RADIO
Welcome to Week 21 of the 2018 MLB season and a new week of our investigation into the steepest power trenders in baseball, whether those trends are positive or negative.
As the season has progressed well into August and the MLB trade deadline has passed, the window of opportunity to snag a surging slugger or to rid yourself of a down-and-out disappointment grows shorter with every plate appearance. Most Fantasy Baseball Leagues have already had their trade deadlines come and go, and the only decisions left for Managers to make in terms of personnel are whether players are worth the AB they are receiving and whether a player is worth adding for a postseason push. Getting the jump on identifying the catalytic variables and telling trends in these player's recent offensive performances could be the key factor in the management of your roster in the season's final months.
To do this, we'll be taking a look at the batting metrics that influence a hitter's power (Fly-Ball%, Pull%, Hard-Hit%, Exit Velocity) and determining whether you should buy or sell respectively on these surgers and strugglers. Since it's always best to wait and trudge through with the power play from players like Bryce Harper, Charlie Blackmon, Joey Votto, and Mookie Betts, we are going to be focusing on players who have seen a change in their power profile due to a change in batting metrics and has either warranted greater attention for waiver wire pickups or for a potential trade to cash in on what's left before it's too late.
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Power Risers
Charlie Culberson - (SS/3B/OF, ATL)
After three consecutive months of OPS between .839 and .876 from May through July, Charlie Culberson has burst into August with a .324/.359/.730 slash and four HR in 37 AB. This month, he has improved upon several offensive peripherals that were holding back his power hitting. He is currently producing a pull rate of 50% (for the third month in a row) and is producing both his best hard contact rate (46.2%) and soft contact rate (11.5%) of the year so far. Also, while Culberson is a heavy groundball hitter (56.4% with a 3.14 GB/FB ratio for July), he has produced his lowest GB/FB ratio this month of 1.00 with a 38.5% fly ball rate.
Several of his offensive figures point in more confusing directions. His strikeout rate (28.2%) and walk rate (2.6%) have both worsened since July and he has had two months this season being south of 30% hard contact (29.6%, 25%) and two months north of 20% soft contact (24.1%, 22.5%). Despite this, however, discounting his bad offensive work in a limited 27 AB in April, Culberson has still managed to produce ISO consistently between .192 and .405. His average HR distance of 395 feet with his average exit velocity of 86 mph seem to indicate that he doesn't possess much in the way of raw power. However, through his more abandonment-based approach of August that has brought more strikeouts as well as hard hit fly balls, he has carved out a four-start per week role for the Braves. His bat has proved well-rounded and consistent since May, and Charlie Culberson could well be a nice spot play going forward in an Atlanta offense that occupies baseball's upper echelon.
Harrison Bader - (OF, STL)
Harrison Bader's 2018 campaign has been somewhat up and down, but lately, he has been at his best yet. In 66 August AB, he has a slash of .333/.392/.576 with three homers, which overall has topped his previous best month of May when he produced a .902 OPS and four dingers in 58 AB. Though some of his peripherals such as pull rate (40.4%), GB/FB ratio (0.89), and soft contact rate (19.2%), have regressed from July to August, they are all vast improvements from his April through June figures while his hard contact rate of 46.8% is his best of the year by a 10.4% margin. This has led to an ISO of .242 this month, his second-best of the season, though the misdirection comes in when one notices that this came in the month of May when he hit for just 34.1% hard contact.
Harrison Bader indeed has some major holes in his power game. His exit velocity (87.4 mph) and HR distance (397 feet) are both below league average, and he plays his home games in a typically pitcher-friendly ballpark. He also strikes out a lot at 28.6% and creates a lot of soft contact at 21.3%. However, he has been making progress in limiting his volume of grounders and he presents a big threat for steals with 12 swipes out of 15 attempts this season. When makes hard contact on batted balls, he often does so by significantly lowering his soft contact frequency. In months where he has gotten on this type of roll, he has netted fantastic offensive results. His minor league track record suggests that he could be a good hitting, 20-20 type of player, and the 24-year old may be settling into that rhythm for the red-hot red birds.
Ryan Zimmerman - (1B, WSH)
33-year old Ryan Zimmerman hasn't let his injury issues stop him from making the most of the AB he has received in 2018. Over the last 63 AB Zimmerman has produced six bombs with a fantastic slash of .317/.405/.698, and he has been relatively consistent throughout the year. He got off to a rough start in April with a .623 OPS in 98 AB, but he still managed to hit four homers. He then produced OPS of 1.062 and .950 with two combined HR in just 40 AB in May and July, before exploding at the plate this month. His play has been improving since the start of the season and he has nice cumulative numbers on the year.
His ISO on the year sits at .257, and though his GB/FB ratio (1.28) and fly ball rate (35.1%) both stand as less than ideal for HR hitting, they are both on par with Zimmerman's career figures, and he has rarely struggled to hit for power in his 14-year career. His strikeout rate of 17.7% may be a little on the upper-side, but that is actually a moderate improvement from his career figures leading up to now, while his walk rate of 8.6% is his highest since 2014. Finally, his batted ball contact has been exemplary. His hard and soft contact rates this year have been 45% and 16.6% respectively, and while his pull rate is relatively low at 33.1%, his fantastic exit velocity of 93.6 mph and average HR distance of 408 feet more than make up for any deficiency that it presents. The Z-Man has been an imposing presence at the plate this month and has been a part of a Nationals offense that ranks fourth in the league in runs scored after the All-Star break (with all three teams ahead of them having played more games). He is hitting the ball with high-quality contact this year and now that he has been able to play consistently, has been wracking up deep shots for Washington. If he's on the field for the remainder of 2018, place strong confidence in his bat to produce a nice HR total through September.
Melky Cabrera - (OF, CLE)
Melky Cabrera is yet another player who was hampered in his success at the plate by his limited opportunity early in the season, with just 91 AB from May through July. Now, in his 58 August AB, he has been Melky-smooth for the Tribe with a .293/.339/.569 slash and five HR. This month, he has produced his offensive body of work with a variety of factors. First, his pull rate of 36.7% and his GB/FB ratio of 1.24 aren't exactly conducive to power hitting, but he manages a tolerable 42.9% grounders, and his 22.4% line drive rate supports the sustainability of his BA and OBP. His ISO for the month of .276 comes off a solid contact split of 42.9% hard contact and just 12.2% soft contact, and all year long he has continued to strike out at a low rate of 14.1%, on par with his career tendencies.
Unfortunately, this is where the comparison between his 2018 figures and past career numbers begins to find contrast. His total hard contact rate this year of 38.5% is 5.4% higher than any of the 34-year old's previous season marks while his ISO is also his career best and his soft contact rate is at it's lowest since 2013. His average exit velocity has been well above league average at 90.3 mph but his average HR distance of 386 feet is below the norm, and this all may indicate that Cabrera may be able to be counted on for a well-rounded bat moving forward for Cleveland, but that his current HR-pace may in all likelihood isn't going to be sustained through September. With a full season under his belt, he can usually churn out a good BA and OBP with a HR total in the neighborhood of 15+. Even if this only means three or four dingers for the Indians over the season's final month, he will still hold value in the elite Cleveland batting order.
Power Fallers
Jake Bauers - (OF/1B, TB)
Few players in baseball have experienced growing pains like 22-year old Jake Bauers has over the last two weeks with a .260 OPS and a goose egg in the HR department to give him an unsightly slash of .105/.297/.175 with just one bomb so far in all of August. Though he began making waves for the Rays in his first big league season, the 22-year old former top-100 prospect mightily regressed his performance to start the month of August in a variety of peripheral categories. First, although he is already a heavy partaker in striking out, this month he has increased his strikeout rate to 30.7% despite his walk rate ballooning to a stratospheric 20%. His groundball rate for August has shot up to 57.1% with 28.6% flyers for a GB/FB ratio of 2.00, and while his soft contact rate (16.7%) increased by just 1.2% from July and is actually 1.5% lower than his June figure, his hard contact rate has fallen all the way down to 30.6% after two consecutive months of 47.3% and 42.3%. This corresponds with his ISO dropping to .070 so far in August after producing consecutive figures of .227 and .265 for June and July.
Bauers sports a helpful 50% pull rate while his below average figures for exit velocity (88.2 mph) and HR distance (394 feet) seem to indicate the capability for feats of strength more in line with a Josh Bell type bat than a Joey Gallo-esque player, which is also supported by his brief minor league track record. His downward trending performance since he first appeared with Tampa Bay isn't a particularly positive sign proceeding into September and it is clear there are many aspects of his game that he needs to finely polish. He is a talented offensive player with power upside, but a learning curve for a player so young is to be expected, so be very cautious when deploying him from this point on. Though his minor league track record also indicates that he is more of a stolen-base threat than most power-hitting first basemen, so that at least works in his favor down the stretch if he can continue getting on base at a decent clip.
Anthony Rendon - (3B, WSH)
Many factors continue to work in Anthony Rendon's favor. On the year, he has managed to hit powerfully and accurately to the tune of 16 homers and a .293/.353/.500 slash line off of an average exit velocity of 91.1 mph with 401 feet in average HR distance, both figures standing well above the league norm. Even in his recent dinger-depleted month of August in which he has managed only one long ball in 67 AB, he has still managed a .313 BA and .364 OBP. With a strikeout rate of just 11.7% for August so far with solid total figures on the year for walk rate (8.8%), pull rate (41.9%), and GB/FB ratio (0.76), while being a part of one of the best post-All-Star break offenses in the MLB, what could possibly forecast negatively for Anthony Rendon?
The issue is that his power has been trending downward ever since it hit it's 2018 peak during the month of May. During that month he produced hard contact at a 48.5% clip and that resulted in an ISO of .280. Since then he produced respective hard contact figures of 43%, 38%, and 32.8% for August so far; while his ISO also fell to .265, .205, and now sits at .104 this month. Also in rhythm with his downward trending power is the fact that he hit five HR each in May and June, then managed four in July before he has only managed a lone homer this month. As we mentioned, he has still been producing solid BA and OBP figures this month, and this can likely be explained by the fact that he began hitting for 33.3% line drives and despite his hard contact figures he has hit for very consistent soft contact ranging from 8.9% to 15.5% after April with a 13.8% average. This makes his BABIP of .333 seem quite sustainable. However, we are talking about his pop proceeding forward, and the fact that he has been producing less and less of it isn't highly encouraging for a player that so many Fantasy Baseball Managers will be deploying in the season's remaining weeks.
Daniel Palka - (OF, CWS)
While Daniel Palka's first MLB season may have been up and down to this point, the ups of the season have been exciting and we certainly have gotten a good look at the 26-year old's strengths (and weaknesses). During July he smacked eight no-doubters with a .942 OPS through 67 AB for the White Sox, but soon after experienced a sharp downturn and has a .227/.261/.379 slash and three HR through 66 AB for August (with just one over the last 41 AB). Thankfully, it appears as if the vast majority of this recent skid can be explained by just a couple of factors: his high strikeout rate when combined with an uncharacteristically high GB/FB ratio.
Palka has posted some helpful power hitting peripherals for most of the season. His pull rate is a very healthy 46.9%, and even though he produces a high amount of soft contact at 21.6%, he counterbalances that nicely with a hard contact rate of 39.2%. His hard contact this year has been streaky, but he has still managed to produce three months with hard contact north of 40% (41%, 43.6%, 43.6%) and three months with an ISO above .200 (.467, .221, .403). A big problem has been his strikeout rate, which has ranged from 27% to 40% from May through July before settling once more at a horrifically high rate of 39.1%. Confusingly, during his current skid for August, he has been producing the hard and soft contact rates that are tied for his best of the season (43.6% and 18% respectively). So why isn't he hitting more homers? His GB/FB ratio went all the way up to 2.67 from 0.68 in his big July run off of 61.5% grounders in August. That seems to be one of the most telling reasons as to why such batted ball contact figures have manifested into a slump as opposed to his best MLB month yet. With an average exit velocity of 92.3 mph (with monstrous homers reaching 115.2 mph!), average HR distance of 413 feet, and minor league track record, it seems evident that Daniel Palka is capable of Herculean home runs at a 25+ HR pace at least over the course of a full season. He has been one of baseball's most devastating pinch hitters (three bombs in 13 AB) and has blasted 18 homers for the South Siders already this season. At this point in time, it appears as if his game is largely neutralized by heavy groundball tendencies for a month. If he can reverse that trend moving forward, Palka-Mania can resume with a barrage of bombs in September. If he continues to hit grounders while simultaneously striking out nearly 40% of the time, September could get ugly. Daniel Palka may be a big boom or bust candidate moving forward, and project optimistically due to the upside presented by his exit velocity and high hard contact rate for August.
Avisail Garcia - (OF, CWS)
Despite the injury interruption, Avisail Garcia has been well on his way to the best power hitting season of his career. With 14 HR in 247 AB, he far exceeded the pace he set last year by hitting 18 homers over the course of a full season. Also, his cumulative ISO (.219), hard contact rate (39.4%), and pull rate (50%) are all career-highs by a long shot, and he has been producing fantastic figures for average exit velocity at 90.2 mph and HR distance at 404 feet (which included a 481 foot monstrosity). This month, much like his start in April, has been anything but his career-best. Over 69 AB in August he has produced a .470 OPS and three homers. He has started to strike out at a 35.1% rate, which is his highest of the season, though it has also brought a season-high walk rate of 7.8%. A concerning aspect of this slump is that it appears to be induced by poor quality of contact.
In the three months that he played before August, Garcia produced hard contact rates ranging from 38.5% to 48.2% with good soft contact figures between 14.8% and 17.5%. This month his hard contact rate has fallen to 27.9% while his soft contact sits at a stagnant 25.6%, causing his ISO to go from .382 in July to .159 for August. Even though he has been producing a 0.90 GB/FB ratio this month from 46.5% fly balls, he has been able to take little advantage of that with his contact quality. It has been hard to get a read on Avisail Garcia in this, the year after his All-Star appearance. Some months he looks like a power hitter, some months he looks well-rounded, and some months he appears to be neither. A considerable benefit of the doubt should be extended to him for the season's latter weeks, as he has proven more often than not this year to be capable of consistent, hard contact. The high strikeout frequency and inconsistent GB/FB ratios ironically leave a lot in the air about how easily he can get back on track.
