This isn’t about the Cheaty Cheaty Bang Bang scandal. I’m not here to talk about the Fiers Festival. We’re not going to rehash the Banghazi hashtag. You have a Big Bang Theory? Great, so do I. Wanna hear it after saying I’m not going to talk about it? Fine! Twist my arm! The Asterisks cheated; it’s well-documented. You can’t watch a home game of the Asterisks without it sounding like the PA speaker is accidentally on while someone nearby hammers together a piece of Ikea furniture without the proper instructions. “Where does this screw go? Hmm…eff it, I’m just gonna bang it together.” That’s what it sounded like. I made less racket drunk at 2 AM in college. There’s quieter trash cans in the dead of winter filled with a family of raccoons. There’s a ton of evidence. Irrefutable evidence, and they were convicted of cheating by Our Commissioner Manfred, who almost requested the return of a piece of metal. Their GM and manager fell on the swords. Were they the main ones to blame? Haha, my dude, the players are the ones that cheated. I’ve seen video evidence of Alex Bregman at the plate while Bang A Gong (Get It On) played in the background. So, he was right there in the middle of Bang-gate. Should he have apologized? I think so, but they were busted already, so it’s not like he’s saying something people don’t know. It’s the way of celebrities (athletes and otherwise) to not apologize unless it’s through a spokesperson. Never the hoo! None of this matters for fantasy or it all matters. We won’t know until the 2020 season concludes. We’d be guessing on that. The easy narrative for Bang-gate is: Bregman was good on the road, so he’s fine. That’s dismissive of what it is actually going on here. I was saying you should avoid Alex Bregman before any ruling came down about cheating. So, what makes Alex Bregman overrated for 2020 fantasy baseball?
Out of 81 possible players with 400 batted ball events, Bregman was 61st for barrels/plate appearance with a measly 3.8%. About the same as Freddy Galvis and Alex Gordon. For average distance per homer, he was 80th out of 81, only missing last place because David Fletcher is in the league. His launch angle was 19.6, which is ranked 5th. His fly ball rate was 8th with 45.9%. All of that together should be vomit-inducing. To sum up for the back of the room, Bregman is barely getting the ball out of the yard and hitting a ton of fly balls. I’m way more worried he’s going to hit a ton of 370-foot outs vs. anything to do with The Orange Bang. He’s hitting too many weak fly balls. Plain and simple. I can look at his career HR/FB% of 14.3% and back that into him hitting 31 homers this year. Last year, he hit 41 homers. You’re losing ten homers year-over-year and not talking about anywhere near a 1st rounder in 2020. Worse news is (yes, it could be worse) there’s a chance Bregman continues to hit a lot of fly balls that don’t go out of the park and his average plummets. Last year with a .281 BABIP, he was able to hit .296. Steamer says with a .286 BABIP, he should hit .287. He’s never hit .300 in his career and I don’t see how he can with that weak contact batted ball profile and all of those fly balls. It reminds me of Jose Ramirez last year, but at least Jo-Ram still had speed and steals. Bregman’s speed has been decaying for three years in a row. Now to bring this back to Banghazi, if Bregman struggles in April/May, the whispers are going to grow about what he can’t do without banging. You think that’s going to alleviate pressure or be a tempest in the teapot? I.e., there’s a chance here of things spiraling out of control in a bad way, and I wouldn’t go near him with a ten-foot pole, even if that pole was banging on a trash can. Or a more appropriately, “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “Changeup!”
