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Jordan examines early fantasy baseball struggles of Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz, Yuli Gurriel, and Justin Turner. Are they are buy-low candidates or simply busts?
The first month-plus of the season has not been particularly kind to a few of baseball’s oldest hitters. That includes players who put together monster years in 2021 despite their already-advanced age.
This article takes a look at a group of four old bats, to recalibrate expectations on their rest-of-season output.
When evaluating the biggest risers and fallers in fantasy baseball, it's critical to know which are due to regress positively and which are set to bust before it's too late. Let's take a look.
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Recalibrating 2022 Fantasy Baseball Expectations
Nelson Cruz, Joey Votto, Yuli Gurriel, and Justin Turner are the older bats fantasy baseball managers care most about. Each had an offseason ADP in the top 250. There are a few others, like Jed Lowrie, Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, and Robinson Cano, but managers only paid attention to this group in super deep formats anyway.
During the first month-plus of games, Yuli Gurriel has the highest wRC+ in this bunch, a whopping 66. The other three bats have a wRC+ below 50. This group has been among the worst hitters in the game so far.
The FanGraphs auction calculator allows a comparison of how much projections have soured on this bunch, incorporating their early-season struggles. This article references the FanGraphs auction calculator using Preseason and updated rest of season Depth Charts projections, with 12-team default settings, to keep the comparison apples-to-apples.
Rest Of Season Fantasy Baseball Outlooks
According to preseason Depth Charts, Nelson Cruz was projected to be the 62nd-best hitter this year. His first month has dropped him to 92nd best-projected hitter for the rest of the season. His wRC+ projection has dropped from 120 to 104. Joey Votto has dropped from 62nd best-projected bat to 92nd best, with his projected wRC+ dropping from 117 to 101. The drops for Yuli Gurriel and Justin Turner have been smaller, 112th to 128th for Gurriel, and 113th to 121st for Turner. Gurriel has seen his projected wRC+ drop from 114 to 105, while Turner’s has dropped from 117 to 105.
Rest of season projections are typically slimmed-down versions of preseason projections, however. It’s worth taking a closer look at their performance to see if there are any hidden reasons for optimism.
Firstly, all of these batters are still playing every day. This fact, coupled with their long track records of performance, makes them still worth using as unspectacular options in medium-depth (15-team leagues). You could do worse if you’re in need of a safe, boring, utility or corner infielder bat. Notably, as of writing (May 8), fantasy managers have not yet soured on this group enough to drop them—all are still 100% owned in The Great Fantasy Baseball Invitational.
Digging Deeper On Rest Of Season Projections
Digging deeper, Nelson Cruz’s quality of contact measures, barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and average exit velocity, are all substantially down from career norms, but his contact rate is stronger than usual. Given his stellar track record pre-2022 and the small sample size of his 2022 struggles, I would bet on a partial rebound, perhaps a bit more than Depth Charts projects—he is the least worrisome bat of this bunch.
Justin Turner has also seen a decline in his quality of contact metrics, paired with a dip in his contact rate. I think he also bounces back to an extent and could finish as a backend top 100 hitter still, but the Dodgers have little patience for struggling hitters, and a platoon or at least more frequent off days could significantly limit his value.
Joey Votto has seen a bigger reduction in power on contact than either Cruz or Turner, and he is also swinging and missing more than ever. There is little reason for optimism when perusing his 2022 stat line—except for the fact that it has only been 90 plate appearances. Regression to career norms should help him and you can use him as a backend first base option as long as he is starting every day, but I would not count on a full rebound.
Finally, Yuli Gurriel continues to make a lot of contact, but he has yet to barrel up a baseball this year. His rest of season upside is also capped at a low-end first base option, and he’ll have to start barreling it up at least now and then to avoid losing playing time.
Conclusion
Votto, Cruz, Gurriel, and Turner have consistently been among baseball's best hitters for years. They have allowed us to collectively forget Father Time...at least for a while. Their early struggles are a reminder that aging hits even the very best of us. Nonetheless, this group was so good before 2022 that they can survive a fair amount of aging-related decline.
As long as their teams continue to run them out there every day, you can too--as long as you keep expectations in check.
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