Regression articles are always a fun topic to cover early in the season, but they tend to border on the obvious with certain players off to blazing hot starts that can’t be expected to continue – apologies to Jed Lowrie. Or on the flip side, players like Lance McCullers Jr. whom we covered last week, that clearly won’t give up a home run on four out of every 10 balls that go into the air all season. My goal is to take a look at players who are under or overachieving and try to provide the analysis tools to diagnose if there will be correction and how big it will be. Or in the case of Jed Lowrie, maybe it’s real change and we should all get on board!
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Week of April 16th Recap
Here are how the positive regressors turned up the heat after their documented slow starts.
Ryan Zimmerman (1B – WAS) had been hitting the ball hard all year and continued to do so last week tallying a .240/.296/.600 line with two HRs, two doubles and a triple with six RBIs.
Jeimer Candelario (3B – DET) was off to a cold start but heated up right on cue last week going .440/.481/.760 with two HRs, two runs, and seven RBIs.
Chris Taylor (OF – LAD) got the power swing going last week as well with a triple, two doubles and a home run, triple-slashing .250/.323/.500 and scoring five runs in the process.
Ian Happ (OF – CHC) and Addison Russell (SS – CHC) both continued to underperform, but let’s see what happens when the Cubs start playing games every day. It’s worth noting that Happ has lost playing time to Almora Jr as well as the leadoff slot.
Alex Wood (SP – LAD) was the easiest positive regression candidate I tackled last week and he didn’t disappoint with two earned runs in two games this week. I guess you really can’t continue to allow 70% of your runners to score.
Lance McCullers Jr. (SP – HOU) was the second easiest lay-up I had last week. He did McCullers things like strike out 14 batters in his two starts including a start against Seattle where he struck out 11 batters and allowed a single hit, walk and homer in the process.
Over on the negative regression side of things, we hit the nail on the head in a couple places as well. In some cases, it was a performance prediction hit and in others, like the Bryce Harper case it, was describing what would need to be true for him to continue the ridiculous power numbers he was putting up.
Gregory Polanco (OF – PIT) had just one extra-base hit (a lone double) though he maintained his higher launch angle profile.
Francisco Cervelli (C – PIT) went back to mostly hitting weak ground balls as we watch his launch angle plummet back to normal.
Matt Davidson (3B – CHW) struck out in seven of his last 16 at-bats meaning any hope of more hard-hit balls in play has continued to vanish. Mr. Opening Day was solely that.
Tim Anderson (SS – CHW) was noted for both his penchant for taking more walks (which continues), but also for running a crazy-high .500 BABIP on pull side grounders which contributed to an overall .385 BABIP on grounders through last week. That regressed, as predicted, and he’s now running a ~.260 BABIP on grounders (.333 to the pull side vs. his career average of ~.250) which actually has some upside in it (.000 BABIP on balls hit back up the middle).
Mike Moustakas (3B -KC) Moustakas is still hitting .591 on ground balls. If you rode him another week remember his career average on groundballs is something like .250.
Bryce Harper (OF – WAS) continued to do Bryce Harper things. He has walked a lot because no one behind him in the lineup can hit yet this year, and he homered a couple times. There was a little backlash on my Harper take, but I’m planning to continue monitoring if he maintains power in the air to all fields or if it regresses. He is continuing to pull the ball with great frequency (50%) in the air, which bodes well for a repeat of his career-high 42 HR season in 2015. Remember in that season he pulled the ball 41% of the time in the air (33% in 2016 and 35% in 2017).
Trevor Bauer (SP – CLE) finally saw some of his fly balls do damage against him this week (.287/.287/.857) which is in line with his career norm rather than his hot .130/.130/.217 start.
Luke Weaver (SP – STL) still had the following triple-slash on fly balls last week: .000/.000/.000 despite the fact that he still gave up six ER to the Cubs.
Tyson Ross (SP – SD) almost threw a no-hitter so what do I know? I’m still not buying his newfound ability to not walk hitters.
New Players To Monitor
Positive Regression
Joey Votto (1B – CIN)
Three things stick out to me about Joey Votto to start the year. The first is he is pulling 80% of his groundballs, none of which have found a hole (.000 BABIP). In fact, his total BABIP on balls hit under 8° degrees of loft is sitting at .045 vs. a career average of .235. The hits are going to start finding holes and Votto is going to heat up very quickly. Secondly, Votto hasn’t been hitting many balls between 24 and 32° which is where he generated 20 of his 35 home runs last year. Lastly, he has been hitting a lot of balls in the line drive launch angles (36%!) yet has produced a wOBA of only .568 vs. a career average of ~.700. I recognize that predicting that Joey Votto will soon go on a tear is a lot like predicting that we’ll stop having snow-outs in May, but I just want reassure everyone that Father Time has yet to catch up with the aging first baseman. Everything looks okay except the luck factors. I know it’s not every day that you get a chance to acquire someone like Votto, but if you have a chance to make a trade and catch his hot streak you can pile up a few extra counting stats and something like a .350 AVG and .450 OBP from here on out.
Gary Sanchez (C – NYY)
Much like Joey Votto, this isn’t about me telling you why Sanchez will be better than the 8th best catcher for the remainder of the season. I’m more interested in seeing where his skills turn out in terms of his batted ball profile if/when he plays an entire season. To start the season, we can see Sanchez isn’t taking many walks, he’s hitting more “poppers” over 40 degrees in the air and he’s also underperforming on his ground balls much like we discussed with Joey Votto (an exact duplicate .045 BABIP) despite hitting them even harder than he did in 2017. He’s also hit a bunch of balls the other way with limited exit velocity to begin the year which is a trend that’s continued from the end of last season.
Negative Regression
Hanley Ramirez (1B – BOS)
Here’s where xStats can get you in trouble. They suggest Hanley should be responsible for a .296/.356/.514 line to open the season and to his credit, he’s managed .314/.372/.500. There are no bones to pick here. How hard, and where Hanley has hit the ball has gotten him everything he’s deserved. But what we care about is how sustainable his batted ball distributions are. Let’s take a peek at his batted balls this year as compared to his most recent three seasons.
Ramirez has continued his trend of putting more balls in the air, however, he has not found the fountain of youth no matter what his stolen base totals tell you. Ramirez has absolutely smoked everything he’s hit on the ground. Averaging nearly 100 mph (98.7) on balls hit under 8° and a .400 BABIP which have provided him with a lofty .314 batting average and .372 on-base percentage vs. ~.260/.310 based on what we might expect from his 2015-2017 career batted ball statistics. It does seem like everyone is running hot in Boston these days and Hanley is no exception, but I do feel like he’s still going to end the year in the .270/.340/.490 territory like most of the projection systems forecasted for him. It’s worth keeping an eye on how many balls he’s squaring up into those good wOBA-positive launch angles, but be prepared to take an AVG/OBP hit in the near future.
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Jim Melichar is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Jim, check out his archive and follow him @JimMelichar7.
