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Positive & Negative Regression Candidates: Week 2 (2020 Fantasy Baseball)

Positive & Negative Regression Candidates: Week 2 (2020 Fantasy Baseball)

It’s the first week of August and the…second full week of the regular season? This fantasy baseball season is just as strange and awkward to navigate as the actual baseball season, and fantasy owners are going to have to make quick decisions based on small sample sizes.

Knowing which numbers to believe and being able to accurately predict positive and negative regression is going to be key to staying competitive in such a short season.

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Negative Regression Candidates

JaCoby Jones (OF – DET)
If this abbreviated season ended today, Tigers outfielder JaCoby Jones would be a legitimate MVP candidate. Coming into Sunday, he was batting .423 with a 1.349 OPS. He has six runs scored, three home runs, and seven RBI in eight games. His Hard Hit %, Barrel %, xWOBA, and xSLG are all 90th percentile or better. The exit velocity and xBA are up there, as well.

As a result, his ownership percentage has jumped more than 30% in the last few days.

Here’s what else Jones has: a .500 BABIP, a 37.5% HR/FB, a K% of 25%, a BB% of just 3.6%, and a fairly lengthy track record that tells us this hot start isn’t sustainable. And if you look at his Pitch Tracking numbers, he is hammering fastballs and off-speed pitches but has a .232 xBA against breaking pitches.

More breaking pitches are coming for Jones, and so is negative regression. If you grabbed Jones in your league for some quick production in the short season, it’s time to see if you can sell him for a player off to a slow start.

Nathan Eovaldi (SP – BOS)
Nathan Eovaldi is the best starting pitcher on the Red Sox this season. With Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez out for the year and the likes of Martin Perez, Ryan Weber, Matt Hall, and Zack Godley toeing the rubber to start games, that isn’t exactly a feat worthy of Hall of Fame consideration. But he has allowed just three earned runs over his first 11 innings while striking out eight, and the team only has one win so far in games not started by Eovaldi.

There’s just one problem: he’s out-pitching his metrics.

Eovaldi’s ERA currently sits at 2.45, but his FIP is 3.62, his xFIP is 3.74, and his xERA is a whopping 5.24. There are a few reasons for these warning signs. His strikeouts and SwStr% are both down, and opponents are batting .310 against him with an xwOBA of .354. He’s also below the 40th percentile in the following metrics: Exit Velocity, Hard Hit %, xwOBA, xERA, xBA, xSLG, Barrel %, K %, and Whiff %.

Positive Regression Candidates

Josh Donaldson (3B – MIN)
Through his first eight games in 2019, Josh Donaldson was 4-for-28, and there were rumblings that the then-33-year-old might be done after an injury-plagued 2018. He finished the season with 37 home runs and a .259 batting average.

His numbers through the first week of 2020 look eerily similar. His Exit Velocity and Hard Hit percentages look good, while the rest of his Statcast data looks…less promising. Still, we can take track record into account when we take a look at regression candidates.

Is Donaldson going to bat .297 and hit the 60-game equivalent of 41 home runs as he did in 2015? No, probably not. But will get his average back up to somewhere around .250 and hit 10 home runs in this abbreviated season? I think he will.

Buy low if you can.

Will Smith (C – LAD)
A catcher has entered the positive regression conversation. Only five people in all of baseball have a lower BABIP than Will Smith; three of those players currently have a BABIP of .000. Smith’s is .071.

What’s odd is that Smith’s Statcast numbers are off the charts. I mean, look at this:

While he is batting just .118, Smith has walked four times against just three strikeouts, and he is ripping the ball when he swings. It should only be a matter of time before his box scores start to resemble his underlying metrics.

Honorable Mention

Miguel Cabrera (1B, DH – DET)
It felt too strange to include a player hitting .133 as a negative regression candidate, but Cabrera gets an honorable mention here since his ownership is jumping a bit after hitting two home runs on Thursday.

It’s hard not to like Miguel Cabrera the person, but it’s just as hard to like him as a potential fantasy contributor at this point in his career. While once the best hitter in baseball, he just isn’t the same hitter now that he is 37 years old. His HR/FB% is amazingly 60% right now, which almost makes sense when you consider that three of his four hits this season are home runs.

Unfortunately, there are the usual warning signs. His K% right now is 29.4%, and even though his BABIP is an unlucky .059 (second only to Christian Yelich‘s .000), his expected batting average is still just .226. And while Cabrera’s power has all but disappeared in recent years, he has typically still hit for average. This is looking like the season for that to end.

He has hit a few off-speed pitches out of the park this season, but his average launch angle shows the true story:

And here is his launch angle breakdown with all pitches listed. Note the extreme difference this season between changeups and pitches that are…not changeups:

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Mike Maher is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @mikeMaher.

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