- Draft Prep Tiers: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
- Heath's Sleepers | Breakouts | Busts |
- Scott's Top 100 prospects | Sleepers | Breakouts | Busts
Now that we're deep into draft prep season and I have a couple dozen mocks under my belt, I can say with greater confidence which players I'm avoiding than I could back in January, when the content gods demanded a sacrifice of maximum clickability, leaving me with no choice but to hurry the process.
So I'm glad you've clicked a second time. You might find the names to be a little more provocative this time around. Which isn't to say they're all different from the first go-around -- I've kept all the ones I'm still wary of drafting, and for the ones I've removed, I've offered an explanation as to why -- but for higher-end players, I need the confidence of experience to recommend turning them down.
But turn them down I do, sometimes for rounds at a time. And now I get to explain why.
The Newcomers
First off, I'd like you to understand that when I call these players "busts," it's more a statement on their disaster potential than their most-likely outcome. The most-likely outcome for Judge is still studly, and I have a few shares in him myself even knowing the risks.
But you have to know the risks.
Judge of course led the AL in home runs and walks last season. But he led the majors in strikeouts, with a rate (30.7) that was fourth-highest among qualifying hitters. None of the three ahead of him hit even .240.
But there was Judge strutting around with his .284 mark. It wasn't exactly a mathematical anomaly. Home runs are like batting average freebies, and he hit 52 of them. His quality of contact supported a high BABIP, so it's not like his .357 mark was outrageous considering. A repeat of his 2017 is totally within the realm of possibility.
The problem is it depends on him continuing to perform at near-historic levels in areas where every player is susceptible to random chance. If we assume last year's strikeout rate is his baseline, an off year in terms of line-drive or hard-contact rate blows everything up. It's why we've seen Chris Davis teeter between MVP candidate and total mess the past few years.
The more likely outcome to me than last year's numbers is, say, a .260 batting average and 40-45 home runs, which is certainly deserving of a late second-round pick. But there's a possibility Judge is worse than that. There's a possibility he hits .220, and then what have you done?
I have a new friend. His name is Dr. Mike Tanner.
Dr. Tanner writes about injuries for Fantrax, and he likes to tell me on Twitter when my inferences about injuries are wrong.
He's a doctor. I am not.
Recently, he wrote some discouraging things about Daniel Murphy, whose rehabilitation from microfracture surgery has happened mostly behind closed doors, with few details escaping into the outside world. There was talk he might be ready for opening day, but the presumption of late is that he won't be. Still, the prevailing attitude from beat writers and Fantasy analysts is that it's no big deal.
Paging Dr. Tanner.
"As of February 22, Murphy was still fielding grounders on his knees and running on a treadmill with a harness that supports 60 percent of his weight. His therapy will progress from partial weight-bearing to static full-bearing (swinging a bat), and later dynamic full-bearing (running the bases, fielding, etc.) over the course of the next few months. Return to sport is on average 6-9 months, and in Murphy's case, we'll be much closer to the latter. In rehab terms, he is a long way away from getting back on the field, and when he does return, we can expect an extra day off every week or two to manage the surgically repaired knee."
You can read the full explanation here, but basically, if you cut through the chatter and look at what Murphy's actually doing (and know the general timetable of these things, which is where having medical knowledge helps), it certainly sounds like Murphy is a long way off. It certainly sounds like he could miss as much as half the season.
And yet he's hardly being downgraded at all on Draft Day, going off the board 61st on average. Elite second basemen are in short supply, so I can understand the appeal of having one. But the risk of this recovery dragging on for months makes it a non-starter for me.
You had to go and do it, Arizona, you bunch of slimy snakes.
The introduction of the humidor this season is going to mess up a good thing in A.J. Pollock. It's going to mess up a lot of things, but especially this thing.
If you don't have the 411 on the humidor, read this and wait for your heart to sink.
You may have heard the Rockies use a humidor and may wonder what the big deal is since Colorado is still considered a hitter's haven. But it's not the circus it used to be, and it's not as dry an environment as Arizona. Less moisture is absorbed by the baseball to get its humidity up to 50 percent. In other words, the effect figures to be even greater in Arizona. Estimates have home run production dropping by as much as 50 percent, and it's not like other forms of hard contact won't be compromised in some (major) way.
Pollock already had reasons for concern. Before breaking his elbow in 2016, he was considered an elite contributor in both batting average and stolen bases, but he was neither of those things in 2017, his first full year back. And considering he's a career .299 hitter with an .848 OPS at home compared to .273 with a .762 at home, he's losing a big part of what made him good.
There's a point where he's still worth drafting for the stolen bases, which may well increase with the Diamondbacks suddenly straining for offense, but it's well after his average draft position of 63rd overall.
Jake Arrieta finally found a team, agreeing to a three-year deal with the Phillies Sunday.
I'm not sure it's soon enough.
We're less than three weeks away from opening day, you know, which might be fine for hitters and relievers. But spring training is as long as it is for the starting pitchers, basically. Arrieta has missed important conditioning time and important buildup time, and rushing to do something as unnatural as hurling a sphere at maximum effort 100 times over a three-hour span every five days is generally a bad idea.
He was already getting plenty of benefit of the doubt by ranking among the top 25 starting pitchers. His strikeout rate and velocity were both down last year, and he wasn't the workhorse we had grown accustomed to seeing either, averaging less than six innings per start. His saving grace was a 2.26 ERA over his final 14 starts, but while his ground-ball rate was up during that stretch, it wasn't up enough to explain it completely. It may have had just as much to do with the .235 BABIP he put together.
And by the way, his ground-ball percentage wasn't back to 2015-16 standards during that 14-start stretch. With hitters able to hit the ball in the air against him last year, his home run rate nearly doubled, which could be a problem now that he'll be pitching half his games at last year's most homer-friendly environment.
Add readiness concerns to performance concerns, age concerns and stuff concerns, and I'd just ... rather not. Not at 88th overall, anyway.
Miguel Sano homered twice in spring action Friday, so if there was any doubt he could still hit for power, there you have it: He can still hit for power.
Why would there be doubt? Well, for one thing, general manager Thad Levine pointed out that Sano showed up to spring training with a "generous carriage," which is the nicest possible way of calling someone fat. And while it's true said carriage likely had something to do with Sano recovering from shin surgery this offseason, is that such a comforting thought? He's recovering some surgery, so things aren't so bad?
There always seems to be something going on with him -- health, conditioning, work ethic, focus -- and now the somethings are begetting more somethings.
You have to ask yourself if Sano is really worth it at a deep position in an era where his greatest attribute, power hitting, is hardly in short supply.
For me, it's all too easy to pass him over in the middle rounds. Too many interchangeable pieces there. I like Matt Olson more in Rotisserie leagues, and I like Kyle Seager more in Head-to-Head points. And both tend to go off the board later than Sano, so what's the point?
Coming off a disastrous first season in Colorado, you might assume Ian Desmond's stock would be down, and no doubt there's a point where I would look at him and say, yes, that guy's a sleeper.
But 127th overall ain't it. I feel like 127th overall isn't even paying attention.
That's an 11th-round pick in a standard 12-team league and the same place where you might draft someone like Matt Olson, Luke Weaver or Ender Inciarte. You'd forfeit them for a guy who could only muster a .701 OPS while playing half his games at Coors Field? Really? I mean, yeah, he runs a little, but so does Dexter Fowler. You don't see us going hog-wild for him.
I could understand if last year was the one blemish on Desmond's record. His season was sidetracked early by a broken hand, and later, a calf strain slowed him down. On its own, health might be a valid excuse, but we had just about written him off prior to 2016 as well. It took an unbelievable first half with an unbelievable BABIP for the Rangers to put him back on the Fantasy map and earn him that big contract from Colorado last offseason.
You know what's about the worst thing you could do while playing half your games at Coors Field? Put the ball on the ground, which is what Desmond did 62.7 percent of the time last year. He has always been a high ground-ball guy, but that's an outrageous number. The highest among qualifiers was 57.6 percent.
You could argue it's a sign he wasn't totally healthy last season, but you could also argue his batted-ball profile isn't one that's going to benefit from greatly Coors Field. And Coors Field is the only reason we're excited about him, right?
You know who else we're excited about? Ryan McMahon and David Dahl, and they're both looking for jobs. A slow start could be the nail in Desmond's coffin.
The Holdovers
I don't know why we have to fall for it again.
From time to time throughout his now 11-year major-league career, Justin Upton has had seasons in which his production reaches another level. He's not a fundamentally different player, but he's a little better all around. And 2017 was one of those seasons.
It just seems like every time it happens, it becomes his expected baseline production. He gets drafted like the best version of himself rather than what he usually is.
What he usually is is a solid starter in any format, but not a fourth-round pick, as his FantasyPros consensus ranking suggests. Not anywhere close.
His .341 BABIP was his highest in seven years, yet he hit only .273 ... which itself was his highest in five years. He strikes out so much that he's normally condemned to a batting average in the .250 range.
Meanwhile, his .268 ISO was his highest ever. Shoot, only once in the previous five years had he even topped .220. A power breakthrough at age 30 is suspicious, particularly for a player who has been in the league since age 19. I don't mean that in accusatory way. I just mean we probably shouldn't take it so seriously.
It's a mathematical quandary -- and one I don't think you can explain just by him being in the same lineup as Mike Trout. After all, he was doing the same things in Detroit during the first two-thirds of last season with little to no help from a broken-down Miguel Cabrera.
Upton may not be a bust in the traditional sense -- where the bottom falls out, leaving his Fantasy owners trembling amid the rubble -- but he'll underwhelm you at his going rate.
"Bust" probably isn't the most appropriate term to describe Marcell Ozuna either. The disaster potential rates fairly low. He'll hit his share of home runs and drive in plenty as the new big bat in the heart of the Cardinals lineup. But the specifics matter.
Will he hit 37 home runs as he did last year, exceeding his previous high by 14? Most likely not. Will he drive in 124 as he did last year, exceeding his previous high by 39? Well, not without as many home runs. Will he hit .312 again after previously settling in as a .265 hitter? The percentages all say no.
Chief among them is a .355 BABIP. Some players legitimately do profile as .350-BABIP guys -- a rare, uniquely gifted few whose contact mainly manifests as line drives. Ozuna's 19.3 percent line-drive rate last year was in the bottom third of the league and not at all a departure from career norms.
What was a departure? His home run-to-fly ball rate -- a bloated 23.4 percent thanks in part to a modest 33.5 percent fly ball rate. He was the only player with a mark as low as 33.5 to hit even 30 home runs.
Again, not a disaster here, but the bottom line is Ozuna's BABIP and home run-to-fly ball rates in 2017 were just a little too high to believe, and yet at 44th overall, you're paying for the production they yielded. Let one of your competitors do that.
First of all, we need to forget 2016 happened. Wipe it from your memory. Regard it as but a figment of your imagination.
And it's pretty easy to do if you just look at Cano's year-by-year numbers since joining the Mariners in 2014. One of these things is not like the others:
So ... fluke. We're on the same page, then. Great.
But then we should also be on the same page with this: He doesn't need to go 73rd overall.
Oh, but he's a second baseman. You have to pay more for a good one of those.
OK, but how good is he really? The problem with second base is a lack of true standouts. There's Jose Altuve. There's Jose Ramirez. There's Brian Dozier. There's (maybe) Daniel Murphy. And if you want to count Dee Gordon for what he contributes in categories leagues, fine. But that's it. Maybe Whit Merrifield if you trust him to fully repeat his 2017. But that's it.
For everyone else -- a span of about 15 players -- we're talking marginal differences, attributable mostly to variable levels of assurance. That's more or less what separates Cano, my sixth second baseman, and Jason Kipnis, my 18th.
And then when you consider Cano is 35 and has declining walk and line-drive rates, I'm thinking it might be better to grab an Ozzie Albies or Yoan Moncada (both on my Breakouts list) five rounds later. They're more likely separate themselves from the pack than Cano is at this stage of their careers.
Again? You're making me do this again, after getting it right last year? After doing my part to educate the world about the pitfalls of Xander Bogaerts only to have to witness it play out like Dr. Malcolm in Jurassic Park.
Once more with feeling, y'all.
Bogaerts doesn't do anything especially well, and he doesn't do many things even moderately well. He has twice done a good job of faking it -- in 2015, when his .320 batting average carried him, and in 2016, when his 21 home runs carried him.
Faking it, I say? Allow me to demonstrate.
Here are his year by year BABIPs (via FanGraphs):
2014 | .296 |
2015 | .372 |
2016 | .335 |
2017 | .327 |
Here are his year by year home run-to-fly ball percentages (also via FanGraphs):
2014 | 7.1 |
2015 | 5.3 |
2016 | 11.4 |
2017 | 7.2 |
I'll connect the dots for you. Both of the years in which he had the appearance of a Fantasy standout were built on anomalies -- an uncharacteristically high BABIP one year and an uncharacteristically high home run-to-fly ball rate the next. And nothing in his batted-ball profile would suggest a change is on the horizon.
Now, you will find people -- honest, hard-working people -- who make this claim:
No way! People forget that Bogaerts had the wrist injury last year. Look what he did when healthy. Can't get behind this.
— Rich (@rbenny43) January 23, 2018
But you know what? I'm not buying it. What he did when healthy was hit all of two home runs in the first 2 1/2 months of the 2017 season. The success he had prior to the plunking was driven by two numbers: a .308 batting average, which was built on the same sort of BABIP (.367) that made fools of us all in 2015, and nine stolen bases, which were obviously out of character and in no way slowed by a wrist injury. I don't blame health. I blame natural regression, and I'm happy to double down on that view this year, with Bogaerts still sitting at 74th overall in FantasyPros consensus ADP.
At age 25, he still has time to live up to all of his potential, but I need to see actual changes to his batted-ball profile before I'm willing to forecast it.
Ryan Braun is Fantasy royalty, and Fantasy royalty tends to get the benefit of the doubt. But over the past several years, a few troubling trends have emerged, and last year showed what happens when they converge.
It was a bad season by his standards. It was a bad season by 2017 standards. His 3.06 Head-to-Head points per game were eclipsed by the likes of Eduardo Nunez, Marwin Gonzalez and Michael Brantley.
And of course, per-game production isn't the fairest way to assess Braun anymore, not when missing games is the norm. Even if you're willing to excuse the six weeks he missed with a strained calf last year -- which is awfully generous of you seeing as he's no stranger to DL time at age 34 -- it doesn't change the way the Brewers handle him in between DL stints, resting him every five days or so to keep his thumb, wrist and back in working order.
It's sort of the way the Giants handled Barry Bonds in the latter stages of his career, which worked out OK for his Fantasy owners because, you know ... Barry Bonds. But Bonds Braun is not, and he's finding it more and more difficult to meet the threshold required for a less-than-everyday player to deliver in standard mixed leagues.
The problem is one several years in the making: He doesn't elevate the ball as he did when he was one of the most feared sluggers in the game.
| Fly-ball rate by year, according to FanGraphs | ||||||||
2007 | 44.9 | |||||||
2008 | 44.1 | |||||||
2009 | 33.9 | |||||||
2010 | 34.9 | |||||||
2011 | 37.4 | |||||||
2012 | 38.1 | |||||||
2013 | 32.4 | |||||||
2014 | 33.0 | |||||||
2015 | 31.0 | |||||||
2016 | 25.1 | |||||||
2017 | 31.9 | |||||||
Last year's rate of 31.9 percent would have ranked 112th among all qualifiers, down there with Chase Headley, Andrelton Simmons and, yes, Xander Bogaerts -- you know, some of the few players who aren't hitting 20-plus homers at a time when everybody who's anybody does.
Braun got away with it in 2016, when he homered 30 times in 511 at-bats, because of an uncharacteristically high home run-to-fly ball rate (28.8 percent), but if he wasn't homering at that clip in his younger, studlier days, why should we believe he will now?
Royalty or not, he's probably like a fourth outfielder in Fantasy Baseball these days.
You know how the humidor is coming to Arizona? Yeah, this one was a bust pick for me even before that announcement.
Two years in a row Jake Lamb convinced us he was breaking out only to disappear in the second half. I'm not letting it happen a third time.
The first-half/second-half split isn't especially revealing to me, but the fact he couldn't sustain an All-Star level of production over a full season is.
And he has a glaring enough flaw for me to wonder if it'll always be the case.
The guy stinks against left-handed pitchers. Big deal, right? Most left-handed hitters do. But there's a difference between keeping one's head above water and doing whatever Lamb did last year, hitting .144 with a .557 OPS against them. It wasn't an isolated event either. In 2016, he hit .164 with a .625 OPS against lefties.
By the final two months of 2017, the newly contending Diamondbacks had seen enough, sitting him against the majority of left-handed pitchers in favor of Adam Rosales.
And that's the clincher for me. Not only do Lamb's struggles against left-handed pitchers require him to perform at an MVP level against right-handers -- which is difficult to sustain from month to month, much less year to year -- but they also may have rendered him a platoon player, making him a souped-up third base version of Lonnie Chisenhall.
Mixed-league owners can do better -- certainly in Round 11, where FantasyPros consensus ADP shows him going in a 12-team league.
Already in this space, I've noted a couple players who don't have true bust potential but are likely to just, you know, underachieve.
Jon Lester, meanwhile, is standing over the trap door, stammering through an explanation of why there are no sharks with laser beams on their heads.
He's toast.
He may be, anyway. Granted, I thought he was in 2013 as well, and then he went on the best three-year stretch of his career. But the evidence at this stage of his career is a little more damning.
From 2016, his average fastball velocity dropped by more than 1 mph. And while we see some fluctuation for most every pitcher from year to year, establishing a new low is of particular concern for a 34-year-old, especially one whose strikeout rate -- not K per nine, but true strikeout percentage -- fell to its lowest mark since 2013, when the league as a whole was less strikeout-prone. He didn't have a way to make up for the reduced rate either, with his walk and home runs only rising in response.
In other words, he looked like a pitcher with diminished stuff at an age when it only stands to reason his stuff would be diminished. He's at a point where he might need a reinvention of sorts to function as more than just an innings eater. CC Sabathia has finally gotten to that point over the past two years, but it was a multi-year ride getting there. I'm concerned Lester will go the way of Adam Wainwright, Felix Hernandez and -- if I'm not speaking too soon on this one -- Cole Hamels. Those who ignored the warning signs for those three had a front-row seat to the disaster.
Innings eaters are still valuable in this landscape, when removing a pitcher before he goes six is all too common, so there's certainly a point when I'd draft Lester. I feel like he's getting too much benefit of the doubt, though, amid some troubling signs.
Some people like Jose Berrios. I don't.
I could if I wanted to. He had a 2.15 ERA, 0.94 WHIP and 9.8 strikeouts per nine innings in 23 starts over the last two years at Triple-A Rochester. I like that. He was the No. 36 and No. 28 prospect, according to Baseball America, in his last two years of eligibility. I like that, too.
Here's what I don't like: His actual performance in the majors so far.
Don't get me wrong: His final line was fine, particularly for a rookie and particularly after that dreadful start to his career in 2016. But it was built primarily on an unrealistic eight-start stretch in which I get the sense he caught the league by surprise (and possibly relying on those scouting reports from 2016, when his command was all screwed up). Over his final 18 appearances last year, 17 of them starts, he had a pedestrian 4.61 ERA and 1.43 WHIP.
Again, not a deal-breaker necessarily. I like pedigree. I like stuff. He appears to have both. The problem is perception -- or more accurately, the presumption that either his final-season line or his performance in those first eight starts was his truest, purest self.
But that's not what I see.
I see a pitcher who for the entirety of 2017 -- good stretches and bad stretches included -- produced a swinging strike rate that was below league average, according to Baseball-Reference. His 16.9 percent mark ranked 58th among qualifying pitchers, down there with Chad Kuhl and the gang. All things considered, it's a wonder he struck out as many as he did, and by 2017 standards, his 8.6 strikeouts per nine innings were pretty modest to begin with.
Again, it's one thing to take a flier on him and hope for improvement, but that's not what's happening here. FantasyPros consensus rankings have him 29th among starting pitchers, ahead of mainstays like Johnny Cueto, Marcus Stroman and Sonny Gray.
The Dropouts
It was fun while it lasted, right? Once an early-round fixture, Ryan Zimmerman rebounded from a couple injury-plagued years with better-than-ever production early in 2017, cementing his place in all Fantasy lineups for the duration of the season.
But by the end, he probably didn't deserve it.
Don't get me wrong: The final numbers are indeed impressive, but they pretty much had to be after the way he started the season. He was like an in-his-prime Miguel Cabrera, batting .330 with 19 home runs and a .969 OPS through the All-Star break, but there wasn't much explanation for it. Nothing changed in the underlying numbers. He wasn't a part of the fly-ball revolution, improving his bottom line the way Daniel Murphy and Justin Turner have. He didn't adjust his approach the way Justin Smoak did. The prevailing theory was "well, I guess this is what happens when he stays healthy," except it never was in his younger, sprier days.
And it didn't turn out to be last year. How could it? It was a built on a .364 BABIP. Zimmerman's second half, meanwhile, was built on a .299 BABIP, much more in line with his career .311 mark, and he hit .269 with 17 home runs. It averaged out to 3.09 Fantasy points per game -- or about what Smoak averaged over a full season. If that's the more likely level of production for him, I don't know that it's worth even a mid-round pick.
And there's always the chance he gets hurt again.
Reason for removal: True, I don't much believe in what Zimmerman did last year, but it seems like no one does. At 147th overall, I've gotten to where I don't hate the value as a just-in-case-type pick. I mean, even if he's just what he was in the second half, that's still something useful.
Remember last spring, when Bird mania was sweeping the nation?
Greg Bird, the Yankees 25-year-old first baseman, had recovered from a torn labrum in his shoulder and was homering seemingly every other day as Fantasy owners tripped over each other to draft him earlier and earlier in a frenzy not seen since the days leading up to Kris Bryant's debut.
Remember that? Crazy, right?
Yeah, FantasyPros consensus rankings have Bird going even higher this year.
I'm trying to jog my memory here, because I don't think he actually delivered on the hype of last spring. There was that one guy ... but wait. No, it was Cody Bellinger, not Bird. No, as a recall, Bird was a disaster for the first four weeks, striking out 22 times in 60 at-bats while homering exactly once before landing on the DL with a ankle bruise that never would get better.
OK, so it eventually did, and he himself was better when it did, but I don't remember him carrying Fantasy teams down the stretch the way Rhys Hoskins and Matt Olson did. No, he hit .253 with eight home runs and an. 891 OPS in 29 games for an average of 3.03 Fantasy points per game -- or about what Brandon Belt averaged before suffering his season-ending concussion.
Is that worth more than J.T. Realmuto? Or Jay Bruce? Or Joey Gallo? Because that's who Bird is ranked ahead of -- not by me, but by the industry as a whole. And based on what? A couple clutch home runs in the playoffs? Check out that postseason line again. He also hit .244 and struck out in more than one-third of his at-bats. I'm not saying that's who he is, but my point is I still don't know who he is. And neither do you. Apart from that magical spring training, he has yet to do anything to suggest he's deserving of this leap of faith.
I buy he has breakout potential, especially if he gets to bat behind Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. But in taking him where you'd have to take him, you're passing up assured production for a dangerously unproven player.
Reason for removal: This is one of those cases where the data we have now tells me my initial assumptions about where Bird might go in drafts were inaccurate. At 155th overall, he's going at a point where you should absolutely be targeting upside. And with power, on-base ability and the possibility of batting in between Judge and Stanton, he certainly has upside.
If you're still drafting Danny Salazar to be an integral part of your pitching staff, you're either a velo-file or a glutton for punishment. Either way, you're getting what you deserve targeting him 144th overall, as he's projected to go according FantasyPros consensus rankings.
Maybe you'll be surprised to learn he's 28 now. Yeah, 28 and still looking for that breakout season. It could happen. Every blue moon, a Tommy Pham type makes good on his potential five years after he was supposed to. But you know, we weren't drafting Pham in Round 12 last year because it would have been as crazy as drafting Salazar there now.
Oh, you could point to a couple brilliant efforts last year -- the six-inning, 11-strikeout gem April 12 and that five-start stretch after coming off the DL in which he compiled a 1.39 ERA, 0.84 WHIP and 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings. But what happened thereafter? A return to the DL and eventual banishment to the bullpen.
He's not durable. He's not efficient. In five years on the job, only once has Salazar masqueraded as such, 2015, and he had a 3.62 FIP.
Enough already. An arm like his is best served in the bullpen, and with Mike Clevinger breaking out last year and Josh Tomlin still in the fold, the Indians have every excuse to move Salazar there for good.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Reason for removal: In a way, I couldn't have been more right about Salazar. He may have already busted because of those durability concerns. Some shoulder inflammation has prevented his spring from getting off the ground, and he has already missed out on a rotation spot because of it. If Clevinger pitches the way I think he will, the Indians won't be so motivated to insert Salazar into the rotation by the time he's ready to return, and that shift to the bullpen may be in the offing.
One thing that isn't in dispute here: Ian Happ has power.
He can hit home runs, he has proven it in both the minors and the majors, and in a different time, under a different set of circumstances, I can see how it might even make him a breakout candidate in Fantasy Baseball, particularly with his second base eligibility.
But not with where the game is right now. Not with where he is right now.
He, of course, is with the Cubs and their oodles and oodles of infielders. They have three starting-caliber second basemen, and if the postseason is any indication, Javier Baez is the top dog of that group. Ben Zobrist is under contract for another $29 million and will steal starts as well.
Happ's at-bats, then, will have to come primarily in the outfield, and while the Cubs have question marks at all three of those spots -- Kyle Schwarber got sent to the minors for a stretch last year and can't hit lefties, Albert Almora has yet to prove he can play every day or succeed against righties, and Jason Heyward is basically just a money pit at this point -- they also have great incentive to stick with what they have.
Happ will play, maybe even enough to collect 450 at-bats or so, but lacking a position of his own puts a clear ceiling on what he can provide for you this coming season -- a ceiling further capped by his skill set.
Yeah, he can hit home runs, but if you haven't noticed, so can just about everyone else in the game today. Unless it's Joey Gallo-level power, a hitter kind of needs to do something else. And I'm not convinced yet Happ will. His strikeout rate last year -- which would have been fourth-worst among qualifiers, ahead of only Gallo, Chris Davis and Trevor Story -- meant his .253 batting might be the peak of what he can provide, and his batted-ball profile doesn't peg him for a high-BABIP guy.
What we have here is a part-time Dan Uggla in a power-neutral era. Not good.
Reason for removal: No self congratulations here. I completely misread this situation, thinking the Cubs' preferences were too entrenched for Happ to break through. But president of baseball operations Theo Epstein has spoken glowingly about Happ's defense in center field, and manager Joe Maddon has penciled him into the leadoff spot day after day. Batting in front of Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo should mask many of Happ's shortcomings and allow him to get more out of his abilities than even last year. And while he'll probably get more days off than we'd like, the additional at-bats at the top of the lineup will make up for it.
