If the MLB season were a film, it would be a long, grinding war epic of broad sweep with innumerable detours along the way. We are past the quarter mark, and a number of hitters have started faster than expected, others seem stuck in perpetual slumps, and still others are returning expected value for fantasy baseball owners. For some of the slumpers it looks like it’s just baseball being baseball, but with others there are clear signs of decline or skills slippage. Are the overperformers just hot, or do we see signs of real growth?
The NFBC has hosted a few second chance drafts in May, and the market has reacted to these early trends in players’ performance. Let’s examine some over- and underperformers’ data and see if the change in market value is justified. Just for fun we’ll also give each of these players their own movie franchise.
^Stats & data as of 5/16/24
**
Alec Bohm
March adp: 156.11
May adp: 94.0
Hand up: I wasn’t on Bohm at all in draft season. I have, ehh, let’s say 15 teams (keeping this vague as it’s almost an embarrassing number). Zero Bohm. Sounds like a movie title, and not a good one. This despite him being fairly cheap with a ~155 adp in all March drafts at the NFBC (29th corner infielder). I considered him boring with little upside, ie, not a source of truly impactful average or power; a mere compiler. Well, now he’s the 7th most valuable CI according to Fangraphs’ player rater. The story of his season has been much better than expected.
The top line numbers are fantastic: 4 home runs, 58 runs + RBI, .333 batting average, .921 OPS. He had a .764 OPS in 2023.
So what’s going on? The path to production isn’t new: great contact hitter in a good spot for a powerful lineup. Hell, he had 97 RBIs last year.
This season Bohm’s hitting the ball harder: 89.4 -> 91.1 avg EV. His barrel rate is up too, if modestly so: 5.7 -> 7.1%. It’s worth noting that he’s had 6.7-6.8% barrel rates before and his average launch angle is similar to career norms.
But he’s not just hitting the ball harder: Bohm’s zone contact rate is up 2.8% to an elite 90.9% (Bohm Zone is the surprisingly arch and witty sequel to Zero Bohm). Perhaps most important, Bohm is spitting on pitches he doesn’t like at a rate we’ve never seen before. His chase/o-swing is a career-best 29.2%, five points lower than the past two years.
So Bohm’s seeing the ball well and laying off the pitches he can’t turn into damage, while making more and better contact.
Bohm is hitting a few more ground balls; this could help explain the jump in batting average and career-high .302 xBA. He’s also getting a bit lucky with a .381 babip; however, hitting the ball harder may be powering a legit jump from his career .327 mark, making him a true batting average standout even if the babip settles somewhere between these two marks.
Remember: this is a 27 year old with a 70 grade hit tool who plays in one of the best parks for right handed power (The Bank is 11th for HR and 9th for doubles for righty hitters over the last 3 seasons, per Statcast). We probably should’ve expected a step forward, if not quite THIS. Bohm’s pace of production will slow a bit due to normal regression (and has in recent days), but this looks mostly sustainable with the approach and contact gains he’s made. The park and the lineup—second in MLB in runs scored—aren’t going anywhere. He’s living in a good zone, indeed.
**
Bo Naylor
March adp: 168.97
May adp: 287.50
A popular “wait-and-profit” pick for two-catcher leagues especially, Naylor’s production has tumbled even more than his adp. This was a high-end prospect who showed strong plate skills and gave us a nice run of production at the end of 2023, including a handful of steals. Expecting a leap in his age 24 season made sense.
So far, no good: .176 BA / .536 OPS in 120 PA with 3 HR 10 runs 9 RBIs 1 SB. (Bo Good and Bo No Good aren’t really movie title-worthy; more like the bookend tracks to a very weird and bad country concept album).
Naylor’s once outstanding plate discipline has abandoned him: 10.4% walk rate, a decent number but down from 13% last year; 35.7% strikeouts from 23%; chase rate is up 12% too. His swinging strike rate sits at a scary 14.2%—it was just 8.4% last year, well below average.
Something must be off with his approach, his stance, or maybe he needs lasik? All of the above? His zone contact is down over 10% from an above average 84.9% to an abysmal 74.5%. This is almost an entirely different (and terrible) player.
Naylor’s x-stats likewise look horrific: expected batting average, slugging and wOBA are all 4th percentile or worse. Fourth. Another way to state this: 96% of the league have better supporting metrics than Naylor right now.
Is an aberrational babip to blame? Nope. It’s at .254, completely in line with his career .259 number. We know fly balls can reduce babip, but Naylor’s actually hitting fewer of them. The pop up rate is gross at 13%—but that’s exactly what it was last season.
Further, Naylor’s launch angle isn’t buried in worm-burner territory—not even close at 18.9°. This and his hard hit rate are actually positives, as he’s hitting the ball hard 45.2% vs just 30.8% of the time last year.
None of that matters when you’re not actually making contact with the ball. Naylor will surely go up from here—most batters with low contact rates but good hard hit numbers don’t hit .175—but we can’t hold and expect a good outcome barring some major change. Rest of season projections offer some (tempered) hope: .220 BA / .720 OPS, 10/30/30/4 (Steamer). But these are based in part on what Naylor did last season; without a material change in his approach and contact, we won’t see even these modest numbers.
Maybe Naylor starts stealing bases to make some meaningful fantasy contribution, but he’s a drop in shallow leagues and a hold and pray in deep formats. This could be a young player whose true level in MLB is simply lower than what he did last season, at least in the short term. At minimum we can safely assume we’re not getting close to the JTR-lite many hoped he’d become. I don’t like this movie.
**
Brent Rooker
March adp: 287.87
May adp: 262.50
Rooker wasn’t a complete afterthought in preseason drafts, as he was taken ahead of names like Nootbaar, Taveras, Velazquez. But we’re talking fifth outfielder territory here, at least for most (one sage/crazy soul took him at 157). And it’s not as if drafters now are totally buying in—he was the 68th OF taken in March and the… 67th in May.
The rise of Rooker began last year, when he flashed legitimate power (30 HR) while getting his first full-time chance as a 28 year old (Ah, now this is a film-friendly name. Brent: The Rise Of Rooker sounds awesome, maybe a kind of Bourne ripoff, wherein a forgotten, faceless man trained by the government and dropped in the bowels of the A’s minor league system suddenly regains his superhuman ass-kicking powers. The Return of Rooker, a perfect sequel. It can even get a bit intellectual: Brent 3: Rooker Takes The Pawn. Sure, a first name like Rick may be better for the alliterative inclined, though Rick Rooker would imply a different, and more salacious, kind of flick). He’s already at 10 HR in just 33 games while batting third or fourth every day for the surprisingly feisty A’s (and unsurprisingly petty: Rooker was buried and even sent down briefly early in the season, apparently because he wore a wristband supporting the protesting Oakland fans. Please sell the f’n team).
The power, however, isn’t that compelling, or at least it isn’t surprising. The reason Rooker is the 21st-ranked hitter (not OF) this season on Fangraphs’ player rater is the batting average, which sits at a robust .281.
Is it sustainable? Well if you believe in expected stats, the short answer is yes: Rooker’s .281 BA is supported by a .284 xBA, and the .584 slugging by a .596 xSLG. The quality of contact further backs it up, as he’s: hitting the ball harder on average (92.8 EV), set a new maximum (113.8), and doing all this at ideal launch angles (14.1% barrels). Those metrics are all top 10% in MLB.
As for the batting average specifically, Rooker has pulled a reverse Naylor: his zone contact is up 8.3%, a huge jump to nearly a league-average 81.7% rate. He’s done this while lowering strikeouts to a nearly acceptable 31.4% (which can work when you hit the ball as hard as he does), while walking more (10.9%, up nearly 2%).
This all looks like it could continue. Yes, Rooker’s always batted closer to .230 in the majors—which is what projections have for him ROS—but 1) he doesn’t have much of a history in MLB to anchor expectations, and 2) he did hit in the .270-.280 range during stops in the upper minors.
We should expect some natural, but gentle, regression here. If Rooker stays healthy, a .250 BA with 35 HR is a reasonable assumption. He is risen.
**
Paul Goldschmidt
March adp: 77.53
May adp: 100.5
Has age caught up to Goldy? It sure looks like it. After an expected step back last season following an MVP campaign, his performance and metrics are in total middler territory now at age 36. (In years past I’d suggest an “everything he touches turns to gold” theme, but there’s really just one choice now: Gold Schitts, a wry comedy about a man in mid-life crisis who has made mistakes and could be rejuvenated by a young muse, if only he had the courage to take a chance. Starring Eugene Levy to get ahead of any copyright issues).
I could enumerate all the underlying numbers, but just look at Goldy’s hard hit, barrel and resulting expected stats in 2024:
An 8.2% hard hit rate drop is obscene. His 5.9% barrel rate is by far a career low, and more than 6% lower than any full season since 2016. The overall run value sitting exactly at “poor” is too perfect.
It’s not just the quality of contact plaguing Goldy, it’s the rate: his zone contact has been dropping every year but it’s down a huge 4% to 72.7, true bottom-feeder territory. Chicken or egg? His 32.6% strikeout rate is nestled among the most clueless of wretches. More signs of aging: he’s whiffing over 31% of the time against fastballs and can’t punish off-speed pitches either—.053 batting average and .207 xwOBA.
It’s not going to be THIS bad all year. Goldschmidt’s expected BA against fastballs is .275 (.284 last year). But we’re looking at drastically lower expectations now. Steamer projects a .255 BA and 18 more homers rest of season, but that’s with a 24% overall strikeout rate. I’m taking the under on the production and the over on the whiffs.
Goldy’s still going 100 overall in second chance drafts, just a two-round drop from his preseason adp. That’s not low enough: I’d take Yandy, Vinnie P, Paredes and Croney over him (first basemen going post-100). I don’t know if the light of the muse is really flickering for Goldy.
**
Michael Harris II
March adp: 27.78
May adp: 23
I took Harris in a December draft at pick 36, which itself required a rosy growth projection (he finished outside the top 100 on Razzball’s 2023 end of year player rater). Well that quickly became a steal as he rocketed into the top ~25 in spring. (I can’t think of a dumb, punny movie title here. Maybe: Harris, Spare Us, a coming-of-age dramedy about a young man working through the inevitable pains of life’s disappointment and disillusionment?).
There’s logic to the Harris growth thesis: outfield is a gross position, he’s a batting average asset, he has power/speed juice that could match some first rounders with a step up in his age 23 season, and perhaps he’d get more opportunities higher in the Braves’ lineup (low runs/RBI kept his 2023 value down).
How much of this is happening? If we scale his production to last year’s 539 plate appearances, it isn’t. On that basis he’s pacing for 13 HR, 59 runs, 49 RBI, 16.5 SB with a .260 BA, all of which would fall short of last year’s 18/76/57/20/.293. His OPS is just .694 vs .808 in 2023.
The power hasn’t repeated for Harris, let alone taken a leap: just a .130 ISO vs .184. Never a launch angle standout, his ground ball rate is up to 54% from 47%. When he does put it in the air, Harris isn’t far off his usual HR/FB rate at 13.3%; but again, this is slightly down, not a step forward.
The plate discipline looks fine, with a slight drop in zone contact but still a solid 84.4%. Harris is hitting the ball harder with a 91.2 EV, 48% hard hit, and a career-high 114.4 max EV. However, he isn’t accessing the thump: just a 31.1% launch angle sweet spot and 5% barrel rate, which is half what he posted his first two seasons. He’s even pulling the ball 10% more often, a big jump—it’s just not translating to power production given the launch angle.
We know that pulled ground balls sometimes are among the worst things a hitter can do, resulting in rolled-over, often easy outs—which may explain the batting average decline.
The other prong to the Harris top 25 player thesis was playing time/lineup position. We saw a stretch earlier in the season—while Ozzie Albies missed time on the IL—when Harris hit second versus righties. And he’s batting sixth/seventh (128 of 169 PA) more than eighth/ninth, where he was stuck for much of 2023. However, even this slight bump up the lineup hasn’t generated big dividends, as most of his Braves colleagues are (relatively) slumping.
At his current pace Harris will be less valuable than in 2023, when again he was outside the top 100 players in roto value. He was the 10th OF off the board in both March and May; he’s ranked 42 among OF so far this season. Harris not only needs positive regression to return his draft value, he needs to make a push so strong that it significantly alters the hitting metrics. I’d expect better than we’ve seen, but certainly not top 25 overall going forward. Baseball (and life) is hard.
**
Freddie Freeman
March adp: 8.32
May adp: 6.50
The market is not only not panicking, it’s more confident in Freeman now than in the preseason. I find this a little odd; both the top line and underlying numbers would have him down my board—certainly I’d take Harper, and perhaps Olson, before Freddie if drafting today. I thought he may lead MLB in RBI by moving to third in the lineup, behind Betts and Ohtani, but so far the production has been good, not great. (Nothing’s Free, Man: an indie film about a good-looking, successful but aging executive whose life keeps getting weirder, and worse, with every promotion).
Yes, yes, Freeman’s hitting .292. But he has just four home runs in 204 PA with 50 runs + RBI and one steal. That is good for the 10th best first baseman; he was a top 10 overall pick.
While never a huge power guy, Freeman’s averaged 25 HR over the last two seasons in LA. He’s also run successfully, with 36 steals since 2022 including a career-high 23 last year under the new rules. He has one so far in 2024 on two attempts; that paces out to just four total. If the power and speed are muted, this isn’t a first half of the first round profile.
Under the hitting metrics hood, the only good sign is a four year-high 13.4% walk rate. Freeman’s average EV is just 88.6, down 1.4 mph from last season—which itself was down 1.3 mph from 2021-22. A three mph drop over two years, at age 34, seems significant. His barrels are also down 2% despite a good average launch angle.
Freeman’s high line drive rate buoys the good batting average, but it’s the first time since 2019 his xBA sits below .300. As with Goldy, Freddie isn’t crushing fastballs as he has in the past: .288 xBA / .480 xSLG now vs .344 / .616 in 2023.
As for power, the fly ball rate is actually up this season, but they aren’t leaving the yard: his HR/FB rate sits at a pedestrian 7.1%—less than half of last year’s 15% and his career 16.2%. If Freeman’s not striking the ball as hard, more flies become automatic outs. For example, he’s pulled 13 fly balls, fewer than half of which qualify as “hard hit” (95+ mph); he has just one HR on those 13. He may be a little unlucky on this front, but either way we get a .184 xISO, which is a rather meh (for him) 68th percentile—it’s been 90-98th since 2020.
Just as worrisome—and perhaps telling of age—Freeman’s zone contact is way down, to 81.8% (from 85.7). That’s big! Also, we don’t have bat speed data from last year but Freeman 2024 checks in at just 70.2 mph (27th percentile). If turning 34 were to slow down a player’s batting production, his metrics might look a bit like these.
Regarding his speed, Freeman wasn’t a burner last year: 26.7 fps, 34th percentile. It is down a bit to 26.1, which is just 22nd percentile. Perhaps that half-step is significant and the difference explains his reticence to run. (It likely isn’t a team edict, as both Betts and Ohtani are pacing for big increases in SB). Further, last year Freeman was +3 in fielding range (OAA; 84th percentile); now he’s a -1 OAA, 22nd percentile. It appears age has started to literally slow him and we should hope for no more than 8-9 steals total.
I’m not going so far as to argue that Freeman is cooked, or bad, or even average. He’s still a very good player. But there appears to be some skills degradation here. Steamer projects a rest of season 17/71/67/9/.294 line. That seems reasonable, but that won’t get him to 200 runs + RBI and there isn’t any measurable reason to hope for more—this looks like second round production, not a top 8 pick. The corner office has a dismal view.