Fantasy Baseball Hitters That Are Underperforming - Buy Low, or Trade Away?

Mike Marteny takes a look at those fantasy baseball players who are struggling and underperforming in 2024. Should you buy low on them, or trade them away?

If you're a season-long fantasy baseball player, you've heard this a million times. "It's a marathon, not a sprint." While that is true, how long should you wait until you drop an underachieving player?  This process becomes particularly messy when it's a player that you spent significant draft capital on. Hey, I'll drop anyone that I drafted after round 20 a week into the season. It's much more difficult when we're discussing a player who went in the top 100 picks of the draft.

Another adage feels appropriate here: "Know when to say when." Just as you should know your limits when it comes to food and beverage, you should also know what your limit is on underachieving fantasy players. If it's a struggling youngster, you can give the guy a longer leash so long as you have the roster spot available. It's the struggling veterans who make it really hard to know your limit.

We will take a look at five players who are hurting our teams at this point of the season. Some are seasoned veterans. All are proven players, so what should we do with them? We are nearly a quarter of the way through the season already. Enough is enough!

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Xander Bogaerts, Padres (84.7% Rostered)

Bogaerts has been in the major leagues since he was 20 years old and he has never struggled like he is this season. The 31-year-old is hitting just .209 on the season. His previous season-low was .240 as a 21-year-old in his first full season. The guy owns a .289 career average, so this is clearly an outlier, but why?

The Statcast tells all. First off, the exit velocity is way down and his hard-hit percentage is almost 11 points lower than his career average. Perhaps what is most disappointing is that Bogaerts had 19 homers and 19 steals last year. A 20/20 season was so closer than fantasy managers could taste it. Xander has just two homers and two steals on the season. He hasn't homered since April 21 and hasn't stolen a base since April 22. He simply isn't helping your team right now.

Verdict: Bench in deeper leagues, drop in 10-12 team leagues.

Matt Olson, Braves (99.7% Rostered)

Yes, I'm going to be that guy. I'm coming out swinging. Olson hit 54 home runs last year and drove in 139 runs. Both totals led the league and both were by far career highs. We expected some sort of regression, but this is ridiculous. Olson has just four home runs on the season (one of them came last night, his first since April 7), putting him on pace for just 17 this season. For reference, he hasn't hit fewer than 29 in a full season in his career.

Olson has never been a guy that has hit for a high average, but his .202 mark on the season would be his lowest since the COVID season of 2020 (.195 in 60 games). His worst mark in a full season was .240 in his first season as a Brave in 2022.

Olson just turned 30, so his career trajectory is on the downward slope anyway. Is all of this just bad luck? A peep at his Statcast page suggests that Olson is still hitting the ball hard. The 94 mph exit velocity is the best mark of his career and so is the 55.9% hard-hit rate. Olson is barreling the ball less and his launch angle is back where it was during the 2020 season.

His last three seasons were the best of his career. In those years, the launch angle was between 16.1 and 16.2 degrees. That remarkable consistency resulted in a lot of home runs (127 in three years). This year's launch angle of 17.3 degrees accounts for some of the lack of barrels, but not all. A higher strikeout rate and lower walk rate aren't really that concerning since they aren't radical shifts either way.

His xBA of .253 suggests that better days are ahead, but the WOBA of .303 would be his lowest in a full season by a large margin and the xWOBA (.359) doesn't predict much of an improvement either. Olson won't be this bad for the entire season, but a 30-homer season seems unlikely at this point. If you are tired of him killing your average in shallow leagues, it might be time to part ways.

Verdict: Bench at the very least until he turns it around. Trade if you can find someone who still thinks he's going to have a 40-homer season.

Michael Harris II, Braves (93.6% Rostered)

This one is tough since Harris is only 23 years old. He still has plenty of time to turn it around. We've seen the best and the worst of Harris so far in 2024. He opened the season with a .304 average in the first month with three homers and five steals. He hit 18 homers and swiped 20 bags last year, so we were expecting a 20/20 season at the very least when we drafted him this year.

Things have gone horribly wrong since. Harris is hitless in May (27 plate appearances) and only has two hits in his last 42 at-bats. His average is all the way down to .248. Harris hasn't hit a home run since April 19. His last steal came on April 23. Of course, it's hard to steal bases when you can't get on them.

Wondering if there's something bothering #Braves OF Michael Harris II.

March/April | May

PA: 121 | 23
chase%: 48% | 48.5%
zone contact%: 85.6% | 76%
SwStr%: 16% | 16.7%

Swinging at pitches 60%+ of the time in each month (68% in May), up from 53.5% career mark. Pressing, maybe? pic.twitter.com/Wvfb2V5Vbn

— the Fantasy Gospel™ (@fantasy_gospel) May 10, 2024

A peep at the Statcast page suggests that Harris has been a bit unlucky (.270 xBA). However, his barrel percentage of 4.5% is less than half of his career mark (10% entering the season). His expected metrics are better than his actual stats, but they also fall short of the past two seasons. Is something wrong with Harris?

Those of you in shallow leagues shouldn't wait to find out. If you are playing Harris every day in hopes that he will turn it around, he has tanked your average by several points in May alone. Harris is capable of scorching hot streaks, but cold streaks like this make you wonder if everything is worth it. He is such an elite defender that the Braves have to keep playing him. Unless your league counts defensive stats, you have little reason to hang on right now.

If you have a bench slot, you can hang onto him. However, most "shallow" leagues are shallow for a reason. They have 10 teams or less and usually three bench slots at the most. Drop Harris until he figures things out again.

Verdict: Bench Harris except in plus matchups. 

Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Diamondbacks (86.7% Rostered)

Gurriel is hitting just .240 on the season, which is disappointing considering his .278 career average coming into 2024. Gurriel made his first All-Star team last season, hitting .261 with 24 homers and 82 RBI in 145 games. He is far behind that pace, especially in home runs, with just five long balls in 35 games.

More and more it is looking like Gurriel deserves to be a platoon player at this stage of his career. He's not a defensive wizard like Harris. Gurriel is hitting just .185 with a .229 OBP and .301 SLG against right-handed pitching this year. His splits have always been drastic, but not this drastic.

The good news is that Gurriel's xBA is exactly the same as last season (.264) despite Gurriel hitting career lows in exit velocity (88.6 mph), WOBA (.294), and xWOBA (.314). This isn't just some passing thing. Gurriel hit home runs in each of the first three of the season. He has two in 32 games since, with the last one coming on April 16. His batting average is down 60 points since April 23. Don't love something that doesn't love you back, especially in shallow leagues.

Verdict: Drop in shallow leagues.

Bo Bichette, Blue Jays (84.7% Rostered)

This is another tough one since Bichette is only 26 years old, and like Harris, has been in the majors since he turned 21. Bichette led the American League in hits in both 2021 and 2022 before "dropping off" a bit last year due to injury. He still hit .306 in 135 games in 2023. It's not like he was bad. Bichette also notched his third consecutive 20-homer season.

Where is the power? Bichette only has one home run all season, against Seattle on April 9. Bichette is also on pace for just 50 RBI this season, which would be well below his previous low in a full season (73 last season). So...what is wrong with Bo? It seems like Bo doesn't know how to hit anymore. His Statcast page would agree.

Wow...where to start? Bichette has always been a slow starter (.254 in March/April in his career), but he was still hitting home runs in the early going. The power is gone. As you can see above, almost all of that is to blame on his lack of barrels. He has barreled just two balls all season long! Predictably, all of the other indicators of a well-hit baseball are absent from Bichette's page as well.

If you can take one thing away from Bichette's page, his strikeout percentage (16.4%) is the lowest of his career. He's making contact, he just isn't making good contact. I understand that shortstop is a shallow position in fantasy, but only Javier Baez and Tim Anderson have been worse among everyday shortstops. Meanwhile, guys like Jackson Merrill are still on waivers in 62% of leagues. The guy is hitting .319 with two homers, 16 RBI, and four steals. That is far more productive than Bichette right now. Just be ready to pounce if Bichette gets hot. Or should we say when he does?

Verdict: Bench him for now. Trade him, but not at a discount. 

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