Jeff McNeil

Many players will have a breakout in their third season in the big leagues, but it could be said that came in McNeil's second year with his big sophomore power season. His third season at the big-league level was a disappointment if you viewed 2019 as his new performance level, but a satisfactory performance if you viewed him against the backdrop of most of his minor-league career. In this day and age of low-contact and low-average hitters, McNeil shines as someone who makes excellent contact, hits the balls to all fields and will accept walks. He has a career .319 batting average and a .383 OBP spanning over 1,000 plate appearances. The expected stats do not love him, but the actual results are tough to overlook, as long as he continues to feast on fastballs (.354 BA in 2020). As good as his batting average was, it could have been even better were it not for his .146 average against breaking balls.

Even after batting .329 over his first two-plus months of MLB action in 2018, McNeil was slated to open last season in a utility role until injuries intervened. Suffice it to say, McNeil now owns a full-time lineup spot after demonstrating that the exceptional contact skills he exhibited as a rookie weren't a fluke. More surprisingly, McNeil showed he wasn't merely a slap hitter, either. He raised his barrel rate from 2.4% to 4.8%, allowing him to tap into power (62 extra-base hits) that was mostly absent from his minor-league profile. The 2019 baseball undoubtedly helped McNeil, but his high batting-average floor and spot near the top of the order are enough to make him a quality building block for fantasy teams even if the power production proves unsustainable. McNeil's eligibility at three spots (second base, third base and outfield) only burnishes his value further.

McNeil has stellar bat-to-ball ability, as evidenced by the minuscule 9.7% strikeout rate he posted with the Mets last season. Those skills helped McNeil to a .329 average after his late-July callup, which was a top-10 mark among second-half qualifiers. McNeil had a K-rate above 13.3% at only one stop on the farm (16.4% in 30 games at High-A). While there isn't a ton of pop to be found here (.142 ISO, 30.2% hard-hit rate), he uses the entire field with balanced batted-ball distribution. McNeil can also run a little. His recorded average sprint speed of 27.8 ft/sec actually wasn't very good, but he was caught stealing just once in eight attempts, giving him 13 steals total across three levels. New general manager Brodie Van Wagenen said early in the offseason that McNeil was "penciled in" as the starter at second base, but that changed after the team's acquisition of Robinson Cano. Look for McNeil to open in a utility role.