The Buyer’s Guide: Christian Yelich

The phrase “I have faith in [Player X]” is often bandied about in fantasy baseball circles. It’s most often uttered about a player who has struggled mightily and people are panicked, wondering if they should be jumping ship. Fantasy experts on Twitter and across the internet attempt to assuage the restless owners, offering optimistic data and promising better things to come.

Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher in the early 19th century, argued that faith was a firm belief in something despite its being impossible (in the true sense of the word “impossible”). Hope, on the other hand, was inherently an exercise in probability; one had reason to believe it could be true. And the latter is really what we’re striving to find when analyzing a player who has unexpectedly performed very poorly. Hope. We comb through the underlying data, searching for a statistical or physical reason to believe that player will turn things around.

I don’t bring up this distinction merely as an excuse to reference Kierkegaard in a fantasy baseball article—though that is a bonus, and it must be said that Fear and Trembling would be a tremendous team name or weekly fantasy column. Rather, I bring this up because I often see the difference between faith and hope on Twitter when discussing future performance.

As a personal example, I believed Brett Lawrie would improve his swing and his approach after moving to Oakland. I rationalized the belief, specifically with the “change of scenery argument,” but ultimately, it was faith on my part, not hope. Now I’m stuck with a .255/.292/.338 hitter (3.8 percent walk rate, 27.6 percent strikeout rate) in my newest dynasty league. Joke’s on me, right?

So, anyway, that’s what we’re trying to find. Can we find statistical evidence to indicate greener pastures await? Is there any hope?

*****

In the average fantasy draft this spring, owners drafted Christian Yelich as the 22nd-overall outfielder and the 75th-overall player. After a quarter of the 2015 season, the 23-year-old outfielder is hitting a putrid .178/.268/.233 with one homer and four stolen bases. He currently ranks as the 115th-best fantasy outfielder in ESPN leagues.

In short, it’s been a dreadful beginning. Granted, his .521 OPS looks gorgeous when compared to Chris Iannetta’s .354 OPS (that’s an OPS+ of 4, by the way), but there’s no way to avoid the fact that Christian Yelich has been awful thus far.

Perhaps his recurring back injury can somewhat explain away his uncharacteristic struggles; however, the underlying numbers combine to form an overwhelming cornucopia of sadness. His 27.8 percent strikeout rate is significantly higher than his career norm. His swinging-strike rate (11.7 percent) has almost doubled from a year ago. His .057 ISO is the worst power production of his professional career, majors or minors. Furthermore, he’s only scored six runs in 19 games.

The biggest reason Yelich is struggling this year, though, is because he’s pounding the baseball into the ground. His 79.2 percent ground-ball rate is the highest mark in the league (min. 50 PA) by almost 10 percentage points. This gives him very little opportunity to drive the baseball or hit for power. It’s what is driving his minuscule ISO and making his empty average heavily dependent upon BABIP—and that’s only sitting at .255.

At the most basic level, Yelich is turning in perhaps the worst combination a hitter can possess: groundballs and whiffs. Of qualified hitters since 2002, no hitter has eclipsed the 67-percent mark for grounders in a single season. More importantly, though, only two others have posted a ground-ball rate over 60 percent and posted a swinging-strike rate over 10 percent—Starlin Castro and Ian Desmond, this year. This isn’t to suggest that Yelich is potentially “making history” or anything of the sort; rather, it’s to say that hitters who combine heavy ground-ball rates with high strikeout numbers don’t generally see enough playing time to “qualify” for hitting titles. It’s a dreadful combination.

That’s my reductionist explanation as to what’s going on with Christian Yelich. Granted, it’s important to recognize that Yelich missed time due to injury and hasn’t even hit the 100-PA plateau, which means we should hardly expect these numbers to be stable where they currently stand. However, other pieces of data make the simple “it’s early” argument a bit cloudier. For one, he’s swinging and missing all over the strike zone—up, down, inside and outside.

The above heat map is concerning because it’s such a deviation from his historical performance. It’s also concerning because it suggests his contact issues are all-encompassing this year. He’s not being exploited in one area. Opposing pitchers are pounding the zone and then working up or away, and Yelich is missing the baseball everywhere. For lack of a better term, the heat map suggests that his swing is currently broken, though that does not imply it’s permanent.

Still, there’s a question of future performance, rather than simply a description of what’s gone wrong at the plate. I’ve presented a fairly damning picture, but there’s nothing to really suggest that Yelich will continue to whiff this much or to hit the ball on the ground this much. Thus, it’s fruitful to remember that it’s been 82 plate appearances and the best bet is that he’ll regress to career norms—all of which suggests a major rebound. Consider this:

• At no level in his major- or minor-league career has he hit under .280.
• At no level in his major- or minor-league career has he struck out over 25 percent of the time.
• At no level in his major- or minor-league career has he posted a BABIP under .340.
• At no level in his major- or minor-league career has he compiled an ISO under .100.
• He has a career 62.9 percent ground-ball rate, including this season.

Those are all strong pieces of data that indicate Christian Yelich will turn around his performance in a big way, despite the overwhelmingly poor start to the season. Thus, in many ways, this is an example of needing to look past the obvious signs of struggle and look backward to career norms. What is the statistical likelihood that he suddenly bucks all of these career trends and performs at an outlier in so many of these areas? Common sense suggests it’s very low.

However, the problem is that such probabilistic analysis doesn’t guarantee when the regression will begin. It may begin now, or it may begin in August. Furthermore, it doesn’t take into consideration his back injury, which may be impacting his physical performance, which would then make much of this discussion regarding his historical performance a moot point. But, on the balance of things, it appears that Christian Yelich should enjoy much more success on the baseball diamond than he has in the past month.

In short, I have still have hope for Christian Yelich.

BUYER’S ADVICE: BUY

This is a great window to buy because as I’ve shown, the data this season is rather bleak. Yelich owners know just how poor his performance has been this season and could be ready to bail, even if they’ve dug deep into his 2015 numbers. When comparing his 2015 performance—his swinging-strike rate, his BABIP, his ground-ball rate, his batting average, his power numbers, etc.—to his historical major- and minor-league numbers, though, it becomes obvious that he should be in line for a major (not minor) rebound. Again, the injury caveat remains a rather big unknown at this point, but to the best of our knowledge, the data suggests that he’s one of the prime “buy-low” candidates in fantasy baseball.