Power Hitting Risers & Fallers for Week 9 - Buy or Sell?

May 29, 2019

Home run risers and fallers for Week 9 of fantasy baseball. Nate Green evaluates power increases or decreases, and players who could be buy or sell candidates.

Welcome to this week's Power Hitting Risers & Fallers. All stats are full season through Monday, May 27th (unless otherwise noted). In what amounts to mostly an accident, this week is almost entirely about fallers in one sense, because three of the five risers are players that Statcast isn't very enamored with despite double-digit home run totals, and a fourth is over-performing despite strong Statcast numbers.

Your weekly reminders: When a Statcast ranking like exit velocity is mentioned, a minimum of 50 batted balls is needed to rank in Statcast figures (this is up from 25 last week); 299 players  have that many. An expected stat, like xSLG, is from the pool of players with 100 plate appearances, which is currently 257 of them. EVAB (pronounced ee-vab or ev-ab) is simply exit velocity on "air balls" - meaning fly balls and line drives, as shown on Statcast. Isolated power -- ISO -- is slugging percentage minus batting average, and so xISO is xSLG minus xBA. And lastly, the Statcast Search feature is used to obtain partial season Statcast numbers.

Who's rising and falling this week? Read on to find out.

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Power Risers

Hunter Pence (OF, TEX)

Pence did not make RotoBaller's March list of the top 772 players for mixed leagues. Why would he have? Entering his age 36 season with no guaranteed roster spot, Pence had hit .249/.297/.368 the past two seasons and just .226/.258/.332 last year. He had all the signs of being done. Yet here were are, with Pence at 11 home runs on the season before June.

It's hardly been a fluke, either. His .552 xSLG is below his .630 actual slugging rate, but the expected rate still makes for the 92nd percentile. He's doubled his launch angle from 5.7 degrees last season to 10.7 this year. After a long downward trend in overall exit velocity, nadiring last year at 88.0 mph, he's averaging 92.3 mph this year. He has an 87th percentile hard-hit rate.

While it's not a fluke, Pence is also not this good, and some slowdown can be expected. There's the obvious bit that his xSLG is 78 points below his SLG. And that's despite a .299 BA that is below his .315 expectation, making for a .237 xISO, not his .331 actual ISO. Most importantly, however, Pence has only nine barrels despite the 11 home runs, a 6.5% barrel rate that ranks 105th.

Pence's strong performance this year is absolutely more real than fluke, but Statcast does not fully back up his performance thus far. (Quick note: This applies to Derek Dietrich, who hit three more home runs Tuesday, as well. He'll likely get an in-depth look next week.)

Hunter Renfroe (OF, SD)

Our Pierre Camus wrote on Renfroe's Statcast data recently. There is definitely cause for concern. In addition to the large gap between his actual and expected slugging rate, he only has 11 barrels to support the 14 home runs. A 94.8 mph EVAB is fine, as is a 6.8% barrel rate, but they don't support Renfroe's 2019 power output to date.

Although Renfroe has been lucky, he is at least running a 16.7 degree average launch angle, which gives him the chance to go yard with sufficiently hard contact. So far this season, however, he's only running a 51st percentile hard-hit rate.

Renfroe hit 26 home runs each of the past two seasons, doing so on 33 and 37 barrels, respectively. And while he is well above that home run pace, he is about on the same barrel pace. So if he keeps hitting like he has, and converts roughly the same rate of barrels into homers, you're looking at more like 18 home runs ROS than 28. Still, with those 14 home runs banked in the first third of the season, that would be a career high.

Gleyber Torres (SS, NYY)

You probably already know by now how much Torres owes his power this year to the Orioles. He's slugging 1.233 against them! But the xSLG is "only" .873 against Baltimore. Such over-performance applies to his full-season marks as well, as his .486 xSLG has translated into a .548 slugging rate.

The good news is Torres doesn't have more home runs than barrels, which has become sort of an alarm bell in these parts recently (see the Hunters above). It's hard to see Torres increasing his home run output, but with 17 barrels and 13 home runs, a complete crash isn't likely either. No, he's not going to hit 40 home runs, especially if his EVAB sticks at 92.0 mph as it has this season. But he did hit 24 of them in a 123-game debut last season. And that year the SLG-xSLG gap was a manageable .016.

Given that his xSLG has actually increased as a sophomore, Torres has developed this year, not just gotten lucky. A full season total of 30 homers is certainly possible. No, he won't play the Orioles every day, but he doesn't have to. Given that he's 22, some day he might have a 40-home run profile, but that is not the case this year despite his first couple months.

Eduardo Escobar (3B, ARI)

After several years as an average hitter at best, Escobar had a mini-breakout in 2018, and he's building on it so far in 2019, with a .287/.352/.550 line bolstered by 12 homers. Unfortunately, Statcast is not impressed. To be fair, it wasn't impressed last year either. Escobar slugged .489 in 2018 but Statcast had him down for just a .429 xSLG. This year, the gap is even larger, as Escobar only has a .421 xSLG. Statcast actually liked Escobar's 2017, when he hit .254/.309/.449 with 21 home runs, better than either this season or last (a .472 xSLG).

The good news for Escobar is that he's been a launch angle guy since before the concept exploded, with a 13.5 average in 2015. By last year, he was at 18.8 degrees, and this season so far he is at 17.0 degrees. But that may be the only good news, because how he's gone throughout his career, he's launched plenty of fly outs.

His mediocre 87.4 mph exit velocity represents a career high, only because he's usually in the 86's. He's only once exceeded a 30% hard hit rate, reaching 30.6% in 2017, and it's 28.5% this year. His EVAB this season is only 91.1 mph. Unsurprisingly, he is another member of the 2019 more-barrels-than-homers club. In fact, his 4.7% barrel rate this season pales in comparison to even 2018's 5.9% mark. All the signs are there that Escobar has not really made a significant improvement. Like everyone else, those 12 homers aren't going away, so a career high is possible, but most of that production is now in the past, unavailable to you.

Rafael Devers (3B, BOS)

We first checked in on Devers in Week 4. Back then he had a 2.3 degree average launch angle, a single barrel, and no home runs. Now, he has an 8.3 degree angle, 11 barrels, and seven homers. Four of those home runs came just from May 20-26. Despite all of his home run production coming in May, Devers' full season line is now excellent. His .505 SLG is more than backed up by a .515 xSLG, the latter ranking in the 82nd percentile.

It's fairly evident that the Week 4 version of Devers was unlikely to be permanent, as he had entered 2019 with 31 homers in 179 career games. The question going forward is whether the insane May version is a more accurate representation, or the quite good combination of April and May.

It's always likely to be the averages, but no one can doubt how hot Devers' bat has been in May. He's run up a .672 xSLG in the month, with an average batted ball of 95.6 mph at 11.6 degrees. That's not the most insane hot streak, but it's been plenty good enough. The good news is Devers could raise his launch angle even further, and continue to homer at a much better rate than he did in April. Not that that would be difficult.

Power Fallers

Paul Goldschmidt (1B, STL)

Goldschmidt recovered from a slow start last season to end up slugging .533 with 33 home runs. This year, he got off to a really strong start, with three home runs on March 29 and six more through April 22. That gave him nine bombs through 22 games, but he's only got one (May 12) in 30 games since.

What happened? He didn't stop elevating the ball, as he has a 14.6 degree launch angle since April 23 that brought his season average to 14.1 degrees. He didn't have much of an exit velocity change, with an 89.7 exit velocity during the power drought that brings his season line down only a hair to 89.9 mph. And yet, in this time period, he has a mere .377 xSLG. While his .304 actual SLG in that time frame means he's been unlucky, it's not by nearly enough to matter.

This is one of those occasions where the full season line and past performance are far more important than the cold streak. Goldschmidt's Statcast before April 23 was in line with his performance (.596 SLG, .584 xSLG), while he has been below it during the rough patch. The result is a full-season .469 xSLG that portends better than his current .433 SLG. Additionally, there's last year's .534 xSLG/.533 SLG. Goldschmidt is 31, so a decline is unlikely albeit possible. The same could be said at 30 last year, and he turned out fine. While the nine homers in 22 games won't be his full season pace, neither will this extended slump. (Note: Goldschmidt was the provider of this week's inevitable Tuesday homer.)

Josh Reddick (OF, HOU)

Since hitting 32 home runs in 2012, Reddick has never hit more than 20 in a season. He homered thrice in his first 19 games this year, but only has one in the last 29. With four overall, he's off of the pace of 17 he set in 134 games last year. So while he's never been a huge power hitter of late, he's giving hardly anything now.

Despite a batting average blip last season, that statistic has really been Reddick's calling card. His xBA's since 2015 have run .284, .295, .296, .242, and back up to .288 this season. The team, if he plays enough, buys you some counting stats, but he really needs some level of power to become more than a one-category asset.

And, by Statcast's reckoning, the power hasn't been there and won't be there. Reddick's .431 SLG is already weak but the xSLG is an even weaker .412. Reddick over-performed last season even more, with a .400 SLG and .365 xSLG. He's got just five barrels this season, just 2.6% of his plate appearances. In all, you won't be getting 17 home runs from Reddick again. The three homers in 19 games to start the year was an unsustainably optimistic pace.

Adalberto Mondesi (SS, KC)

Mondesi hit 14 home runs in just 75 games last year. Few analysts believed he'd demonstrate such power in a full season, but he added five in his first 35 games this year. That was a slightly lower pace, but a strong one given his stolen base value. He does not have any home runs since May 6, however, a 16-game stretch. That slight decline in pace 16 games ago is now a relatively strong one. Mondesi remains a massive threat on the bases, which makes him quite valuable with even just 10-15 home runs, but he has confirmed that he is not a 30-home run player.

Mondesi's performance last year was in line with his Statcast data, a .485 xSLG to back up his .498 SLG. This year, he's retained an overall .490 slugging rate, but his xSLG is all the way down to .403. The launch angle fall from 11.8 to 9.7 degrees can only partially explain the drop. More important is this year's 92.3 mph EVAB instead of last year's 94.6 mph.

The bright side for Mondesi is that if you look at barrels per home run, it seems a bit unfair that he has 16 barrels -- more than Pence, Renfroe, or Escobar -- but only has five home runs, while the rest are already in the double digits. That said, Mondesi's lag in expected slugging and EVAB is perhaps more important. It's possible the barrels stop happening so often, and so even he starts homering on them at a more "fair" rate, he will fully earn a low double-digit total by year's end.

Maikel Franco (3B, PHI)

Here's a guy with 25, 24, and 22 home runs from 2016-18, but was only above average overall as a hitter in 2018. Then he added seven more homers in just his first 16 games, followed by a seventh in game #26, and...and we're still waiting on the eighth after a total of 51 games. Now he's at about the same pace as last year in home runs, while hitting as poorly overall as in 2017.

So what's the deal? In those first 16 games, through April 16, Franco averaged 87.6 mph at 23.6 degrees with seven barrels. Since then, 89.8 mph at 11.0 degrees with five barrels. Essentially he stopped elevating, and so the unimpressive exit velocity had no chance at getting out.

The full-season Statcast data has Franco at a .421 xSLG instead of his .390 actual rate. That's actually a better xSLG than last year at .416, but he well over-performed with a .457 SLG in 2018. And so the "real" Franco, taking the average of both SLG and both xSLG, "should" slug about .420. That means we haven't seen the supposed real version since 2016, when he hit 25 home runs. It seems like another mediocre 20-25 home run season is in the cards for Franco again.

Nick Markakis (OF, ATL)

It's kind of boring to talk about Markakis from a power perspective, even though he has enjoyed an astounding renaissance the past couple years. It's never been based on power, but he did hit 14 home runs in 162 games last year. He only has four this year, which came in two consecutive-game spurts, on April 13-14 and May 5-6.

Although Markakis' xBA is even better this year than last (.309 from .294), his xSLG is essentially the same: .429 in 2018 and .428 so far in '19. Of course, that is worse from a power perspective, because his expected ISO is lower. Markakis' barrel rates are essentially identical, 2.4% last year and 2.2% this year. So, you are probably once again looking at low- to mid-double digits this year. With 34 runs scored and 24 driven in in 54 games, Atlanta's giving Markakis his counting stats. In BA and OBP leagues, he's good to have, but there's no power boom coming.

What makes Markakis' power this year somewhat interesting, from an how-to-analyze rather than what-to-expect perspective, is his demonstration of the trickiness of trends. His home runs, as few as they are, have come in bunches. That can happen at broader scales, too (see Torres' outbursts vs. Baltimore). If you took too narrow a view, he'd be a power faller on April 12, power riser on the 15th, back to a faller near the beginning of May, a riser again a week later, and, as he is, a faller now. The best thing to look at remains his past and present performance, rather than living and dying with each cold spell and hot run.

Last Week's Risers

Last Week's Fallers

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