In a year that started by studying 60 games, three full months feels like a vast data trove.
Although the 2021 MLB season has yet to reach the midway mark, some players have already endured massive ebbs and flows. Amid rising temperatures, plenty of hitters got hot in June. Of course, not every streak is created equally for fantasy purposes. It was certainly a relief to see an established performer rebound after a rough year on and off the field.
On the other hand, managers can’t react as strongly to a pure contact hitter bunching together some seeing-eye singles.
Throughout any season, fantasy players must decide how heavily to weigh a pitcher’s ups and downs. A wide swing in production (in either direction) can sometimes amount to random variance, but it often points to a significant change with long-term ramifications. If June’s results are any indication, one of the game’s most underappreciated aces may have rammed into a major roadblock.
*Note: Stats updated as of Wednesday evening.
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Tommy Pham (OF – SD): 62.3% Hard-Hit Rate in June
Admit it: You were close to giving up on Pham. In his first season with the Padres, the outfielder batted .211/.312/.312 with three home runs in 31 games. Worrying about his recovery from a broken hand was concerning enough before he got stabbed in the offseason.
At the end of February, Pham said he was fortunate to avoid a far worse fate and was up to around 80% in his recovery. The 33-year-old didn’t look to be playing at full strength when batting .179 in April and going until May 15 before notching his first home run of the season. Banking on a healthy comeback with a top-100 pick quickly looked like a jarring miscalculation for fantasy investors.
Nobody would know it by examining his overall line. Pham is doing exactly what drafters signed up for, batting .263/.384/.429 with nine home runs and 12 stolen bases. That’s because he caught fire in June to hit .337 (29-for-86) with six homers and steals apiece. He also scorched seven doubles and scored 21 runs in 25 games for the Friars.
During the redemptive month, only the phenomenal Shohei Ohtani crushed more of his batted balls at an exit velocity of 95 mph or higher.
That’s quite the leap from Pham’s 35.9% hard-hit rate in May, but he also made a sizable share of hard contact (49.1%) during his horrid April. However, he pounded more of his batted balls into the ground (50.9%) through the opening month. That’s in line with his career average, and this problem befell him even more drastically last season (62.2%). Yet he dropped that rate to 41.0% in June.
This tendency has prevented Pham from ever exceeding 23 home runs in a season, but 20 would do just fine now that he’s running. As of Wednesday evening, just nine players had amassed more steals in 2021.
Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one, so perhaps Pham is now finally fully healthy. If that’s the case, fantasy managers are getting one of baseball’s best power-speed sources. He’s also worked his way back into the leadoff role, where he’s hit .301/.413/.526 in 35 games. Pham is once again a tremendous five-category contributor.
David Fletcher (2B/3B/SS/OF – LAA): Zero Barrels
Fletcher batted .434 (23-for-53) during a 14-game hitting streak, upping his season batting average from .255 to .288. Previously banished to the bottom of the Angels’ batting order, he returned to the leadoff spot Monday and Tuesday.
No qualified hitter has a higher contact rate than Fletcher’s 91.8%, but this is a case of quantity mattering less than quality.
Among 200 hitters with at least 200 plate appearances, Fletcher joins Elvis Andrus and Nicky Lopez as the only one yet to hit a home run. He’s also the only one of 131 qualified batters yet to record a single barrel, a ball traveling with the exit velocity and launch angle to yield at least a .500 expected batting average and 1.500 slugging.
This makes sense, as Fletcher is also dead last in average exit velocity and hard-hit rate.
Kevin Newman’s 1.2% barrel rate would put him in the bottom slot if not for Fletcher. Newman has three barrels this season. Fletcher has three in 1,498 career plate appearances.
None of this is necessarily new information, as nobody drafted Fletcher for power. They took him for batting average, runs, and multi-position flexibility. But the first two months showed the minuscule margin of error for a singles hitter who is useless when hitting .260 instead of .290. Given the shallow nature of Yahoo’s standard fantasy format, it’s odd that Fletcher is rostered in more leagues (63%) than Jonathan India (54%), Josh Rojas (45%), Ty France (42%), and Amed Rosario (40%).
Hyun Jin Ryu (SP – TOR): 2.3 K-BB% in June
This is … not great.
Ryu recorded the sixth-highest K/BB ratio (5.79) from 2018 to 2020 among all starters with at least 200 innings. While that mark extenuates his pinpoint control, the veteran lefty’s 20.3% K-BB% ranked right behind former teammate Clayton Kershaw. He’s struck out over a batter per frame in two of those three campaigns.
After punching out a career-high 26.7% of batters faced during the shortened 2020, Ryu now has his lowest K rate (20.0%) since 2013. Making matters worse, this regression mostly all occurred in June. Ryu has just 14 strikeouts in five starts. His 11 walks in those 31.1 innings are also highly uncharacteristic of a control artist who previously issued eight walks in 10 turns.
What’s happened to Ryu? He’s suddenly become far more hittable, as shown by his worst contact and swinging-strike rates since 2014. He’s also three barrels away from matching the 25 surrendered in a 2019 that saw him accrue 182.2 innings.
There might be a forgiving explanation. Ryu started the month against the Astros and White Sox, MLB’s two best offenses against southpaws. After facing an underachieving, but dangerous Yankees lineup full of right-handed mashers, he made back-to-back turns against the Orioles. Finally a breather, right? Not so fast. Baltimore ranks third in wOBA against lefties.
On the other hand, Ryu has handled difficult circumstances before. He flourished despite pitching exclusively against the AL and NL East last season, and he submitted 12 strikeouts to two walks in a pair of April encounters with the Yankees. Although the schedule doesn’t lend him a total mulligan, it’s too soon to panic over a pitcher possessing a 3.41 ERA and 1.10 WHIP.
That’s why managers with pitching depth should consider moving Ryu now. Pitching closer to his 3.91 xERA and FIP during the final three months would downgrade the 34-year-old into SP4 territory if the strikeouts don’t resurface.
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Andrew Gould is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Andrew, check out his archive and follow him @andrewgould4.
