MLB Barometer: The Season's Biggest Risers & Fallers

We're officially one month into the 2020 season. It's been a rocky one, with multiple teams getting shut down due to COVID-19 outbreaks, but the majority of teams have been able to keep plugging along. It's been a frustrating fantasy season in many respects, as it's never fun to learn that your star player is shut down for the week right after lineups are due, but given the circumstances, I'm just happy to play.

To celebrate getting through a full month, this week's column will repeat an exercise I performed one month into last season: checking on players whose performance has been most out of line with their draft position. I'll compare each player's rank in NFBC ADP, using only drafts from the final month before the season, as several players' ADPs shifted by large amounts with the shorter and delayed schedule, to each player's rank in earned auction value. The earned auction values are set to a 15-team league with 70 percent of the budget spent on hitters.

This approach means this week's column will be purely results based, in a deviation from my usual methodology, but it's worth remembering that the vast majority of fantasy leagues deal in actual, rather than expected, statistics. (If you have a league which deals purely in xFIPs and xWOBACONs, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.) I'll effort to highlight players whose overperformance or underperformance looks most or least believable. I've left out those whose "underperformance" is due to the fact they haven't played or have barely played. All earned auction value rankings are through Saturday's games.

RISERS

Top-100 Picks

Jose Abreu, 1B, White Sox: The craziest thing about Abreu's inclusion is that his rank doesn't even include his 11th homer of the season, which he hit Sunday as part of his six in the White Sox's three-game weekend series against the Cubs. It's been a remarkable stretch for the 33-year-old, who was hitting .247/.289/.412 through 21 games but who now has a .322/.365/.669 batting line just eight games later. He likely won't keep up quite this sort of power explosion — his .347 ISO is far above last season's .219 — but his 5.6 percent walk rate, 20.6 percent strikeout rate and .333 BABIP are quite close to his career norms, and his presence at the heart of an improved White Sox lineup should help him maintain his typically high RBI numbers.

Marcell Ozuna, OF, Braves: Ozuna's two seasons in St. Louis weren't awful by any means, though they failed to live up to his numbers from his breakout final season in Miami in 2017, in which he hit 37 homers while posting a 143 wRC+. His 137 wRC+ this season looks a whole lot more similar to that number than his marks of 107 and 109 with the Cardinals. There seem to be some mixed signals as to how sustainable this is for the 29-year-old. His 25.0 percent strikeout rate is his highest since 2014, but his 13.8 percent walk rate is his career high by a margin of 2.5 percentage points. His 91.6 mph average exit velocity is right in line with his previous seasons, though his 36.2 percent groundball rate is his lowest by more than five percentage points.

Picks 101-450

Anthony Santander, OF, Orioles: On the one hand, Santander is just 25 and was at least a moderately interesting prospect, so seeing him break out shouldn't be a huge surprise. On the other hand, it would be quite surprising if anyone saw a breakout like this coming. He really hadn't accomplished much in his first three partial big-league seasons, hitting .249/.285/.434, good for just an 85 wRC+. His 161 wRC+ this season, the product of a .291/.339/.673 batting line, is nearly double that. He's still quite a free swinger, as his walk rate has only risen from 4.6 to 5.9 percent, but he's slashed his strikeout rate dramatically from 21.1 to 13.6 percent. His hard contact percentage has jumped similarly, sitting at 46.8 percent after coming in at 36.7 percent in his first three seasons.

Kyle Lewis, OF, Mariners: Lewis was listed in this column in the first week of the regular season, but his performance this season has remained strong enough that he deserves another mention. Through 28 games, he's hitting an incredible .373/.463/.569. His .464 BABIP certainly won't last, but he's hitting the ball quite hard, and his .297 expected batting average and .524 expected slugging percentage suggest that he deserves quite good numbers, even if not quite as good as what he's done. Perhaps more impressively, the strikeout issues that plagued him both in the minors and in his 18-game big-league debut last season appear to have evaporated completely, as he's trimmed his strikeout rate all the way to a slightly below-average 23.1 percent.

Picks After 450

Jake Cronenworth, 1B/2B/SS, Padres: Cronenworth hit the ball quite well in 88 games for Triple-A Durham in the Rays' system last season, posting a .334/.429/.550 batting line. But he was more or less completely ignored during draft season after being part of the trade that sent Tommy Pham to San Diego and Hunter Renfroe to Tampa Bay, as he simply didn't have an obvious spot to play. He made the expanded Opening Day rosters, however, and started earning regular starts while Eric Hosmer was out with an illness. He's remained a nearly everyday player even upon Hosmer's return, and it's easy to see why, as he's hitting .347/.410/.627. A .377 BABIP suggests that line is due for heavy regression, but Statcast actually disagrees, giving him a remarkable .402 expected batting average and a .751 expected slugging percentage.

Dylan Moore, SS/OF, Mariners: Moore stands out among this group of overachieving bench players and middle relievers. His .282/.364/.538 slash line may not be entirely sustainable, but there's plenty to like about what he's done. A .354 BABIP suggests his numbers should fall, though his .298 expected batting average and .552 expected slugging percentage suggest that he's actually overachieved. His quality of contact is very different from what it was in his debut season last year, in which he hit just .206/.302/.389, as he's increased his barrel rate from 6.5 percent to 15.1 percent. He's also trimmed his strikeout rate from 33.0 percent to 28.4 percent.

FALLERS

Top-100 Picks

Note: I skipped a depressingly large number of players whose low earned auction values are primarily due to the fact they've missed the majority of the season. I've left players like Morton who have missed some of the season but have appeared in a meaningful portion.

Tyler Glasnow, SP, Rays: Some of Glasnow's poor ranking stems from how the Rays have used their pitchers. Rays starters have just three wins, none of which has gone to Glasnow, who's only once pitched long enough to be eligible. That's far from the only issue with his performance, however, as his ERA is 6.00 through five starts. While his 4.16 FIP and 3.56 xFIP paint a much more optimistic picture of his performance, he's certainly pitching noticeably worse than he did during his breakout 2019 campaign. His walk rate has spiked from 6.1 to 13.7 percent, while his groundball rate has plummeted from 50.4 to 28.3 percent.

Eugenio Suarez, 3B, Reds: Getting the obvious out of the way first: Suarez's BABIP won't remain as low as .164 the rest of the way. Some positive regression in that category will see the third baseman's .149/.282/.310 batting line rise along with it. Still, it's not as if the 29-year-old's struggles can be entirely attributed to bad luck. He simply hasn't hit the ball hard as he usually does, as his hard contact percentage has dropped to 28.6 percent after coming in at 46.7 percent last year. He underwent shoulder surgery in late January, so it's possible that sapped much of his power. 

Picks 101-450

Shohei Ohtani, SP/DH, Angels: In most leagues, those who drafted Ohtani this season were expecting to get a two-way player. What they've gotten is effectively a zero-way player. His first two starts in his return from Tommy John surgery were so terrible — he allowed seven runs while walking eight batters and recording just five outs — that the Angels elected to make him exclusively a hitter for the rest of the season. He's seemingly taken those struggles with him to the batter's box, as his .165/.241/.367 batting line is far below expectations. A .170 BABIP is undoubtedly part of the problem, but his 90.0 mph exit velocity is also a career low. Statcast gives him a .243 expected batting average, suggesting that he's getting unlucky but also underachieving.

Robbie Ray, SP, Diamondbacks: Ray was the sort of pitcher I was high on during draft season, on the theory that ERAs might never stabilize in a short season but strikeout rates likely would, meaning a high-strikeout but potentially high-ERA arm like Ray would be quite interesting. That, of course, relied on the fact that we'd get a typical season from the southpaw, but that simply hasn't happened. He's always been a high walk guy, but his 18.7 percent walk rate this season is untenable. He's also seen his strikeout rate drop from 31.5 percent last season to 26.1 percent this year. His groundball rate could be the most worrisome of all, as it's fallen off a cliff to 19.4 percent, giving him an unsurprising 3.0 HR/9.