Sometimes, we as fantasy players tend to form our player assessments based on only a small portion of a very long season. Our most rigid expectations of player performance often come based on the first few weeks of the baseball season, despite the season lasting more than 25 weeks (literally ½ of the calendar year). Making those snap decisions can be comforting and confidence boosting, but it isn’t very good process in order to put together a winning fantasy team. The point of this article is to take a look at a few players whose starts may have convinced us that we knew what we could expect from them, but who might not actually be fulfilling those expectations.
Below, I assess four players – Two of whom got off to hot starts and two who started miserably – to see if their performance has maintained that early pace.
Any position eligibility I reference is based on NFBC eligibility. All stats I’ve referenced are as of end of day on Tuesday, June 24th.
Hot Starts:
Tommy Edman, 2B/OF, LAD
After a start that saw Tommy Edman turn himself into a power hitter with 8 HRs in 122 PAs in March/April, Edman then missed around 3 weeks due to injury. Since his return on May 18th, he’s managed to hit only 2 HRs in his 115 PAs. His HH% has dipped 10% since his power month, and his pull rate has cratered. He is hitting the ball on the ground over 15% more often than he did in March/April, and his FB% has dipped from 42.1% all the way down to 26.3% in June.
If you’re still rostering Edman, hoping for his early-season power surge to show itself again, you might find yourself disappointed. He’s still hitting for a decent AVG, and he’s amassed 10 Rs and 10 RBIs in June. Notably, the former speedster has just 1 SB in June and just 3 this season. If you’re happy with a player on a season-long pace of 12 HRs, 60 Rs, 60 RBIs, and 7-8 SBs, Tommy Edman is your guy. But if you’re putting him in your lineup due to his strong start to the season, it may be time to reconsider.
Geraldo Perdomo, SS, ARI
Geraldo Perdomo wasn’t a part of many draft plans during the pre-season, unless that drafter either was in a 15+ team league or could stare into a crystal ball and gaze upon a future of bliss. Perdomo has provided so much more than we could have hoped, currently coming in at a .260 AVG, 8 HR, 41 R, 53 RBI, and 11 SB in 343 PA. Could we have expected a 15 HR, 80 R, 100 RBI, 20 SB season? No.
The Razzball Player Rater lists Perdomo’s value to date at $17.50. Almost every major projection system put Perdomo at a negative dollar value in their pre-season models, and most of them had him as worth negative double figures: -$12, -$19, -$19, -$19, -$20 from some of the most well known projection systems. So, if you picked up Perdomo early in the season, you have made a ton of profit. Excellent work.
But is Perdomo still worth playing in our lineups? His positive value has largely been the result of his surface stats in March, April, and May:
March/April: .267 AVG, 4 HR, 15 R, 24 RBI, 7 SB in 134 PA
May: .309 AVG, 2 HR, 14 R, 17 RBI, 4 SB in 113 PA.
Those numbers had Perdomo on a nice season-long pace of around 15-18 HR, 90 R, 120 RBI, and 30 SB. Whoa. But the June numbers have sagged significantly: .190 AVG, 2 HR, 12 R, 11 RBI, 0 SB in 92 PA. The June Perdomo hasn’t been a valuable player except, based on his draft or waiver cost, maybe in Rs and RBIs. So which Perdomo is real?
The 15 HR pace guy isn’t real. He doesn’t hit the ball hard at all – this year’s HH rate of 31.9% is 7 points higher than his career norm. It’s great that he has increased, but it’s not like he turned himself into a slugger. His 4 HR run in March/April was aided by a high flyball rate of 41.6% and a 10% HR/FB%. While that FB% is only a couple of points above his career norms, the HR/FB% is more than double his career rate. Probably not sustainable.
It also looks like his run of HRs is likely not that great for Perdomo’s AVG. Notice that his .267 in March/April was fine, but not great. And much of that even moderately good AVG seems aided by luck. In May, his excellent .309 was partially due to dropping his FB% down to 34.6% and increasing his ground ball rate 11.5% from March/April. That big uptick in GB% helped contribute to a .337 BABIP. Then, jump to June, in which his current swoon seems partially aided by him trying to lift the ball again like he did in March/April (46.5% FB% in June!!) and the resulting BABIP dip (down to .197 in June). It looks to me like he’s trying to be someone he isn’t and get up to that 15-20 HR mark, which is hurting him overall. If he gets back to understanding that he is a 1-2 HR per month kind of guy, I think his AVG will rebound. I’m happy to take 12 HRs from him to get a more solid AVG.
The 30 SB pace guy also isn’t real. His sprint speed is mediocre at best (27 ft/s, which is 42nd percentile), but he apparently knows when to run and how not to get caught. In March/April, his SB success rate was 7 of 7, and in May, it was 4 of 4. He picks his spots well, but apparently he hasn’t found any of those opportunities in June – he has 1 attempt this month, and he was thrown out. This type of inconsistency in attempts is probably something we should expect, as 2023 is the only season of his MLB career when his SBA% was over 2%. Currently, he is at 1.9% for this season, and this seems to be who he is. Since he got off to such a great start, maybe we can reasonably expect a total of 20 SBs for the season, but I suspect he’ll be closer to 15 when all is said and done.
If Perdomo is indeed a 12 HR / 15 SB player, there may not be much more coming from him in terms of helpful counting stats. I would continue to roster Perdomo, but I would definitely be watching his performance and not just automatically putting him in my lineup.
Cold Starts:
Matt McClain, 2B/SS, CIN
I have written on a number of occasions this season about my Matt McLain crush, but also about his bad plate discipline that tends to result in streakiness (see articles on March 20th, April 3rd, April 10th, April 17th, May 22nd, and June 5th). For most of this season, we’ve seen bad Matt McLain – while his HRs and SBs have been ok, his AVG, Rs, and RBIs have been brutal.
Please say welcome to good Matt McLain. Over the course of June, he has hit .273 with 3 HRs, 13 Rs, 9 RBIs, and 3 SBs. Not overwhelming stats by any means, but much better. And then if we look at his sample over the last 14 games, his stats get even more interesting – and impactful: .317 AVG, 2 HRs, 10 Rs, 5 RBIs, and 0 SBs. So the mass of his June total of hits (13 of 18), HRs (2 of 3), and Rs (10 of 13) have come over the last two weeks.
My initial reaction to this hot streak is: this is who Matt McLain is. But if we look deeper under the hood, there are some really interesting things happening. In June, McLain has cut his K% to 21.1%, which is a huge drop from his Mar/Apr 33% and his May 29.5%. His BB% is up to 10.5% after his May 8.9%. His OBP has gone from a low of .266 in Mar/Apr all the way up to .368 in June. Has something changed about his approach?
His batted ball metrics suggest that he is intentionally not trying to murder the ball as much as he did before. His HH% has dropped significantly, from 41.2% in Mar/April all the way down to 16% in June. That dip makes me nervous, but then I look at his EV for June, which lands at just over 87 mph as compared to his season EV of 89 mph. So he’s actually still hitting the ball hard, just more selectively. As a result, his medium hit rate has gone all the way up to 60% in June from a low of 45.1% in March/April. His soft hit rate has also gone way up: 24% in June compared to a low of 10.4% in May. And he’s hitting the ball on the ground 10% more often than in May, while he’s hitting the ball in the air 8% less often than in May. Maybe all of these metrics are simple variance, but they look to me like he’s trying to hit the ball with some authority without selling out for power.
So what does this mean for Matt McLain in our lineups? It tells me he’s trying to be a more consistent hitter, which will likely result in fewer HRs but better AVG and OBP metrics. I’m interested. If you’ve benched McLain due to his slow start, I get it, but it may be time to get him back in your lineup. If he’s on the waiver wire in your league, I would absolutely go get him.
Marcus Semien, 2B, TEX
Marcus Semien was the inspiration for this article.
You might remember that I defended his slow start for the first 2+ months of the season (see articles on April 17th and May 8th). But in my June 5th 2B rankings piece, I finally bailed on Semien, dropping him out of my top 20 2Bs. Even then, I believed he was the victim of bad luck, but I just couldn’t run with him any longer.
To those of you who were inspired to drop Semien, um, my bad. To those of you who continued rostering him, you’re welcome. As soon as I dropped him in my list, he began looking much more like the Marcus Semien we’ve grown to love. That must be cause and effect, right? OK, probably not, but it is true that the very night after I dropped him in my 2B list, he hit 2 HRs. He’s hit .295 in June, and he has picked up his pace of Rs and RBIs. His K% has dipped from 23.6% in May to 11.2% in June, he’s continued hitting the ball at roughly the same HH%, he’s increased his pull rate, and he’s started putting the ball on the ground more. His HR/FB rate suggests he’s gotten a bit lucky in terms of number of fly balls that are leaving the park, but his other numbers suggest he’s making some intentional swing decisions that might just be resulting in better overall stats.
I don’t know if his much more solid June is real, but he’s certainly earned a little more benefit of the doubt than I gave him 20 days ago. I have re-rostered him where I can and am riding the good streak as long as it lasts. Don’t be surprised if this is just a nice hot streak and he goes back to looking possibly washed, but for now, I’m on board with him again.
This article is really meant to serve as a simple reminder: baseball is a LONG season, and small samples don’t tell us much at all. Good process means we might enjoy our players’ fast starts, but we don’t let those starts convince us of anything. Keep assessing to make sure the guys you’re rostering are doing what your initial expectations told you they would do. Until next week. – ADHamley
Dropped Max Muncy for similar reasons as you did Semien and he hit two HR with like 6 RBIs the same night. He’s been hot ever since after a 2 1/2-year cold/meh spell.
Fantasy baseball is hard.
Glad to see someone in the ‘expert community’ willing to re-evaluate their preseason prognostications. Too many times I believe those so called experts are reluctant to admit their *chosen ones* did not live up to expectations that were expected of them. There will always be and have always been those players who exceeded expectations as well as those who underperformed expectations. Thats why we play this silly game. My compliments.
“Baseball is a LONG season, and small samples don’t tell us much at all. Good process means we might enjoy our players’ fast starts, but we don’t let those starts convince us of anything.” ~ ADHamley
“Baseball is a streaky business” ~ Alec Leamas
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” ~ Earl Weaver
Earl Weaver was one of the best