take a look at his seasonal spray chart versus the month of August.

He displayed power to all fields, although he did produce a high volume of ground balls to the left side. In the month of August, all of his fly balls were outs, and he hit nearly 40 percent of his pop outs in that one month.

So, what does this analysis mean for his fantasy value? In short, there’s risk of a degradation in skill. However, I’m mostly willing to write off the warning signs as a symptom of temporary bad mechanics brought on by hip and other nagging injuries.

He’ll probably bat second for what should remain a potent Dodgers lineup. Steamer thinks we should get bullish and expect a 90/23/76/14/.294 fantasy line. I get concerned when players play through a stack of minor injuries, since they can linger into the following season (see Miguel Cabrera). However, Puig is probably young enough to continue producing at a high level, even if his body does continue to break down over time. I’d view him similarly as last draft season – a bid in the mid-$20’s makes sense for standard leagues.