With one month of baseball in the books, things are starting to take shape, both for teams in the real game and for the teams in our fantasy leagues. Hot streaks are beginning to feel like real trends, while ice-cold slumps are starting to seem apocalyptic.
On this week’s Regression Report, let’s take the temperature on a few hitters on either side of the ledger (some white hot, others utterly arctic) to see if their underlying stats point towards a change of fortune on the horizon.
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Ryan Zimmerman (1B – WAS)
At the season’s one-month mark, your MLB leader in offensive production (per Fangraphs’ weighted runs created plus metric) is neither the power-binging Eric Thames nor the reliably elite Mike Trout. No, the clubhouse leader in wRC+ is none other than a resurgent Nationals infielder Ryan Zimmerman, a man who was all but forgotten in fantasy drafts this year, falling outside the top 200 hitters per FantasyPros ADP data.
The 32-year-old’s current offensive stroke invites outrageous hyperbole. Through almost 100 plate appearances, his batting average sits above .400, while his 11 homers have contributed to a gaudy isolated slugging (ISO) that approaches .500.
That’s his isolated slugging percentage, mind you, which is calculated by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage. The league average is usually around .150. He’s on pace for over 160 RBIs, having just set a Nationals single-month record with 27.
There’s a good deal of small-sample magic here, of course, and it isn’t the first time that Zimmerman has looked like the best hitter in baseball over a month-long stretch. In September of 2013, Zimmerman tallied a .318 ISO, smacking 11 homers across 118 plate appearances. In fact, 2013 was the last time that Zimmerman has played anywhere near a full compliment of games in a season, as a succession of injuries has limited Zimmerman to 271 starts in the three years since.
Truth be told, injury concerns are the only thing denting Zimmerman’s prospects for a tremendously valuable fantasy season in 2017. Because even though Zimmerman’s ISO is unlikely to sustain such Bonds-ian heights over the course of the full campaign, his peripherals don’t suggest that this performance is a serious aberration.
Rather, what seems to be at play here is a change in approach; Zimmerman is currently sporting his lowest grounder-per-fly rate since 2009, all while boasting the highest hard-contact rate of his career. Of course, that near 43 percent homer-to-fly ratio is bound to regress, but if Zimmerman’s new focus on lofting the ball causes that rate to stabilize closer to 25 percent, rather than his career 14 percent, Zimmerman has a good shot at a 40-homer season, health filling. Heck, he’s already got 11 in the bag.
Chase Headley (3B – NY)
Headley, like Zimmerman, began the year as a standard league also-ran, seemingly lifetimes removed from the 2011 season breakout with the Padres when he tallied a combined 48 homers and steals. And while Headley’s 2017 resurgence has not been nearly as eruptive as Zimmerman’s, it’s a surprising development nonetheless, with the 32-year-old carrying a strong .308 batting average and 24 combined runs and RBIs over the first month of action.
This quietly prolific hitting stretch has come on the back of Headley’s usual shrewd plate approach, which has been stingy even by his standards. Headley’s 14 plus percent walk rate would represent a career high, while his reach rate stands among the lowest in the majors.
Headley can take a walk, sure, but he’s probably in over his head in the average department, especially when you consider that his current hard contact output is well below his career norms, while his .350 BABIP seems to tack 50 points onto what appears to be a true talent around .300.
Headley’s name probably doesn’t carry enough juice to earn a significant bounty back in a trade, so unless you have an over-eager Yankee fan in your league, it might be best just to ride Headley while his bat is cooking. Just don’t be too attached to cut bait if and when he falls back to earth.
Corey Dickerson (OF – TB)
If Chase Headley is one of the league’s stingiest swingers, Corey Dickerson is among its most generous. Indeed, the Tampa Bay outfielder is currently the MLB leader in reach rate, swinging at out-of-zone pitches more than 45 percent of the time.
Pair that with a 15-plus swinging strike rate that’s among the worst in the majors, and you’d expect Dickerson’s slash line to look like Byron Buxton’s. Quite to the contrary, by some minor miracle, Dickerson is hitting close to .330 on the young season, with a 1.000-plus OPS suggesting that the promise Dickerson showed in Colorado wasn’t a mere figment of the Coors Field park effect.
It might be the case that Dickerson’s swing-happy tendencies aren’t as much detrimental as we might assume. After all, he’s posted well-above-average out-of-zone contact rates throughout his career, and even as his granular discipline stats look weak, his overall strikeout rate, if sustained over a full season, would represent his lowest mark since his rookie year.
Still, a swinging-strike rate over 15 percent does not stand a good chance to produce a strong full-season batting average. Since 2000, there have been 29 players who have managed swinging-strike rates above 15 percent over the course of a full year, and only four such seasons saw the hitter hit .260 or better. Granted, Dickerson doesn’t need to hit .300 for his power stroke to remain a valuable fantasy commodity, but his owners need to be prepared to suffer through what could be a nasty bout of average regression if they want to enjoy the fruits of Dickerson’s prolific slugging.
Mark Trumbo (OF/DH – BAL)
Prolific power is what we expected from the Orioles’ Mark Trumbo, but what we have thus far is a paltry .298 slugging percentage, a faint shadow of the .533 mark that Trumbo carried after last year’s tremendous 47-homer breakout. But just as it’s important to hedge our bets on a Ryan Zimmerman’s small-sample power binge (we don’t expect Zimmerman to hit 65 homers, even if he remains healthy, do we?), we must be disciplined enough to contextualize cold patches from streaky power hitters. And that’s exactly what Trumbo is — a streaky power hitter.
Recall that back in 2015, Trumbo endured a two-month stretch in June and July where he was about as cold as he is now, cobbling together a .317 slugging percentage and mere three homers over 175 plate appearances. What was different about last year’s breakout was that Trumbo never actually went ice cold, perhaps creating a false expectation that he’d unlocked a new level of excellence.
It’s not as if his peripheral stats indicate that he’s absolutely bottoming out in 2017: his strikeout rate is below career norms, his whiff rate only slightly up; his batting eye looks sharp, with a below average reach rate and an above average swing rate on pitches in the zone. One of the only notable aberrations in his underlying stats is a major spike in first-pitch strike percentage, meaning Trumbo is starting counts from behind more often, which could explain both his more caution approach and his dent in power production.
Whatever the case may be, all but the most bullish Trumbo drafters had to know that the potential for long, painful slumps was in the cards for Trumbo, so cashing out at rock-bottom value seems short-sighted. The Orioles’ slugger will make with the mashing sooner than later, so if you bail on him now, you’ll be absorbing the worst of his output without enjoying the fruits of his best work.
Maikel Franco (3B – PHI)
One month into 2017, Maikel Franco is boasting career lows in swinging-strike rate and strikeout rate overall, along with career highs in walk rate, hard contact rate, and line drive rate. There’s only one problem for his fantasy owners: they don’t play in leagues that count these stats.
No, we all (I assume) play in leagues where the results are what counts. Sure, the 21 RBIs are nice, but the .213/.273/.382 slash line is starting to be a real drag. I’m in one 10-team league where Franco was outright dropped.
And you know what, I picked him up in that league. This average sink just can’t continue, not with the way that Franco’s skills are evidently peaking. Franco’s barely-.200 BABIP scrapes way below what appears to be a true talent closer to .300, and while on the surface his grounder-to-fly ratio seems headed in the wrong direction, it’s not because he’s hitting more ground balls — it’s because more of his fly balls are turning into line drives!
The Phillies’ slugger seems like one of the strongest buy-lows in baseball. Put some offers out before his luck changes for the better.
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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.
