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It's a tricky devil, that baseball.
A player can lead us to believe he's one thing over an entire third of a season only to flip a switch and become something entirely different thereafter. And there's little rhyme or reason for it other than ... well, that's the way it's supposed to be.
Track record, you've heard it called, and in today's environment of peripheral-heavy analysis, it's sometimes overshadowed. But it's a real thing, as we've seen over the past three weeks from some of the perceived misses early in the draft.
The key word there is "perceived," because in most of these cases, my colleagues and I weren't ready to sound the alarm. The production of established players tends to normalize over the course of 162 games, but the distribution of that production can be wildly inconsistent. And while staying the course may have felt like embracing lunacy, it's really not unprecedented for even star players to disappear for that long.
So hats off to those who exhibited the necessary patience. And heads up to those who didn't, because even though these players are performing better now, most haven't done it for long enough to correct their season-long numbers.
In other words, you may still have a chance to buy low.
My contention with Abreu was always that, because his walk and strikeout rates hadn't changed at all and because he was on pace for about the same number of singles as a year ago, he must have just been lagging in terms of home runs -- or maybe extra-base hits and general. And now, we're seeing confirmation of that. Nearly 41 percent of his extra-base hits this season and exactly 40 percent of his home runs have come in the past 21 days. And actually, both his strikeout and walk rates have improved some, so I don't see why I'd change my position now.
Upton might have been the most obvious choice to bounce back even though he was also the scariest. You could make the case he was the worst player in baseball over the first two months considering he was at times on pace to set a major-league record for strikeouts in a season. But he had two months just as bad last year, two months just as bad the year before that and two months just as bad the year before that. And in two of those years, 2015 and 2013, those two months were consecutive. No one can say why he's so mind-numbingly streaky, but at least he's consistent about it. And if the worst is behind him, we're looking at a massive course correction for a player who's routinely drafted in the first five rounds.
Wainwright has had a slow and steady recovery from surgery to repair a torn Achilles last year, making small gains with every start to get to where he is now, which may be all the way back. In April, he didn't even have the usual velocity on his fastball. That came about three starts in, and more recently, he has regained the feel for his offspeed pitches, ramping up the whiff rate on his curveball. If you take his numbers in his last five starts -- a 2.72 ERA, 1.04 WHIP and 7.6 strikeouts per nine innings -- and translate them over a full season, that's basically what we saw from Wainwright in 2014, when he was last healthy.
Dozier is one of the few on this list who still concerns me a bit because, while his season-long numbers -- a .244 batting average and .741 OPS -- are now close to normal, he's only the 14th-best second baseman in Head-to-Head points leagues. Of course, he's still behind last year's home run pace by almost 10, which goes back to my concerns about him at the start of the year: He has basically sold out for the home run, depending on them for the majority of his production, and that's asking a lot from a little guy. He still isn't walking or running (as in drawing walks or stealing bases -- that's baseball verbiage for you) like he did two years ago, so this may be as good as it gets.
Martin's inclusion here is testing the limits of the "star player" label, but as miserable as the catcher position has been this year, he has the potential to be exactly that if he can continue to do what he has recently begun to do. And that would make the most sense for a player who has always exhibited good plate discipline. After striking out 31 times in his first 60 at-bats this year, he has 14 strikeouts to 11 walks in 47 at-bats this month --and with a perfectly plausible BABIP. Do we owe it all to him switching to a lighter bat a few weeks ago, or is it simply the law of averages at play?
After trailing a bunch of also-rans at the position for most of the season, Votto is now the 12th-best first baseman in Head-to-Head points leagues and the 15th-best in Rotisserie. It seems pretty obvious nothing is wrong with him. His hard-hit rate is higher than ever, according to FanGraphs.com. He's still hitting the ball to all fields. He has actually cut down on his fly balls, which normally helps with batting average, and has yet to pop out all season. He just needed some time for his numbers to normalize, and while he may not get them all the way back to 2015 level, I'm betting he cruises into the top 10 now.
Jones has eight home runs in June, which is about the extent of his production for the month, but that's always been the case for him. It's why reports of his demise were not only exaggerated but also downright silly. When players who don't walk slump, they're never on base to contribute the runs that other slumpers might, which makes the slump appear to be even worse. But the underlying numbers -- namely, the ISO, strikeout rate and hard-contact rate -- suggest that Jones is the same player as always, and while he'll still need better BABIP luck to be the top-20 outfielder so many of us drafted him to be, there's little doubt he's must-start.
Gomez is the one of these players who was dead to me just a couple weeks ago, and he still hasn't been completely resurrected given that he's also the one whose track record actually works against him following his injury-plagued 2015. In other words, he has been bad now for much longer than these other seven have and, even in June, has struck out 20 times in 58 at-bats. But plate discipline was never his strong suit, which is why I'm choosing to focus on the three home runs and three stolen bases. If he can get back to being a consistent source of power and speed, you'll be glad you took a flier on him now.
Be on the lookout for ...
It hasn't been going on for the whole month, but Stanton is showing signs of the inevitable turnaround, going 8 for 21 (.381) over his last five games. Granted, it's mostly singles, but he did have that one home run Monday, his first of the month, and if the popular narrative that he's battling confidence has any truth to it, even singles can help with that.
Three of Correa's 11 home runs have come in his past five games. It's not the strongest indicator of a turnaround, but it's the best short spurt we've seen from him since the first two games of the season and reason enough for me to keep the consensus first-rounder ahead of Xander Bogaerts and Francisco Lindor in my rest-of-season rankings.
