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Regression Report: Charlie Blackmon, Edwin Encarnacion, Ian Happ

Regression Report: Charlie Blackmon, Edwin Encarnacion, Ian Happ

In the effort to keep the Regression Report as fresh and limber as possible while we barrel, at long last, toward the dog days of summer, let’s try something a little new.

Rather than focusing on five hitters, let’s focus on three hitting statistics, those that can help us pinpoint which players might have performances radically divergent on their baseline expectations over the past 30 days of action (for what it’s worth, the stats here are current as of this past Saturday’s games). We’re still hunting for regression candidates, of course. This leaderboard hunt should help us zero in on prime candidates.

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Batting Average On Balls in Play (BABIP)

1. Aaron Judge (OF – NYY) .527 over last month
2. Charlie Blackmon (OF – COL) .475
3. Nomar Mazara (OF – TEX) .457 

It’s no surprise to see Judge, the breakout offensive player of the season’s first half, topping this past month’s BABIP leaderboard by a wide margin. In fact, Judge’s BABIP on the season is an eye-popping .422. Obviously there are few dinkers and dunkers here–Judge’s hard hit rate on the season is close to 50%. With Judge not even 350 PAs into his Major League career, we have no real sense of what his baseline is, nor what to expect going forward. One thing we can be sure of — barring a major injury or unfathomable second-half collapse, Judge’s draft position heading into 2018 will be one of the more hotly contested topics in fantasy sports.

Blackmon and Mazara make for slightly more interesting cases here, if only because they have larger career samples. Mazara’s batted-ball success is easy to explain. Over the past month, he’s hitting fewer fly balls (30% compared to a 36% mark on the season) and more liners (24%/20%), with a notable gain in hard-contact rate (36%/30%). Moving away from lofting the ball might have put a damper on Mazara’s power production, though. He has a mere two homers to show for his month-long stretch of .370 hitting. Still, considering his hard contact gains and plate discipline prowess, Mazara seems like a good bet for an imminent power binge, even if it comes with some major BABIP regression.

Meanwhile, Blackmon has been quietly announcing himself as one of the more reliable early-round assets in fantasy. I’m not taking any major leaps in suggesting that his current white-hot hitting pace (1.153 OPS and .304 ISO over the last month) is rather unsustainable, but something worth monitoring is the fact that his massive offensive production is pretty clearly linked to a slightly more aggressive approach, with his zone swings and swinging strikes up compared to career marks and his strikeout rate currently marking a career high. Blackmon’s batting eye metrics still look great, though, so don’t be discouraged when the inevitable regression hits and he goes through a whiff-heavy cold stretch.

Home Run Per Fly Ball Rate (HR/FB%)

1. Chris Davis (1B – BAL) 38.5%
2. J.D. Martinez (OF – DET) 37%
3. Edwin Encarnacion (1B/DH – CLE) 35%

It’s been a welcome return to MLB action for Martinez, who has absolutely stormed through his first month of 2017 action, amassing a 1.103 OPS and 58% hard-hit rate across hit first 100+ plate appearances. Of course, the 29-year-old’s colossal homer pace (about one in every 10 PAs!) will certainly subside, though with his plate-discipline metrics looking sharp and his fly-ball rate spiking, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him send 20 more over the fence across the remainder of the season. In other words, Martinez will certainly regress, but his floor seems high enough to justify buying in if his owner thinks of him as a sell-high.

I’d hold off on making the same leap with Davis and Encarnacion, though, especially if it involves buying them anywhere near their draft-day price. These under-performing sluggers are both in the midst of their most prolific stretches of power hitting, with E5 tallying a .275 ISO over the past 30 days and Crush doing him one better with his .347 mark.

Gaudy results aside, there seems to be a lot of fly-ball variance in play here. Encarnacion, whose 43% hard contact rate on the season has had owners swearing up and down that a rejuvenated stretch was just around the corner, is managing a mere 36% hard contact over the last month. The HR/FB boost here looks like the result of a shrunken denominator: check out that meager 29% fly ball rate over the last month. Instead of joining the fly ball revolution, Encarnacion is pounding the ball into the ground, with a 46% grounder rate over the last 30 days compared to a career mark around 36%. In short, it’s taken a fair amount of good fortune to give Edwin the appearance of a return to form, but the contact issues remain, making him quite an uneasy target unless there’s a substantial discount–which, considering his recent run of production, seems like a long shot.

Same goes for Davis, who has more than tripled his homer total over the last month of action. Alas, the dark underbelly to this recent power binge is an ugly 37% reach rate and 16% swinging strike rate. Davis remains an all-or-nothing slugger with some serious batting average floor. Pay for him if you need power (to be fair, he has managed less than 10% soft contact over the last month), but be prepared for him to hit .200 or worse the rest of the way.

Swinging Strike Rate (SwStr%)

5. Ian Happ (2B/OF – CHC) 19%
6. Jorge Bonifacio (OF – KC) 18.8%
7. Keon Broxton (OF – MIL) 17.5%

The tippy top of the SwStr% leaderboard is occupied by familiar names like Austin Hedges, Miguel Sano, and Joey Gallo, about whose contact issues there isn’t much more productive ground to break. You might be surprised to see Ian Happ and Jorge Bonifacio so high up this list, though. Indeed, these two recently-promoted hitters have shown equal parts power upside (.200 ISO for Bonifacio; .272 for Happ) with significant swing-and-miss downside (29% strikeout rate for Bonifacio; 35.5% for Happ).

The Broxton number is provided here as a sort of scale. His toolsy, “shiny new toy” aura made him a popular sleeper this offseason, just as Happ and Bonifacio have been popular waiver adds this month. Lo and behold, Broxton’s 39% strikeout rate has made him virtually unusable in standard fantasy leagues, a fate that could soon befall Happ and Bonifacio, given that their reach rates and swinging strike trends are even worse than Broxton’s. Now might be the time to see if a prospect hawk in your single-season league overvalues these two promising but decidedly unrefined young hitters.


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Tom Whalen is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Tom, check out his archive or follow him @tomcwhalen.

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