Fantasy Baseball Player Notes

Merrifield has established an extremely strong floor, as he'll almost always be an asset in batting average, steals, and runs scored, and chip in for the remaining categories. There were some concern after his steals dropped to just 20 in 2019, but he bounced back to a 32-steal pace last year while also seeing a power spike. Merrifield is 32 years old and does not hit the ball particularly hard, but that's really irrelevant at this point. He is what he is, and with multi-position eligibility, what he is a major asset in fantasy and one of the top second basemen in fantasy.

Soler's injury-shortened 2020 season didn't live up to his massive 2019 campaign, but he did show that a lot of his gains were legitimate. Yes, it was more of a 30-homer pace, but his barrel rate, average exit velocity, and hard hit rate were all elite, as they were the prior year. Soler struck out way too much (34.5% of the time), and if he can't fix that, then his average will suffer as it did last year. But, his walk rate remains high and the power is going to be there with how hard he hits the ball. He's a source of cheap power you can grab later than other similarly-profiled bats going several rounds earlier.

Benintendi will get a fresh start with the Royals in 2021, and if any player ever needed a change of scenery, it's him. After looking like a perennial 20-20 player with a solid batting average, Benintendi has fallen off a cliff the last two years. To the extent you could boil his struggles down to something simple, it was that he appeared to get too homer-happy in 2019. Despite making better contact when he did hit the ball, his swinging strike rate jumped by four points to 11.6%, and his fly ball percentage and launch angle skyrocketed. Things didn't look much better in his brief 2020 season, which was cut short by a rib injury. Benintendi is still young, and out of the spotlight of the Boston media, might be able to return to what made him an impact player prior to 2019. You won't need to spend a ton to find out, thankfully, and he's worth a late-round pick in all formats.

Dozier is almost entirely off the fantasy radar this year, but that feels like an overreaction to 2020. Yes, his poor performance last year makes his breakout 2019 performance seem like an outlier, but really, it seems like 2020, rather than 2019, should be discounted. Dozier's quality of contact was awful last year, but it was out of character for him over the previous two seasons, and was more likely the result of him having tested positive for COVID-19 rather than from a sudden loss of skills. The Royals' lineup is sneaky deep, and Dozier will start at third base this season, giving him eligibility at three positions. Considering he's free in drafts, there is every reason to scoop him up with a late-round pick.