Continuing last week's trend, this week we profile three more players that cost a fortune on Draft Day and thus far have failed to deliver. Maikel Franco is one of the few MLB-caliber players on Philadelphia's roster. Adrian Gonzalez has lost his title as perhaps the safest selection in fantasy sports. Bryce Harper is following up a MVP campaign with a .256 average.

Are these guys sunk costs, or is there a chance to recoup at least some of your investment? Lets find out.

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The Fantasy Jury Is Out

Maikel Franco (3B, PHI)

In just 335 PAs last season, Franco hit .280/.343/.497 with 14 HR, looking like a quality option at a surprisingly thin third base position. His 13 dingers thus far have largely lived up to the hype, but a .243/.302/.435 triple slash line has left fantasy owners wanting more.

The biggest difference is BABIP, as a league average .297 mark last year has fallen all the way to .257. Franco has proven to be a below average LD% guy (17.9% this year, 17.5% career) so far in his young career, which may make it challenging to maintain a league average BABIP. He has also traded some ground balls for flies (34.8% FB% last year, 38.6% this) and seen a IFFB% spike (14.8% last year to 17.4% this), suggesting that a lower BABIP should be expected moving forward.

Franco's batted ball luck thus far seems to be relatively neutral. His grounders have underachieved their normal production, producing a BABIP of .175 against a career average of .228. The shift might be seen as an explanation for this, but Franco's average is actually higher when it is on (.317) than when it isn't (.240). His liners, few as they are, have a BABIP of .718 against a career average of .652. I don't trust Franco's ability to sustain above average line drive production, given his low LD%, but his grounders should perform better to make up for it.

Franco's power seems real, as he has followed up a 15.9% HR/FB last year with a 15.1% rate this year. As noted above, he is also lifting more fly balls into the air. They are hit where he wants to hit them too, as he is pulling them an excellent 30.2% of the time. Franco seems to have established a solid floor of being a one-dimensional power hitter, preventing him from ever becoming completely worthless even with a lower BABIP.

Despite the stigma of being a guy that chases absolutely everything, Franco actually has a league average O-Swing% of 31.2%. A roughly league average BB% (7.5%) is the predictable result. Franco's K% is up relative to last year, 15.5% to 18.7%. SwStr% supports the change, as last year's 11.1% rate is up to 13.3%. That is a lot of whiffs, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to see more Ks in the future. Optimists could point to increased aggressiveness in the zone (69.5% Z-Swing% last year, 74% this year) without a corresponding increase in O-Swing% as a sign of growth, but the benefit of that may be more long term.

Franco also has some bizarre splits this year. Despite playing in a verifiable bandbox, Franco is hitting much better on the road (.296, 10 HR) than at home (.187, three). Players tend to perform better at home in neutral environments, so not doing so in Philly is particularly odd. He's also a right-handed bat that has thus far been allergic to LHP (.183, .193 career). Reverse platoon splits do not really exist for batters, so I expect both of these to smooth out over time.

Franco's surrounding cast is abysmal, severely limiting his counting stat potential. Over the long term, he still looks like a solid power hitter that may be capable of hitting for a decent average. He is still young, his K% is above average, and he has a great home park. If you overpaid him this year, however, you may have overestimated the importance of 335 PA in his 2015 season.

Verdict: Chump

Adrian Gonzalez (1B, LAD)

Gonzalez has been the poster child for boring fantasy production for a while now. If you took on risk early in the draft, Gonzalez's .275ish average and upper-20s HR power represented a great way to balance your roster. His .273/.349/.385 is right in line with what he always does, except for the power. Why does he only have six homers?

The first reason is a steep decline in FB%, 36.7% last year to 24.9% this. That is a substantial drop, and Gonzalez's new FB% is not really high enough to sustain any real power production. All of the batted balls have become grounders (37.3% last year to 51.2% this), and Gonzalez does not have the speed to make those interesting from a fantasy perspective.

The few flies Gonzalez has hit have also been less than effective. His HR/FB nosedived, from 16.4% a year ago to 11.1% this year. Only 14.8% of his flies have been pulled this year, versus 21.1% last year and a career mark of 19.4%. According to a recent Dodgers telecast, Gonzalez is intentionally pulling the ball less often in an effort to beat the shift that held him to a .269 average last year.

If that is the case, it is working. Gonzalez is torching the shift for a .352 average (.280 without it). The question is why Gonzalez is bothering. He is a lifetime .310 hitter against the shift (.340 without it), and his .270ish batting average is not the embarrassment that some other guys have to live with. Is beating the shift really enough to justify sacrificing all semblance of power?

The additional grounders have helped prop up Gonzalez's BABIP to .330 after back to back .294 campaigns, but his average does not reflect this. The reason is a 20% K% that would be the second worst of the first baseman's MLB career. The increased Ks are not supported by any underlying metrics, as his SwStr% is actually down relative to last year (9.9% to 9.1%) while his O-Swing% has improved (33.1% to 29.8%). His BB% is up slightly (9.6% to 10.2%), but that is the only manifestation of the improved plate discipline metrics to date.

Therefore, it seems likely that Gonzalez will regress toward last year's 16.6% K%. This is good, because a .330 BABIP seems unsustainable. In addition to depending on the grounders that sap the power from Gonzalez's bat, the BABIP is built on an elevated 24% LD%. Sure, he had a 26% rate last year and boasts an above average career rate of 22.3%. The stat bounces around too much to count on, though. A 1.9% IFFB% also seems too low to maintain, even if the new approach mitigates pop-ups.

Like Franco above, Gonzalez is also hitting much better on the road (.347/.419/.480 vs. .188/.266/.273 at home). Gonzalez has been better on the road throughout his career, but remember that he spent a lot of it at PETCO Park before attributing that completely to Gonzalez. This is pure speculation on my part, but restless Dodgers fans looking up at the hated Giants despite a massive payroll may make LA a difficult place to play these days.

If Gonzalez really changed his approach to beat the shift, you would think he would have gone back to the approach that made him a good player for so many years by now. The fact that he hasn't leads me to suspect that it is more complicated than that. He still bats cleanup, so the counting stats are still there if he rebounds. He may need an offseason to cure what ails him, though.

Verdict: Chump

Bryce Harper (OF, WAS)

Last year's .330/.460/.649 triple slash line set Harper up to fail this year, as it almost certainly represented an elite player getting every bounce possible. He could be MVP again and not live up to it. Still, his .256/.404/.492 slash line with 16 homers and 10 SBs is underwhelming for a first rounder.

While last year's .369 BABIP was probably significantly north of Harper's true talent level, this year's .255 seems significantly below it. A 14.9% LD%, well short of his career 20.8% rate, seems like the primary culprit. His line drive production is also way down, as a career .693 BABIP on them is all the way down to .533 this year. The stat bounces around randomly at times, so there is no reason to suspect Harper has forgotten how to hit liners or something. A full recovery seems likely going forward.

Harper has also lost some ground ball hits, as his BABIP on grounders is .210 against a career .254 mark. Elite sluggers always have to contend with the shift, but it barely affects Harper at all. His average against it (.264) is almost identical to his mark without it (.263). He has also nearly doubled his SB total from a year ago (six last year, 10 this year), so it seems unlikely that he lost a step. Bad batted ball luck seems the best explanation.

Harper's 27.3% HR/FB last year was bound to come back to reality, and it has fallen to 17.8% so far. That is still a number befitting an elite slugger, and fits in well with his 19.7% career rate. Amazingly, Harper has produced the best FB% of his career this year with a 44.8% rate. Last season he had only a 39.3% FB%, and his career rate is 36.4%. The increased flies may suggest power growth, a scary proposition for MLB pitchers. They may also be the result of line drives being inaccurately classified as fly balls, but power growth is a better story.

If you play in an OBP format, you are likely happy with Harper and unsure why I'm talking about him here. His 19.9% BB% is higher than both last year's 19% rate and his current 16.1% K%. Speaking of K%, 16.1% is a great mark for a power guy. His SwStr% has declined in each of the last two seasons, from 13.8% in 2014 to 10.8% last year to 8.3% this year. As pitchers try to avoid facing him, Harper has become slightly less aggressive in the zone (67.8% Z-Swing%, 72.5% last year) in order to maintain his excellent 27.4% O-Swing%. That is not much of a downside - Harper's plate discipline is elite.

Harper's SB success rate (10 for 16, 6 for 10 last year) and vital importance to the Nationals suggest that he will stop running soon, perhaps even immediately. Other than batted ball luck, this is the only negative in Harper's profile. If you can buy him for 98 cents on the dollar due to his "struggles," do so immediately.

Verdict: Champ+

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