The richness of the current infield class is such that just about every team in every fantasy league will boast at least one early-round stud infielder.
Yet often the difference between keeping pace with your league and breaking away to a title is the ability to recognize bounce-back players whose recent subdued output has depressed their cost. Here are five infield-eligible players whose underlying stats indicate they could be in for a return to form and thus might represent a profitable Draft Day investment.
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Ever since his mammoth 53-homer breakout in 2013, the road has been rocky for the Orioles’ slugger, with extreme batting average variance (.286, .196, .262, and .221 over the last four seasons) rendering Davis a hard player to value precisely on Draft Day. Something was certainly amiss with Davis in 2016, likely stemming from a hand injury that was never quite bad enough to require an extended absence but perhaps was just bad enough to impact his approach at the plate. After all, Davis’ pull percentage plummeted from over 50 percent in the previous two seasons to 41.9 percent in 2016. He also posted a career low in line drive rate (19.8 percent), as well as the highest ground ball (36.5) and infield fly (5.9) rates since before his 2013 power breakout.
All that said, a dinged up Davis still managed to send 38 over the fence in 2016 while totaling a combined 188 runs scored and runs batted in (RBI). And since the perception of a robust power market has taken some of the gleam off Davis’ massive home run upside, now might be a good time to buy in on a bounce back, especially given his modest sixth-round price tag.
Matt Carpenter (1B/2B/3B – STL)
FantasyPros expert consensus rankings show an uncertain market on Carpenter heading into 2017, with a standard deviation of over 23 spots pegging the Cardinal utility man as a somewhat divisive asset. Those who are tentative on Carpenter might put too much stock in the final two months of his 2016, where he cobbled together a sub-par .229/.316/.410 slash line across his final 49 games while working his way back from a month on the shelf with an oblique strain.
But even with that less-than-stellar two-month stretch, Carpenter’s gaudy hard contact rate (41.9 percent) and measly soft contact rate (10 percent) were the top marks among both second- and third-base-eligible players across the full season. Add to that his always impressive walk rate (14.3 percent, a career-best full season mark) and his Swiss-army eligibility, and Carpenter seems like a strong bet to bounce back to top-40 form. He’s a bargain at his current ADP just inside the top 70, particularly in on-base-percentage leagues and points leagues.
There are many troubling off-the-field issues that make Kang a hard player to rely on, let alone root for. On the field, though, Kang impressed in limited playing time last year, particularly in the power department, clubbing 21 homers and posting a .258 isolated slugging (ISO) in 370 plate appearances.
That ISO will likely regress a bit closer to the still-impressive .173 mark that he posted during his first year in the majors. But so too should the .273 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) that underwrote his depressed .255 overall batting average. Fantasy owners who can stomach the potential volatility of Kang’s personal turmoil (which volatility certainly seems to be baked into his current price as the 25th third baseman off the board) could very well have a dirt cheap 30-homer bat with a solid average floor for their utility or corner infield spot.
The former star shortstop has decidedly fallen from grace in recent years, with injuries and legal trouble limiting Reyes to just 412 games played over the last four seasons. The Mets took a chance on a reunion with the beleaguered infielder last summer, and fantasy owners who followed suit were rewarded with 60 games of solid production down the stretch, including eight homers, nine steals, and 69 combined runs scored and RBI.
Reyes’ minor revival was accomplished despite a 17.6 percent strikeout rate that well outpaced his 10.7 percent career mark. If Reyes can return to limiting his strikeouts while replicating three-year highs in walk rate (8.2 percent) and slugging percentage (.443), he could be in a nice spot to produce low-cost fantasy value in the runs and steals column. He’s by no means a lock to play a full compliment of games, but even 130 starts hitting leadoff for the Mets seems well worth a flier, particularly if his cost continues to hover outside the overall top 300.
Plouffe has never been a fantasy star. He’s managed a career .247 average while toiling at the bottom of a mediocre Twins batting order usually rendering him as a desperation power source at best. And while his new home on a potentially bottom-feeding Oakland squad isn’t exactly an upgrade, Plouffe does figure to play every day at third base while occupying a prime RBI spot in the middle of the lineup.
Plouffe’s .220 ISO from his 24-homer season in 2012 looks like a clear outlier, but he did hit 22 out of the park as recently as 2015, along with 12 long balls in an injury-shortened 84-game season last year. He has seen a slight recent uptick in grounders compared to his more productive early years in Minnesota, yet his hard-hit rate remains fairly stable. While last year’s 17.9 percent strikeout rate will likely regress back to his 20 percent career average, so too should his career-low walk rate of 5.5 percent. There is more than a whiff of 20-homer, 80-RBI upside here, but you wouldn’t know it from Plouffe’s current ADP as the 266th hitter off the board.
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @drillguitar.
