An argument can be made that the present talent glut at all four infield positions makes high-risk players at those positions much less attractive.
The counter to that argument is the “rising tides lift all boats” theory, which is to say that if all teams are equally affected by the current richness of the infield player pool, then it makes sense to take calculated risks in the hope of moving your team ahead of the pack.
Here are five infield-eligible players whose high ceiling and perilous floors make them intriguing targets for owners looking to roll the proverbial dice.
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Murphy’s shift from all-fields slap hitter to pull-heavy masher during his 2015 playoff run with the Mets immediately became the stuff of post-season folklore, yet few expected Murphy to continue his torrid hitting over a full season once he joined the Nationals the following season.
Lo and behold, Murphy did just that, upping the ante on his pull percentage (from 40.7% in 2015 to 41.3% last year) and submitting a stellar 38.2% hard hit rate on the way to 25 homers and a .249 isolated slugging, both career highs by some margin.
The once-skeptical market has since turned quite sweet on Murphy, who is being drafted just outside of the overall top 30 per FantasyPros average draft position (ADP) data.
That’s some premium to pay for Murphy’s elite batting average, considering even aggressive projections for Murphy’s 2017 output are accounting for some power decline. His 12.4 homer-per-fly rate last year is not exactly gaudy, but it’s a clear outlier in his career stats profile, so it’s fair to project closer to mid-teens homers than mid-twenties. In the current power-heavy environment, that’s not exactly ideal power production from an early-round hitter.
The Washington infielder is also somewhat touchy with respect to injury, having missed 71 games over the last three seasons. Any sort of long-term injury to Murphy would greatly dampen the impact of that awesome batting average, which is his core fantasy appeal.
There’s nothing especially condemning here, except perhaps the conclusion that Murphy’s upside and downside are both a bit lower than you might think considering his ADP. Owners who take the plunge on Murphy as a third-round pick will be buying the sustainability of his new approach wholesale, and they’ll probably need him to either hit .310-plus or combine for nearly 200 runs and RBI to recoup their investment.
And since there’s no real precedent for the type of radical turnaround that we’ve seen here from Murphy, is it out of the realm of possibility that his elite average and surging power could disappear as quickly as they came?
Sure, Murphy could be a solid contributor in all categories except for steals, but then again he could be few slivers of skills depreciation away from looking a heck of a lot like post-peak Victor Martinez, who, by the way, is going 160-plus picks later in most drafts.
There’s no risk whatsoever in the Colorado slugger’s power profile. The Statcast darling absolutely murdered the ball during his injury-shortened 2016, and the thumb surgery that cut short his historic rookie campaign has not dissuaded the market, with the young shortstop settling into a top-seven ADP at a position rich with young upside.
Story’s loud welcome to the MLB was of course heavily front-loaded by an absolutely molten 10-homer April. But that first month did have its fair share of warts for Story, namely a 36.3% strikeout rate that should highlight Story as a strong batting average risk, Coors home environs aside.
That said, Story’s strikeout percentage did gradually improve in each of the next two months, settling in at a slightly more palatable 28.6% across 91 July plate appearances.
And it’s heartening to note that the young infielder was a perennial double-digit walk rate guy in the minors. He posted above-average plate discipline marks in the bigs last year, so there’s a chance his 8.6% rate during his first taste of MLB action is both sustainable and open for growth.
Indeed, Story’s strikeout woes may be less a figment of his approach than of his swing-for-the-fences aggressiveness. That 72.7 percent contact rate (more than five percentage points below league average) is still a red flag, though. Story looks fairly priced given his massive power upside, but owners should prepare for the possibility that he’s one cold spell away from being a major batting average drain.
The beleaguered Miami second baseman doesn’t quite have the rock bottom floor that I pinned to Billy Hamilton in my outfield risk review, but he’s pretty clearly a steals specialist in the same mold as the Reds’ speedster, albeit with stronger plate presence and a more assured everyday role.
Still, Gordon seemed like a shell of his once-dynamic self in the 249 plate appearances following his return from PED suspension last year, with all of his limitations amplified (61.1% ground ball rate; 15.8% hard contact rate) and his .267 batting average not nearly high enough to pick up the slack.
Gordon did swipe 24 bags over that span, giving us some small hope that he can salvage some fantasy relevance through sheer fleet-footed will. Gordon certainly has the tools to be a galvanizing single-category stud, just like Hamilton.
But if his small post-suspension sample translates over a full season, Gordon will be a profound minus in every other category. That’s a harder hit than most owners will want to take with a top-60 pick. Gordon still has some runway towards being a fantasy difference maker, just not at his current cost.
Bregman’s 49-game cup of coffee with the Astros last season found his wide range of possible outcomes on full display. The uber-prospect managed just one hit in his first 34 plate appearances, striking out 10 times to just two walks. Bregman kept his chin up, though, going on to hit .308 across his remaining 41 games, whittling down his strikeout-per-walk rate to 3.3 while managing a strong .254 isolated slugging thanks to 24 extra-base hits.
This sample certainly shows Bregman’s promise. He’s a professional hitter who can hit for power and average, with enough raw tools and baseball IQ to fight out of slumps and stay engaged. It also shows his downside, with his above-average first-pitch swing rate along with below average contact marks in and out of the zone indicating that there could be more slumps on the horizon, especially if the book on Bregman grows and major league pitchers work to exploit his aggressiveness.
Of course, Bregman’s pedigree precedes him, and as the 12th third baseman off the board, your share of Bregman shouldn’t cost a bank-breaking investment. Resist the urge to overpay, though. The further inside the overall top 80 you reach for this would-be stud, the more his wide range of outcomes will be a liability.
Sano, like Story, is a Statcast overachiever whose hard-hit metrics have made him a trendy power sleeper heading into 2017. And like Story, Sano has significant strikeout downside, with a career 35.8% strikeout rate across 830 career major league plate appearances.
In fact, Sano’s issues with contact make Story look like Ichiro Suzuki. Even with a near-five-percentage-point improvement in contact rate last year, Sano sat at a troubling 65.8 percent, almost 13 points below league average. Sano’s woefully below-average out-of-zone contact rate and hesitant swing rate at pitches in the zone suggest a raw batting eye that could, in theory, improve with increased exposure to major league pitching.
If that happens, Sano and his 40-homer upside could prove to be a massive bargain at his current top-130 ADP. At the same time, Sano is liable to put his owners in a massive average hole by batting .150 for a month straight.
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- 5 Negative Regression Infielders To Avoid
- 5 Negative Regression Outfielders to Avoid
- 5 Negative Regression Pitchers to Avoid
- 5 High Risk/High Reward Outfielders
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.
