Hitters Primed for Comebacks After Injury-Plagued Seasons

March 29, 2021

Sam Chinitz evaluates hitters who could rebound strong in 2021 fantasy baseball after suffering injuries last season.

Injuries can be tough to manage for fantasy managers, especially coming off of a 2020 season that saw coronavirus have a significant effect. Additionally, injuries can sometimes be freak accidents, and it can be difficult to separate concerning injuries from noise.

Still, there are general truths about injuries that can help fantasy managers properly value hitters coming off of injury-plagued seasons, many of which have been explained by Jeff Zimmerman in his work on the subject. I’ll attempt to add to that work by using data from Derek Rhodes’ hitter injury dashboard to examine hitter injuries.

With that in mind, there are two focuses of this article. Firstly, I’ll determine which hitters who were injured in 2020 are least likely to miss time with injuries in 2021. Then, I targeted hitters who are likely to see rebounds in their on-field performance as well.

Methodology

To minimize the possibility that the hitters discussed are re-injured in 2021, I used Derek Rhodes’ injury dashboard to evaluate the season-to-season recurrence rates of hitter injuries. The structure of the data was most conducive to an injury-location-focused analysis, so that’s where I started. Below is a breakdown of season-to-season recurrence rates of hitter injuries by location based on Derek’s data, including data from 2009 to 2020*. This doesn’t include hitters who re-aggravated an injury but played through it, but it should provide a solid picture of injury recurrence rates from season to season.

In addition to exploring injury by location, I examined some seemingly common injuries and their season-to-season recurrence rates. That breakdown can be found in the table below.

What stands out most from this analysis is just how uncommon recurring injuries are; almost 90% of hitters with back injuries (the highest season-to-season recurrence rate of any injury location) manage to avoid missing time by re-injuring their back in the following season. But that doesn’t mean that fantasy managers should be unconcerned about hitters who miss time.

As Jeff Zimmerman wrote in one of his several valuable injury analysis articles, the best predictor of future injuries is past injures. Although that particular quote is from an article discussing pitcher injuries, it appears to hold for hitters as well based on the data examined in this article.

Of the 8,704 hitters to miss time with an injury between 2009 and 2019, a whopping 52% missed time with an injury in two consecutive seasons. That’s a concerning number for all of the players discussed in this article, and I’ve focused on younger hitters with relatively short injury histories as a result. With that in mind, below are five hitters who are relatively likely to bounce back after injury-plagued 2020 seasons.

Internal Injuries

Trey Mancini (1B, BAL)

Mancini missed the entire 2020 season with colon cancer, but he’s now cancer-free and looking to build off of a 2019 season that saw him slash a robust .291/.364/.535. With a 10.9% barrel rate, a 22.9% strikeout rate, and a .345 xwOBA for his career, Mancini is a comfortably above-average hitter who had an intriguing 2019 breakout.

On one hand, Mancini likely benefited from some luck in 2019. To that end, Mancini’s walk rate jumped more than two points despite no significant change in his plate discipline profile, and his xBA (.277) and xSLG (.501) sat fairly far below his actual results. Still, Mancini did show signs of a contact-quality-based breakout in 2019, including a higher average launch angle with no change in launch angle standard deviation, a higher DHH%, and a higher blast%.

Even if those improvements don’t stick, Mancini should manage to flirt with an OPS above .850 in 2021 with relatively low injury risk given his stellar injury track-record (Mancini had played in 457 games in the three seasons before 2020). If those improvements do stick, then Mancini offers exciting upside, and he’s worth consideration from fantasy managers in drafts as a result.

Yoan Moncada (3B, CHW)

Moncada managed to play in 52 games last season, but the 25-year-old struggled with residual COVID-19 effects through the entire 2020 season, and his performance suffered as a result. In particular, Moncada was sapped of his power, with his hard-hit rate plummeting to a career-low 33.1%.

Coronavirus aside, Moncada hasn’t exactly been the picture of health over his major-league career. An unspecified leg injury nagged at Moncada in 2020, and he’s dealt with several scattered minor injuries that have sidelined him for a few days at a time in each of the past four seasons. Crucially, Moncada’s 2020 leg injury was reportedly not hamstring-related (Moncada had a hamstring issue in 2019), and non-hamstring-related leg injuries have a palatable 6.5% recurrence rate in the following season compared to a 9.4% rate for hamstring strains. Additionally, Moncada has managed to avoid the injured list for the most part, so a (mostly) injury-free 2021 season is a plausible outcome.

Writing off Moncada’s 2020 season as an aberration, Moncada is coming off of a 2019 season that saw him post a .915 OPS with an elite .469 xwOBAcon. Now back to full strength, fantasy managers should expect Moncada to regain his exceptional contact quality this season, especially if he can avoid re-aggravating his leg injury.

Non-Internal Injuries

Rafael Devers (3B, BOS)

Devers only missed three games with an ankle injury that he suffered early on in 2020, but the injury reportedly bothered him through the entire season. Notably, it’s possible that Devers’ injured ankle affected his performance at the plate, specifically concerning his swinging-strike rate. After posting a 12.5%  swinging-strike rate between 2018 and 2019, Devers’ swinging-strike rate shot up to 16.1% in 2020, fueling an uncharacteristically poor 27% strikeout rate.

Given that Devers has a fairly clean injury history, ankle injuries have a low 3.9% season-to-season recurrence rate, and Devers’ ankle is now fully healthy, fantasy managers should expect Devers to be back to full strength in 2021. Devers has a strong chance at bouncing back this season as a result, and fantasy managers should keep that in mind heading into drafts.

Yordan Alvarez (OF, HOU)

A knee injury bothered Alvarez in both 2019 and 2020, ultimately forcing the 23-year-old to undergo double knee surgery that cut his already coronavirus-delayed 2020 season short. Rhodes’ data set includes only 14 examples of knee surgery before 2020, but none of those 14 hitters missed time with knee injuries in the season following their surgery, providing some hope that Alvarez may be less injury-prone than the 8.6% season-to-season recurrence rate for knee injuries overall suggests.

It’s hard to overstate just how good Alvarez was in 2019, as he hit the ball about as hard as anyone while demonstrating a patient plate approach and solid contact skills. As a result, Alvarez posted a fantastic .409 xwOBA that put him just ahead of Juan Soto for the seventh-best mark among qualified batters.

It’s optimistic to expect that Alvarez will have no lingering health issues in 2021, even with the (admittedly somewhat stretched) vote of confidence from the data. Still, Alvarez has too much apparent talent to be left off of this article, and his knee surgery may be less concerning than projection systems (which generally expect Alvarez to accumulate around 520 PA this season) expect.

Ozzie Albies (2B, ATL)

Albies missed most of the 2020 season with a wrist injury, but he has a good chance of bouncing back in 2021. Encouragingly, Albies had played in an impressive 318 games over the two seasons coming into 2020, and wrist injuries don’t recur at an extremely high rate with a (still not great but not terrible) 7.9% season-to-season recurrence rate.

Albies struggled on the field last season with a career-worst 24.2% strikeout rate fueled by an uncharacteristically high 13.3% swinging-strike rate, but it makes sense to expect a rebound in 2021. Between the coronavirus-impacted season in general and Albies’ small sample of games, it’s not too surprising that Albies struggled in 2020, and fantasy managers should expect Albies to perform more like his 2019 self than 2020.

*Injury data from 2020 was only considered as a possible recurrence from 2019, not as the first example of an injury that could occur again in 2021.

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