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January 20, 2017 Fantasy Players to AvoidFirst Basemen
Paul Goldschmidt, Arizona Diamondbacks In a year where power was up across baseball, possibly because of a juiced ball, Goldschmidt had a noticeable drop in power. His .192 ISO was exactly league average for a first baseman, and was down about 50 ISO points from where it was the prior 3 seasons, where it sat at .247. He slugged under .500 for the first time since 2012 and ranked 10th among qualified 1B in slugging, down from ranking 2nd from 2013-2015, when he slugged .556. His park and league adjusted OPS+ fell from an incredible 162 from 2013-15 to 134 in 2016, a drop of almost 30 percentage points. It wasn’t just the outcomes. Goldschmidt’s Statcast derived contact quality wasn’t as strong. In 2016, Goldschmidt’s expected slugging percentage based on the exit velocities and angles he hit the ball at was .472, down from an expected slugging of .552 in 2015 (via xStats.org). His Statcast value hit percentage, Andrew Perpetua’s creation, fell from an elite 10.5% in 2015 to 7.0% in 2016, where league average is 6.0%. He hit more popups than ever before, with 14.3% of his flyballs being recorded as infield flies, up from 4.2% from 2013-2015. In fact, Goldschmidt hit more infield flies in 2016 than he did from 2013 to 2015 combined. Goldschmidt wasn’t hitting the ball as well as he usually does based on the velocities and angles of his batted balls. Maybe it was just a one year blip for his power (by his standards) and his power will rebound to vintage levels. His manager, Chip Hale, thought that pitchers were giving him less good pitches to hit, and he was just doing what he could with how he was being pitched. He's still only 29, and if AJ Pollock and David Peralta return healthy, that can make the Diamondbacks lineup around him stronger. It’s definitely possible he goes back to being a .250 ISO/30 HR/.550 slugging type hitter. But the power drop and worse contact quality does raise my eyebrows a little, and I think we should consider it. A lot of this depends on your league rules, too. A drop in slugging won’t matter as much in 5x5 standard leagues as it would in an OPS or points league. And if he keeps stealing 30+ bases like he did in 2016, that offsets the power loss, especially in 5x5 standard. But can we expect that again? He’s been more of an 18-20 SB type player in his career. I don’t want to say "avoid Paul Goldschmidt", because that doesn't sound right. I want to convey something more like, "there’s some warning signs here, Goldschmidt might not be vintage Goldschmidt in 2017, especially if his SBs regress, and that's something to consider when you're drafting at the top of fantasy drafts this year." --Tim Finnegan Adrian Gonzalez, Los Angeles Dodgers Gonzalez hit groundballs in 46.2 percent of his plate appearances last season, a number that was second highest in his career. He hit only 18 homers, which isn’t terrible, but it was ten fewer than his 2015 total, and tied for the lowest output of his career. His .150 ISO and 112 wRC+ were also career lows. He struck out a little more and walked a little less. Gonzalez did still hit .285 last year, which is great, but it’s highly likely that the average was at least somewhat buoyed by a .328 BABIP, meaning he could see regression there as well. Gonzalez could be perfectly “pretty decent” again in 2017, but I’ll probably pass and just remember the good times. --Mark Barry Chris Davis, Baltimore Orioles Seriously, he fanned 219 times (33 percent of his 665 plate appearances) last year. Not only are they preventing him from hitting for an “acceptable” batting average, but they also limit his ability to reach the 45-50 home runs prospective fantasy owners covet. He’s done it before, but the margin for error is razor thin. As I outlined in the “State of the Position” earlier this week (and throughout the offseason on Flags Fly Forever and our Category Breakdown series), the value of one-dimensional (power-only) sluggers has plummeted faster than Wile E. Coyote holding an Acme anvil in the current fantasy landscape. 111 hitters eclipsed the 20-home run plateau last year. We don’t know if the league-wide power trends will continue, but drafting Davis at his current NFBC average draft position in the sixth round (77th overall) virtually ensures that he won’t return a profit. --George Bissell Anthony Rizzo, Chicago Cubs Eric Hosmer, Kansas City Royals
And yet, I probably won’t come anywhere near owning the Royals stalwart in any of my leagues. What’s wrong with me? Short answer: a lot, but none of that is relevant right now. I can refer you to a few people who would be happy to tell you what’s wrong with me if you’re interested and have a lot of time on your hands. Getting back on topic, though, most of my concerns about Hosmer as we head into 2016 are captured in this table:
He struck out more frequently in 2016 as his contact rates eroded. Granted, this may well be attributable to a conscious change in approach, with Hosmer choosing to trade contact for power. He did set a career high in homers in 2016, after all. I think that’s part of it, but I’m worried that his declining contact rates and increasing strikeout rates aren’t exclusively driven by his intentional pursuit of the longball. I also think that there’s at least a little bit of unrepeatable good fortune in his 2016 spike in HR/FB rate alongside a change in approach and an leaguewide increase in HR frequency.
Plus, I’ve always been a bit leery of his profile. First basemen in the three-star tier who have played six seasons in the majors shouldn’t be coming off their first 20+ home run season or their first 100+ RBI season, and they shouldn’t have posted league-average OPS marks in two of their last three seasons.
I don’t know. I’m probably overthinking this, overreacting to some irrelevant aspect of Hosmer’s profile that I find problematic on a not-quite-conscious level. I just know that I won’t own him in any of my leagues unless he slips way past his ADP in drafts or the bidding stops way below the consensus on his auction bid limit. —Scooter Hotz
Let's start with the first. Freeman is a career .288 hitter and he's twice hit over .300. That's really good. However, the .302 batting average from last year is unlikely to be repeated again because while Freeman was hitting more fly balls, he was also swinging and missing more often—his 24.7 percent strikeout rate was the highest of his career. And while Freeman is a perfect example of why you can't just regress hitters to a league-average BABIP (his career BABIP is .341), a BABIP of .370 is not bankable. He also took a step forward in power last year that's not just a fluke because of an elevated fly ball rate. However, even with the increased fly balls, he hit more of them out of the park than he ever has in his career—his 19.9 percent HR/FB rate was by far the highest of his career, and five percentage points above his career mark. Right now, Freeman is going 25th overall and fifth among first basemen. That's a good place for someone who is a really strong bet to hit over .300 (like Joey Votto) or easily eclipse 30 homers (like Edwin Encarnacion), but it's not a good spot for someone unlikely to repeat either. And, hey, I didn't even use the ol' counting stats argument with regards to the Braves offense. (Though, what he did last year is probably his ceiling in that department as any drop from his raw stats will be countered by a likely tick up in external factors.) He's a great fourth rounder. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. —Bret Sayre Wil Myers, San Diego Padres
BP Fantasy Staff is an author of Baseball Prospectus. 12 comments have been left for this article.
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So what you are saying is just avoid all good first basemen?
"just go get Tommy Joseph"