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8 Players That Will Bounce Back (Fantasy Baseball)

8 Players That Will Bounce Back (Fantasy Baseball)

It was not a fun ride for owners of Manny Machado or Masahiro Tanaka last season after they largely disappointed in fantasy. In both cases, wiping out some of the recency bias should take place as baseball has always been a game of numbers and averages and there are underlying metrics that point to a bounce-back campaign.

You don’t have to take our word for it though. We reached out to our five featured experts below and asked them which hitters and pitchers they expect to return to form in the upcoming season after disappointing owners last year. See who they picked and see why you should consider drafting them.

Q1. Name one hitter you expect to have a bounce-back season after disappointing fantasy owners in 2017

Manny Machado (3B – BAL)
“I’ll take the free square, with Manny Machado. From 2016 to 2017 Machado saw his walk rate and hard contact rate go up and his K rate go down. Sounds like a good recipe, right? Well, his .259/.310/.471 slash line was his worst full season in the majors. Expect another elite performance from Machado after last year’s disappointment.”
– Heath Cummings (CBS Sports)

Manny Machado still had a fine season last year, but did not live up to his first-round ADP expectations. After posting a .370 wOBA and 6.6 WAR in 2015 and a .366 wOBA and 6.9 WAR in 2016, Machado dipped to a .328/2.8 mark in 2017. However, his HR totals and ISO were right in line, and his walk rate rose 0.3% while his K rate dropped 0.5%. He also stole nine bases after not swiping one the previous year, and oh yeah, he’s in a contract year in what figures to be the biggest free agent bonanza ever. His second round ADP is a steal.”
Jamie Calandro (Fantasy Team Advice)

Miguel Cabrera (1B – DET)
“Although it’s risky to rely on a bigger player entering his age-35 season, I’m all aboard the Miguel Cabrera train. Yes, he battled through several nagging injuries all last year, but with his big jump in strikeout-rate and steadying decline in walk-rate, his standing in the fantasy community has taken a pretty big dive. But there are plenty of indicators to suggest that regardless of any injuries, his poor year was largely the product of bad luck. Cabrera had the highest line drive-rate of his illustrious career last season, and his hard contact-rate, even if buoyed a bit by whatever they use to measure such data in Comerica Park, was excellent. And if you watched Cabrera all season, more than anything, you saw a hitter hit a ton of “at-em” balls and could see him visibly get frustrated, which likely played into the abnormally high strikeout rate. He has an ECR that suggests he should go in the seventh round, but I’d be more than happy to take him closer to the fifth.”
– Dan Harris (FantasyPros)

Ian Desmond (1B/OF – COL)
“Desmond went .274/.326/.375 with seven home runs and 15 stolen bases in an injury-shortened year after hurting his hand in Spring Training. With a return to health, Desmond should regain his 20+ home run stroke and be a reliable source of power and speed with the aid Coors and a fantastic lineup around him.”
– Justin Mason (FanGraphs)

Jonathan Villar (2B/OF – MIL)
“It won’t take much for Jonathan Villar to bounce back considering last season was an absolute trainwreck. He started the year batting just .221 with 90 Ks in the first half, but turned it around after the All-Star break batting .282. He likely won’t return to his 2016 numbers (.285 with 62 SB, 19 HR and 92 R) which led to him being a top 5 fantasy asset, but .265 with 45 SB and 15 HR is a reasonable expectation. If he is able to do that, he will exceed the expected value of his ADP by over 100 spots.”
– Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros)

Q2. Name one pitcher you expect to have a bounce-back season after disappointing fantasy owners in 2017

Masahiro Tanaka (SP – NYY)
“I know Masahiro Tanaka makes half his starts at home, but I’d still expect some serious regression from last year’s league-worst HR/FB rate (21.2%). I also expect Tanaka’s strand rate to bound back from his career-low of 71.5%. Those two factors alone should be enough to drop Tanaka’s ERA closer to last year’s SIERA (3.52), which was the 12th best in baseball.”
– Heath Cummings (CBS Sports)

“This may be the Yankee fan in me hoping, but there are some signs that Masahiro Tanaka has a chance to resurrect his disastrous 2017 season. While his 1.77 HR/9 was majorly concerning, his 3.44 xFIP shows that bad luck was a contributing factor to his 4.74 ERA, and his K/9 rose dramatically from a 7.44 to a 9.77 mark. While chasing wins is a fool’s errand, you have to figure his chances of racking them up with this potent Yankees offense is high, and you’re getting Tanaka at a discount.”
Jamie Calandro (Fantasy Team Advice)

Gerrit Cole (SP – HOU)
“Cole looked to be on the verge of fantasy superstardom after his 2015 season, but he followed up an injury-plagued 2016 with an extremely mediocre 2017. Cole has elite velocity, and trailed only Luis Severino among qualified starters by averaging 96 miles per hour on his fastball last year. And yet he continues to have a mediocre strikeout rate, in part due to his seeming unwillingness to throw much else other than his fastball. With a move to the Astros, who are well-known in the industry for encouraging their starters to throw their fastball less, Cole should likely have more success. He should also benefit from not having to be the top dog in the rotation like he has been for several years in Pittsburgh. Despite the move to the American League, I’d expect Cole to pitch much closer to his 2015 form than last year’s uninspiring results.”
– Dan Harris (FantasyPros)

Jameson Taillon (SP – PIT)
“When you look on the surface, Jameson Taillon’s numbers weren’t great when he returned from testicular cancer surgery in June last year, but his underlying statistics were much better with a 3.22 FIP, a decent strikeout rate, and great home run suppression. He got unlucky in the BABIP and strand rate departments. With a full healthy season under his belt, he should take a big step forward.”
– Justin Mason (FanGraphs)

Kevin Gausman (SP – BAL) 
“There may be no pitcher, besides Matt Harvey, who ruined more fantasy teams last year than Kevin Gausman. He gave fantasy teams a 5.85 ERA with a 1.76 WHIP and just 7.7 K/9 before the All-Star break, assuming he wasn’t dropped much earlier. The second-half was much closer to what they were hoping for with a 3.41 ERA, 1.20 WHIP and 9.6 K/9. Those numbers are virtually identical to what Justin Verlander did over the full season.”
– Bobby Sylvester (FantasyPros)


Thank you to the experts for naming their bounce-back candidates. Be sure to give them a follow on Twitter and subscribe to our podcast below for all the latest discussions this season.

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