Bobby Dalbec

Dalbec either struck out, walked or homered in 62 percent of his first 92 plate appearances in the majors. If he had enough PA to qualify, he would have ranked second in the majors behind Miguel Sano in Barrel% (22.0) and K% (42.4). Sano rode that profile to a .204 batting average, which is around where Dalbec would have ended up if he had played enough for his numbers to stabilize. He is a couple years younger than Sano, so we shouldn't think of him as a finished product, but he clearly needs to cut down on the strikeouts to avoid being a net negative in fantasy. The 25-year-old is a natural third baseman, but he is blocked by Rafael Devers and he will soon be blocked at first base by top prospect Triston Casas. Even so, Boston will find a spot for him if he makes the necessary adjustments and gets to his massive all-fields pop without striking out over 35 percent of the time.

A good prospect, yet a flawed one, Dalbec could be a plus defender at third base who hits for plus power, but he may not hit enough for those strengths to matter. He mastered Double-A (143 wRC+) in a return trip, but his version of mastering a level is a .234/.371/.454 line. His 15.5 BB% at Double-A is exactly what his OBP/points-league managers had in mind, but that mark shriveled to 4.1% in 30 games at Triple-A while his AVG jumped closer to his career .261 mark. A three-true-outcomes profile will work fine in real life, given his power and defense, but if his walk rate doesn't bounce back to at least 10%, there is little evidence he will be able to provide enough offensive value to occupy a corner-infield spot on a contending team. He is a better defender than Rafael Devers, but Devers may be so entrenched that Dalbec moves to first base (where his 70-grade arm would be wasted) or the outfield.

Position players get graded on five tools, but those tools do not count the same. Take Dalbec, whose power, arm and glove are at least 60-grade, and possibly 70-grade tools. But if he ends up with a 30-grade hit tool, those sixes and sevens may not matter. He has never been young for his level, yet his strikeout rate has never been below 31% in full-season ball, and was above 37% at Low-A and Double-A. He also led the Arizona Fall League with 32 strikeouts in 20 games. Prior to his promotion to Double-A, he at least paired those whiffs with a ton of walks, but his BB% fell from 14.3% at High-A to 4.8% at Double-A. Dalbec's swing is geared for the type of contact we want -- line drives and flyballs -- but he needs to make contact at an acceptable clip. One comp comes to mind, if we want to take a glass-half-full outlook: Matt Chapman. However, Chapman's contact rates were always slightly better, and his walk rate never plummeted like Dalbec's did in 2018.

Dalbec was a fourth-round draft pick out of the University of Arizona, where he played third base and pitched. On a positional track in the Red Sox's organization, Dalbec was Babe Ruth reincarnated last summer, bashing seven homers while hitting .386 with a 1.101 OPS in 34 games for short-season Lowell. So, how was it that a player with this much power potential, an anticipated first-rounder after mashing in the Cape Cod League during the summer of 2015, slipped to the fourth round? Dalbec slugged just .429 with seven homers while striking out 36.7 percent of the time in 68 games during his junior year at Arizona. The knock that he was an all-or-nothing hitter with a high K-rate. But something changed between the end of his junior year and his summer in Lowell. Dalbec went back to an open stance -- the same one used during the previous summer. His strikeout rate dropped to a manageable 25 percent, but the question remains if Dalbec can hit enough to overcome the strikeouts.