With the end of the regular season comes a time for reflection for the majority of baseball fans. What went right? What went wrong? You probably have a few ideas where your teams fell short or exceeded expectations, but what about a completely objective point of view? Throughout this season I have shown what batter and pitcher production looks like when we regress balls in play to look more like what the players should have seen using exit velocity and launch angle. The offseason will be no different as I take a team-by-team look at how the season fared for the club, while going a little deeper on players who were selected in the 2 Early Mock Draft. Provided there is a decent amount of history worth looking into. Player analysis will run from 2015 to present regardless of employer.
The order of release is the reverse of the final season ranking report so you can expect to find some depression leading to elation here. A quick review of that previous post can also give you a good idea of how a team rates compared to their peers as these analyses will focus upon each individual team. Lastly, playoff data has been included, which will not impact the first dozen or so teams, but does factor into league averages, and is included within player analysis. It’s going to take some time, but I would like to get one to two of these out each week which should allow for every team being covered before our glorious game returns to continue threshing our hearts.
Team Batter Production & Discipline
After a pretty lousy start for the Arizona Diamondbacks the offense got cooking in the second quarter of the season, but they were unable to sustain the good hitting, and this would go down as their best stretch. From there it was mostly average or worse with a decent close to the season long after it stopped mattering. As a team they showed some volatility striking out with averages around league peers, but rarely sitting still for long. The walk rate was more generally below average, but did show multiple above average runs. Trading Starling Marte, perhaps their best hitter, midway through the season likely played a role in the lesser periods, but this looks like a team that was more than one bat away in any case.
Batter Seasonal Line
With six players receiving around 200 or more plate appearances it is difficult to chalk the struggles up to injury. This looks pretty much like the team they constructed outside of the Starling Marte midseason removal. Free agent import Kole Calhoun lived up to his billing as a high walk, good power hitter who feasts on righties, and seems to hold his own against lefties despite striking out too often. With another one plus one ($8M for 2021, $9M team option for 2022 with $2M buyout) it is quite possible the team could look to flip if there is interest or they can sit back and reap production. So goes the quandary of playing for today and/or tomorrow when you are a team retooling on the fly. The next best hitter, Christian Walker, saw similarly mid-burner interest from the 2 Early Mocks, though still going almost a round ahead of Calhoun. Walker struck out at a similar pace, but with fewer walks, and less power that he similarly under-performed. This left him as a good enough hitter even for the position, though might represent another piece that could mean more to the next great team by bringing something worthwhile back for his four years of remaining control.
For Starling Marte it was a pretty normal season with his rare reverse split showing up again, and below average production on contact playing up due to his athleticism and preponderance of balls in play due more to a low strikeout rate as he walked around the average. The other half of the Marte Parté, Ketel, also makes a ton of contact as he barely walked or struck out, but also struck the ball with the authority we had seen more over his career than what he put up in his stellar 2019. It is looking like that was the outlier, but there is still a good player in there. Without the stolen bases he seems a bit inflated in the ranks likely due to the recency of his career season. His displayed power was very similar to Tim Locastro, but the latter was better able to use his blazing speed to see overperformance on contact this year. His walk rate looks very strong due to the Craig Biggio method of reaching first base, but he also avoids the strikeout well enough to leverage that elite speed.
Fleshing out the left side of the infield we arrive at shortstop Nick Ahmed and third sacker Eduardo Escobar. The former struggles with righties, but looks like an above average hitter against lefties, while playing virtually every day, albeit at the bottom of the order, which works to nullify some of his opportunity at the plate. Escobar foils nicely by being a better hitter of righties than lefties, though his results on contact this year cratered compared to his expected production on contact. A strong walk rate helps him add value when they aren’t falling in, but he will need to get back to showing some thump to be considered a fine fantasy play. Another player who got a bunch of run when injury has been a real concern over the years was David Peralta. The corner outfield struck out more than a third of the time, though did show a strong walk rate, and while the expected contact production was below average he did see better results, which has been a recurring theme throughout his career likely due to how he sprays the ball around and/or his good speed and/or a knack for consistently hitting to the fat parts of the field.
Catcher looks like a problem with all of Daulton Varsho, Stephen Vogt and Carson Kelly coming in as well below average hitters. Each struggled with lefties while getting closer to the average against righties. The two youngsters Varsho and Kelly should continue to receive some interest due to their position, but neither performed well last year. Varsho looks like the best hitter of the bunch with average or better performance against righties and his outfield usage should keep him on the field more than your average catcher so there should be the most interest in him over the others.
Team Batter Batted Ball Profile & Production on Contact
Looking at batted ball characteristics you can see that hard hit rates were fairly pedestrian early with peaks above the horizon, but troughs well below and then the second half they went through a miserable stretch where they hit with almost no authority before things kind of went back to where they started over the last few hundreds balls in play. The production on contact was pretty good during the end of season better run and the early season best stretch stands out markedly, but the rest of the time this was a team that just didn’t hit the ball all that hard or well. The sluggish start to the season is something we have seen from many teams profiled so far as teams were clearly unprepared for the season, but the interesting thing for Arizona is that they were able to seemingly get it going before that turned into a mirage like any other when driving from Phoenix to the border.
Team Pitcher Production & Discipline
While the hitting showed fits and starts the pitching was mostly pretty bad. Ok, more worse than average than outright bad, for the most part, but never really a strength until the end of the season run of good performance long after it ceased to matter. The strikeout rate showed a slow downward trend over the course of the season starting out around the average and ending up there, as well, but only due to that closing flourish. The tails of the season show a fine walk rate, but throughout the middle it rarely got better than average and never for long. The Starling Marte trade then seems to make sense as the team saw more of a need for pitching for a player they saw as a borderline decision to pick up the option. Caleb Smith coming back alongside Humberto Mejia gave the team another controllable arm for the future, but this still looks like an area of weakness.
Pitcher Seasonal Line
I do not mean to imply that Arizona does not have good pitchers, however. Their earliest pick, Zac Gallen, looked like a stud last year holding his own with lefties while dominating righties whom he struck out nearly a third of the time. The much lower K-rate and worse walk rate against lefties held him back, but it was average or better contact production from both. Some overperformance versus lefties did create a rather large gap in his overall line, but this is a really good pitcher coming off a pretty good season that even threw in plenty of volume. There is a big gap and then a glob of pitchers who were around the average in big stints or better than average in smaller ones. Luke Weaver and Taylor Clarke saw fairly large workloads that came in just below the average, but look like useful mid to back of rotation pieces going forward. Non-ball in play came in around the average with contact being a bit harder, but not egregiously so. Actual results were a different story as Luke Weaver saw far worse results than he deserved, while Clarke’s were a little better than they probably ought to have been.
Merrill Kelly, Riley Smith and Stefan Crichton were also pretty useful, though Kelly succumbed to Thoracic Outlet Surgery early cutting his strong start well short. The actual results on contact were a lot better than expected, though with a walk rate that low it might just be a matter of knowing when to put a guy on instead of attacking the zone full throttle. Smith showed excellently over his pretty small sample with no discernable platoon split, though going about his work in a different way against same-handers. Crichton popped up in the 2 Early Mock drafts, though might have a big enough issue with lefties that he won’t be a realistic option for saves going forward. Another guy with a very short stretch was the aforementioned Caleb Smith who didn’t have a ton of time left to do work after he came over with a missed month for COVID-19 holding him back even further. Otherwise it looks pretty normal for him as he put the heads of lefties firmly in the toilet, but got his own butt kicked by righties a bit. The walks are a problem, but he gets strikeouts and seems to suppress contact well. He should be a mid-rotation or better option for the club next year.
Perhaps necessitating the trade was seeing Alex Young go from sneaky pretty good to probably not a rotation option going forward. He wasn’t good against either hand, but better against lefties. He avoids the walk well, but comes in below average sitting guys down and the contact was extremely hard, while mostly translating to actual results. Still, he was better and gave more volume than either of the also traded mid-season Robbie Ray and recently acquired via free agency Madison Bumgarner. Both were pretty good against their same-handed lefties, while coming completely unglued against righties. Ray struck out a quarter of them, and damn near walked the same amount while with the D-backs. His hellacious contact against them was a little worse than Bumgarner who also managed to outperform to the point of palatability if he struck any of them out. Instead, the team looks like it will be paying good money for a guy who just cannot do it anymore. He was one of the worst pitchers in the league this year and there seems like few reasons to get back into that pool ever again.
Team Pitcher Batted Ball Profile & Production on Contact
If launch angle is the steering wheel then Arizona’s pitchers looked very content to ride smoothly in the liner or higher zone, which seems fairly dangerous. If exit velocity is the motor you can see that they were occasionally moving along quite well, but did show some hiccups at various points. Combining the two aspects shows a pitching unit that was just constantly giving up productive contact. Meeting the average was seen as a good thing, and while they did outperform on actual results at times pushing down pretty deeply into the good place there were just as many stints where they saw worse than expected results. The close to the season does stand out as one of their best runs and the common denominator with the others was being able to suppress high exit velocity just a bit better. Something the team will need to continue to improve upon going forward as there is just no way to have success when you have a walk problem AND a contact problem.
Player Analysis in order of 2 Early Mock ADP
It is important to remember throughout, but especially for well established players, that the most plate appearances anybody received this year was 327 including the postseason (378 for a pitcher). Meaning 2020 production is only a narrow slice of what is being shown for entrenched players with a long history. For players where 2020 makes up a larger part of their resumé the more recent data is going to take up more of the space. Considering what every player had to go through this year I do not think it makes sense to over-weight what we saw throughout this season so hopefully incorporating more track record will be more informative than simply showing what occurred this year. Also, the vertical axes will remain locked to make side-by-side comparisons much easier, but throughout this series please pay attention to that x-axis as it will change from player to player.
Zac Gallen (50)
In his first full season with Arizona after coming over at the 2019 trade deadline in a one-for-one deal that sent Jazz Chisholm back to Miami, Zac Gallen showed why he is worth the price of admission. He took a step forward in 2020 by improving his walk rate a fairly good deal knocking two percentage points off year-over-year and showing the kind of sustainable growth that bodes well for the future. To do that without losing too much off his above average strikeout rate or a little better than average contact production is exactly what you want to see out of an acclimating pitcher who looks poised to contend for Cy Youngs perennially if he can take a small step forward really anywhere in his game. A true full season would be a good start as the mid-season call up in 2019 actually saw him give more volume than the truncated 2020 season. Bumping the strikeout rate up another touch would be a great way to enter the elites or further lowering the walk rate would go a long way. His production on contact is hard to quibble with, though maybe you prefer even more downer contact the exit velocity has been exquisite including his most recent stretch being the best in his short MLB career. Doing nothing leaves him as a top of rotation pitcher, but if he can just goose a little more out of his stuff then you’re talking about a league elite, and he might not even have to do that if he can show the kind of workhorse volume he really hasn’t had a chance to display yet.
Ketel Marte (73)
While the overperformance in 2019 was fairly obvious for Ketel Marte you can see true wOBA thinks he has been an above average hitter over his last thousand or more plate appearances. Not to the crazy extent seen in what will likely be his career season, but consistently solid production from a top of the order hitter. He got there by turning down an already better than average strikeout rate that has since approached league leader status. He does that while showing the occasional run of passivity that helps spike walk rates, but mostly walking less than average. The production on contact is where he really took a step forward in his best season, though this shorter, more recent one saw a return more to past levels. Exit velocity was not quite in the doldrums seen upon breaking into the league, though suppressed from very best, and while his launch angle cratered over the course of this season you can see strong strides made to get and keep the ball off the ground. If he steals 10 bases as he has twice in his career then you’re probably happy to have an average or better hitter with strong dual defensive eligibility, but if you are paying for him as if 2019 is going to happen again there will be no way to avoid disappointment.
Christian Walker (198)
When he was a prospect in the Baltimore Orioles system the knock on Christian Walker was that he could hit the ball a country mile… the times he didn’t miss the thing altogether. You can see those gross strikeout rates earlier in his career, but credit to the player for working hard to get those around the average if not better. To do that while showing almost no slippage from average walk rates speaks well to his adjustments. To do all that and still see exit velocity consistently coming in above average is very encouraging. With overall production coming in persistently better than average, though curiously often falling short of even better expectations makes me wonder if there is another gear here or if we are looking at a Paul Konerko type hitter who is a good hitter, even considering the position, but outside of the occasional year where everything goes right he is neither exciting nor the kind of bat that can carry your team. Real or fantasy. It is difficult to see him taking a leap upward to a higher level, but this seems like high floor production and like Konerko there should be a year or two in there where he challenges for silver slugger or MVP awards. At this price point it might be worth finding out if this is that year.
Kole Calhoun (208)
There has been some volatility to the game of Kole Calhoun including that incredible swing in 2018 where he was both the best and worst he has ever been somehow contained in a single season he has mostly settled in as an average to above hitter who strikes out a bit more than you might like, but also walks at a strong rate. Doing that while also striking the ball at average velocity usually on liner or higher angles means you are looking at a fairly useful piece. It would not surprise if he finds his way to another club this offseason or even during 2021. There are so few good left-handed hitters around the league that a good team is going to want to bring this guy in to mash righties, see select lefties, and possibly be a cheaper alternative to free agent Joc Pederson while likely being a better player due to non-crippling platoon splits. Getting him into a better lineup and/or park would do wonders to boost his ranking, though being seen as a pure platoon play might offset gains leaving him as a perfectly reasonable fourth outfielder for your fantasy dreams.
Daulton Varsho (237)
Debuting a week after this 24th birthday, the top-100 prospect Daulton Varsho put early struggles aside to migrate toward being a league average hitter. Not shabby for a youngish rookie turn, and made more impressive by the fact that he can nominally catch while also seeing time in the outfield. Defensive questions aside he should continue to carry catcher eligibility where his stolen bases throughout the minors represent a real avenue of rare value from the position. He was able to move his strikeout rate closer to the average, though still on the wrong side, which was offset some by what looks like a good walk rate. This leaves us with the image of a patient hitter unafraid to work deep counts, but given his improving, though still bad exit velocity you have to wonder if pitchers will be even more aggressive next year. Without an adjustment to the more aggressive the hitter may find himself behind in a lot of counts making it even harder to be a productive hitter. As a pure speed play at a position where that could lead to a strong margin he makes a lot of sense, but we will find out in 2021 if the lefty can be the kind of impact hitter that would make fantasy owners even more eager to chase. It’s hard to go wrong at catcher, but I’d rather pay a premium next year than eat a loss in this one if the milk turns sour.
David Peralta (290)
Throughout his career David Peralta has certainly shown some flashes. Even full blown strong runs, but there are also plenty of down periods where he was a below average hitter and almost exclusively that over his last 500 or so trips to the plate. The strikeout rate ballooned this year reaching peaks previously seen, but both then and now those were mostly jaunts, which I would expect to be the case going forward. The walk rate has rarely been above average, though most of that had come fairly recently with straight slough over 2020. He has shown long stretches of hitting the ball hard, though you can see a couple of steps down has brought him to the average, of late. He has never really done a great job of getting the ball in the air to be able to fully leverage the hard contact, but has shown long runs of being a productive ball-striker. It hasn’t been all that long since Peralta was a pretty useful hitter, and it’s possible he will get back to that point, but with platoon splits widening it seems far more likely he will see platoon work in the future.
Eduardo Escobar (292)
Going a couple of picks later we find Eduardo Escobar looks like a similarly productive hitter as Peralta, but goes about it a bit differently. The walk and the strikeout are fairly on the level with both a bit on the low side meaning a higher preponderance of balls in play than a typical batter. Where he is different, however, is in his batted ball profile. We see he is adept at getting the ball in the air, though for much of his career he seemed to lack the kind of exit velocity that would lead to strong results. When his exit velocity has spiked up and over the average he has seen marvelous results on his contact. Worth pointing out that in both of his best stretches the actual results did look better, but with a fly ball approach it is easier to see a player outperform expectations when homers cluster. The most recent performance showed some of his best exit velocity, but he saw some of his worst results, especially on the actual field. With his infield eligibility I like him over Peralta and think a bouceback more believable.
Carson Kelly (310)
In 2019 Carson Kelly burst onto the season with a tale of two halves. His offense early was anemic, but gradually proved to be a real strength as he brought the seasonal line just a hair above average. This year would show all of the start and none of the finish as he was back to unplayably bad. The strikeout rate ticked up approaching 30% after being mostly better than average and the always pretty good walk rate completely cratered. This shows up in his exit velocity, too, where this year was almost straight tail off back to and even worse than his debut. His best production on contact last year came when he was hitting the ball pretty well above average, but also climbing to higher launch angles. This year saw the angles work their way back upward after, but without the oomph the lack of production was no surprise. The mocks did not seem to price in much of a discount, and with Varsho’s ability to play in the outfield he should have some opportunity next year, but he works a lot better as your second catcher that you trade out if things go bust again.
Robbie Ray (338)
Re-signing with the Toronto Blue Jays following his mid-season trade to the American League club was Robbie Ray who was always so maddening with Arizona. You can see his most recent was some of his worst performance since 2015, though did seem to improve following the trade. The strikeout rate sustaining north of 30% is the hook that brings you back, amiritenowjohnpopper, but with it comes absurd walk rates that continue in the wrong direction. Again, post-trade we can see a noticeable difference with both strikeout and walk rates falling dramatically. We can also see the worst of his career exit velocity reach peak then turn down for what around his move. Possibly due to batters being unfamiliar with him, possibly genuine changes the team instilled following what was some an offseason of very radical changes from dramatic weight loss to a full blown arm swing overhaul. This makes it tough to tell which Robbie Ray we will see next year. The ridiculous strikeout rate forgives a lot of sins, and it has mostly worked well for him throughout his career it seems easy to say he will be better than 2020, but will he be as good as he was? Tough to tell at this time, though if the team makes use of the short hook he will not be in line for many wins.
Caleb Smith (340)
The team probably already has their new Robbie Ray in house as Caleb Smith was the bulk of the return in the Starling Marte trade. He has shown all of the same strikeout ability, but with much more manageable walk rates. While Smith does a much better job of suppressing hard contact his extreme flyball approach often leads to worse than average production on contact yielded with much of his brief career residing in the same bands you see above with Ray. He has dealt with shoulder and hip injuries, and a bout with COVID-19 shortened his season this year, but the team has several years of control left for what looks like a potential mid-rotation pitcher if he can get back to showing the kind of success he has over multiple times in his career.
Madison Bumgarner (425)
It has been an obviously illustrious career for Madison Bumgarner who will likely end up in Cooperstown when he can wear all the jewelry he has acquired over his career, but he has to get there first. This season looks like a total writeoff as he was one of the worst pitchers in the game. It has been a couple thousand batters faced since Bumgarner was what you would call pretty damn good, though he did throw in a couple of stretches to remind of old times. Those are very much the outlier here. He has shown a ton of volatility in his strikeout rate the past couple of years, at times showing glimpses of his best, but not really being able to sustain any of it. The walk rate has continued to be a bit of a strength with a blip this past season that he got back under control. The bigger problem is going from soft to hard contact so much more frequently these days. He also seems to show less of an ability to keep the ball down, and when those two forces collide watch out. The resulting production on contact saw another ratchet upward. With the weird season maybe you can find it easier to ignore, but there is so much more bad than good over a pretty long run that it should be easy to avoid.
Luke Weaver (443)
Going even later you find Luke Weaver who has shown some runs of good performance, but always seems to have a counterbalancing bad stretch to offset. This past year aside he had shown a pretty good ability to strike guys out living in a higher area than he had been able to previously sustain, and it was coming with better than average walk rates. With the bump in strikeouts, however, it seems he is also giving up harder contact than when he first broke into the league. Some forearm tightness brings injury intrigue into the question, but at this point in the draft he’s a flier anyway.
Archie Bradley (453)
Upon moving out of the closer role in Arizona following his trade to Cincinnati Archie Bradley immediately lost a ton of his luster. The performance has been uneven, but mostly pretty good since moving to the pen with strikeout rates typically around 30% and walk rates a bit around or above average. Spates of hard contact point to his inconsistency and might point to underlying injury issues, because at times he has done quite well to avoid hard hits. The results on contact this year were very favorable, but not really seen by expectations. Ugly saves are better than nothing and the strikeouts help, but until he is back in that role it seems hard to be competitive rostering him.
Stefan Crichton (454)
Still in Arizona where the closer role is well undefined we find Stefan Crichton receiving some lukewarm interest toward the back of the draft. In his brief exposure he has performed fairly well settling in as an average or better on the back of a good strikeout rate that did fall a bit towards the end of the season in conjunction with an average walk rate. Better than average exit velocity belies modest expected production on contact that has played up continuously. In waiver leagues he might be worth a flier at the end of a draft and if he doesn’t end up in a high leverage role earlier he can be churned out.
Nick Ahmed (465)
Weak starts seem to be a predictable thing for Nick Ahmed who otherwise looks like a decent late shortstop who should play a ton. The past three seasons show horrible starts with linear improvement over the course of the season. In 2019 he established new career best performance after several years of building up, but in 2020 we saw more of what he was like in 2018 as an average performer. He walks ok enough to offset the average or better strikeout rate, and has shown better exit velocity that sees him approaching the average, but rarely exceeding. His contact is predominantly down, especially of late. Production on contact rarely runs above average, but he’s a fairly competent player who shouldn’t hurt you from May on.
Merrill Kelly (472)
We see significant gaps for long stretches of Merrill Kelly’s brief career. Better actual results come in fairly strong while the elevated expectations have tamped down over his most recent stretch after running hotter. If he’s an average type pitcher with average or better strikeouts and no issue with the walk he should be a hot commodity, but coming off Thoracic Outlet Surgery there are many unknowns. Some of which will be sorted out in Spring Training if you can wait that long, but if not he represents kind of a high risk, medium reward type guy. Add in that it seems unlikely he will be able to continue to outrun his rather hard production on contact forever and it seems better to pick up on waivers if things are looking right.
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