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.
COL BOS DET MIA PIT TEX ARI SEA KCR BAL
Team Batter Production & Discipline
Missing their best player, and, perhaps, the best hitter in baseball, Juan Soto, for most of the first quarter left bare an offense that ranged from acceptable to cover-your-eyes bad. Soto’s effect is fairly obvious as his arrival demarcated a spectacular run of production for most of the rest of the season. The finish shows high volatility with a large spike surrounded by two valleys, but for the most part the bats held up their end of the bargain. As a team the strikeout rate only rarely crossed over into worse than average territory with far more of the time showing well better than average. The walk was more often below average, but there were plenty of runs up to and across average so that it wasn’t a constant weakness.
Batter Seasonal Line
After shedding Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon over the two prior winters the offense has gone from deep and feared to quite top-heavy as reflected fairly well by the 2 Early Mock ADPs. Juan Soto is one of, if not, the best hitters in baseball and Trea Turner represents a nice foil who isn’t the power threat, but is a very productive hitter who sustainably plays above average production on contact estimates due to elite athleticism that also leads to best in league stolen base levels. Soto walked nearly twice as often with both avoiding the strikeout quite well. The power advantage for Soto is obvious, which is why he was worth almost a win and a half more at the plate despite 30% fewer plate appearances. That they’re both so balanced against lefties and righties makes the top of this lineup a constant threat night in and night out.
The problem for the club was the massive drop from those two down to the next level where we find Asdrubal Cabrera and Howie Kendrick, both free agents unlikely to come back, and the catcher Yan Gomes who isn’t in the lineup everyday. Cabrera is coming off another good, but not great season, and one where he hit lefties fairly well with even better results on contact, but looked a lot less useful against righties whom still represent the lion’s share of opportunity. Kendrick may retire following his short season made shorter by a lingering hamstring issue. The lack of mobility might help explain the large gap between strong expected production on contact and the much worse results he actually saw. The way low walk rate with better than average strikeouts showed up for both Kendrick and Gomes with the latter actually getting to his average or better expectations. The playing time is less consistent than others, but a league average hitter at catcher last year, it’s a bit surprising the mockers had him so low.
Fresh off some World Series heroics, the other catcher, Kurt Suzuki, showed a strong ability to control the zone, but very little authority when striking the ball leading to below average production that wasn’t all that far above replacement, either. Most of the rest of the group didn’t even clear replacement, but a few sharp teams did throw a dart at Andrew Stevenson in the reserve rounds based on strong results in a short sample. The production on contact was absurdly over the top, but expectations still saw him as an above average ball-striker. Add in a strong walk rate and league average strikeouts and you might be looking at an unheralded 26 year old lefty who might seize and then run wild with fairly open opportunity. Another player who should be handed the keys to see if he can handle the ride is Luis Garcia who saw a fair bit of run, but put up below average production due to a low walk rate and below average contact. Being a very young player (21 in May) who skipped AAA it is quite likely we have yet to see his best. The fact that he didn’t embarrass himself should be seen as a positive, and the team’s confidence to play him then should bode well for 2021.
He won’t be back with the Nats next season after signing with the Chicago White Sox, but Adam Eaton kept the bar fairly low in a season where he never really got going. There was little authority in his contact, while better than average strikeout rates were offset by fairly poor walks. Easy to write this one off for Eaton given the circumstances, but even easier for Washington to replace in-house. Another player they might view that way, Starlin Castro, will instead remain with the club in the last year of a cheapish deal. A fractured wrist ended his season before it even got going, and at his advanced age it would not surprise if he is never able to get back to being a fairly useful player for the back of your lineup. Two other players who saw a good deal of time, and should be a part of the future, were Carter Kieboom and Victor Robles. The former hasn’t really gotten much leash over the past two season mostly due to his glove in 2019 and then a larger sample in the shorter year showing baby food soft contact to go with an elevated strikeout rate and a crazy high number of walks. The bloom has fallen off the rose and what is left has to decide if it is going to stand strong or wilt into oblivion. It is something of a make or break year for Robles, as well, though his typically strong defense should keep him starting on a big league roster. He struck out a touch more than Kieboom, but with half the walk rate. He did, however, run stronger production on contact expectations as well as in the actual results, which probably demeans the young infielder more than elevates the young outfielder.
As the old guard continues to fade the plateaued prospects have not been able to internally fill gaps for a club used to running a winner out there and worrying about paying for it later. This should create ample opportunity, especially in the infield where Turner is a lock for short, and you would expect Garcia to be playing somewhere, though they may start him in AAA due to youth, control and lack of experience at the level with pedestrian results in MLB. That leaves a couple of positions up in the air with few prospects ready to fill the breach. Expect Washington to supplement over the winter with at least one corner infield bat. Depending on how much or long they want to commit to the position that will likely be the difference between the lineup continuing to be so top-heavy, and getting back to the kind of balance that can wear pitchers out.
Team Batter Batted Ball Profile & Production on Contact
Team-wide exit velocity was almost always below average with a particularly nasty crater in the third quarter that returned to close out the season after a brief correction. Despite the lack of consistently hard contact the team did have spurts where the offense sang. The already discussed start to the year shows up prominently, but we also see the sustained run of good performance for the middle of the season. Actual results exceeded expected for long stretches, something that is more likely to continue than with other teams given the speed threats posed by Turner and Robles. That could lead the team to look better on the real field, but a far better solution would be lengthening the lineup so the expected results don’t see so much time spent on the wrong side of average.
Team Pitcher Production & Discipline
On their way to the World Series title in 2019 the Washington Nationals heavily rode their very good starting pitchers to help mask a lack of depth that gave the first glimpses to a perennial contender becoming more top-heavy. The magic dried up this past year as the unbalance further pushed forth due to their second ace hardly pitching exposing the soft underbelly of the beast. The beginning of the season would go down as their best sustained run with the rest of the year struggling to get back to the average, while spending most of the rest of the time well worse. Actual results were even worse than the averagey expectations for runs in the middle and end, but at no point was the pitching a strength of the team despite still possessing one of the best arms in the game. That presence did help buoy strikeouts as the team occasionally flirted with 30%, but there were also troughs in the other direction when batters weren’t all that fooled. The walk rate was mostly better than average over the first half, though slipped to worse levels for a stretch before setting back down to acceptable or even good levels.
Pitcher Seasonal Line
Unsurprisingly, Max Scherzer was the best pitcher on the team, though the old battleship is starting to show some cracks in the hull. Durability was not much of a concern despite the heavy workload in the season and life prior as he faced nearly 300 batters. The strikeout and walk rates were still elite, but all that zone-pounding had the downside of very productive contact. This showed up prominently in reality against the lefties he faced (over half the sample), though his still worse than average expectations were considerably lower. Against righties his expected production was even louder, but showed up at a much lower, though still worse than average, level. The strikeout solves many, many problems and Max can still go to that bag seemingly whenever he wants, but when that starts to slip you won’t want to be the last rat off the ship.
A bevy of relievers fill up the rest of the top of the board with Kyle Finnegan being the only one to combine a healthy workload with strong production. He got there by obliterating righties, while still coming in better than average against lefties. He’ll walk that latter group a bit more while mostly squashing contact when batters did put the ball in play. Lighter on volume, but positing similar rockstar results were Tanner Rainey and Kyle McGowin. Leading the team in strikeout rate at over 40%, Rainey showed that his live arm can play. Regressed contact thought he should have seen worse results on balls in play, but even at that level he was still well above average, in total. It was an even shorter display for McGowin who also struck out more than a third with an even better walk rate, but where he really stands out is in the soft contact he allowed. This showed up worse in reality, which being the opposite of Rainey will be interesting to monitor this year as the closer’s role might be amorphous for a bit. Each meeting regression might leave McGowin the better looking arm if speculating. Representing the side of more is less is Wander Suero who saw a hundred batters and limited production at an above average rate that pales in comparison to the previously covered arms. He showed a reverse platoon split this year with a much better contact profile against lefties, both in theory, and reality. Walks and strikeouts showed little difference.
Forced up the pecking order when their co-Ace had to bug out, Patrick Corbin had a bit of a down year, in which, his utter ownage of fellow lefties got watered down by the much larger sample of righties who hit him hard. The strikeout rate came down a fair bit when the batter had the advantage, though the walk rate stayed in good areas. This may be an example of a previously dominant pitcher thinking he can still challenge opposite-handed batters when down in the count. Given the hyper-low walk rates it might make sense for Corbin to give in once in a while in an effort to keep the ball off the barrel when outmanned and outgunned. Despite facing 50 fewer batters, Anibal Sanchez was also able to put up a sizeable workload in his age 69 season. The line mirrors Corbin in a lot of ways leading with a handedness split that tilted against lefties, giving up hard contact to righties, and arriving at the same twOBA and xwRC+ figures. Corbin does a better job of controlling the zone with more punchouts and fewer walks, but Sanchez limited expected contact production a bit better. Only one of those has an entire category to itself in fantasy so despite identical contributions on a rate basis these two are not the same.
Past closer Daniel Hudson will probably fall right back into that role to start the upcoming season, though it will be curious to see if he can maintain the hold all year as the younger studs already profiled will be champing at the bit for the saves that get you paid. An above average overall line belies a fairly rough season that saw him walk far too many of either hand, but with plenty of strikeouts to at least help offset some of the free pass. While expectations point to strong suppression of offense the actual results were outsized enough to wonder where true north lives. Righties absolutely torched him by either perspective. If this strong of a reverse split persists then he should hold value in the ninth where managers want to be able to nullify pinch hitters, but with high walk rates and strong production on contact he venerable vet looks like a house of cards.
Two starters who fell woefully short of filling the gap were Austin Voth and Erick Fedde. They arrived at similar aggregate rates in different ways with the former controlling the zone better, but also getting hit a good deal harder. While both showed better than average walk rates, pedestrian and far worse strikeout rates, respectively, should lead to little interest in 2021 for either. It’s fairly easy to write off Stephen Strasburg’s season due to the hand injury, but the team sure did fall short trying to replace him with several options cycling through with little success. The youngster Wil Crowe has a bit of pedigree, and may yet turn out to be a fine pitcher, but 2020 was a rough first foray that saw him hit obscenely hard while walking more than he struck out. The smallness of the sample is inarguable, but does show considerable work ahead to adjust to the best hitters he has ever seen.
Team Pitcher Batted Ball Profile & Production on Contact
The team seemed to do fairly well suppressing exit velocity as spikes above the average were brief and infrequent, while troughs show considerable depth, at times, and enough time spent around the average to claim residency. Y’know, for tax purposes. The team seemed to do a better job of keeping the ball down earlier in the year with most of the second half showing more contact in the air until a late season crash. Translating the coordinates to production you can easily see a pitching unit overwhelmed by productive contact. The outsized actual production in the middle stands out as the only run where fine expectations manifested in worse actual production, but is a snapshot of a much larger trend where both perspectives were at that higher level of results. This looks like an area of major weakness this past season and a good explainer for why a decent offense didn’t translate to big success in the standings.
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.
Juan Soto (5)
Despite only turning 22 years old about a month ago, the legend of Juan Soto refuses to stop growing in stature. Since joining the league he has been nearly universally a good to great hitter with his worst stretches still seeing him look a lot like the league average. We can see a gradual, bumpy uptick in his twOBA with even better results in reality for the most part. He really has kicked things into gear over the last season or so worth of plate appearances with both perspectives falling into line with peaks at even higher levels. The ravine seems to coincide with the calendar flip, so hard to fault approaching mortality given the circumstances of this past season and the subsequent bounceback to best in MLB type of production. A big reason for his success has been the discerning eye he brings to a plate appearance. This not only leads to the kind of walk over strikeout gaps shown above that almost no other player can get to, but has also allowed him to show continual growth in his exit velocity, which had been trending at league leader levels until a falloff to close this year. When pitchers have to pick their poison between putting a guy on or getting roped they don’t have much of a chance, though in a lineup where the next best hitter is in front of him and the dropoff to the next is fairly massive it seems likely the decision will be made before the game even starts. Perhaps no team would better benefit from the adoption of a universal designated hitter as a play for J.D. Martinez seems within the realm of reason, and would give Soto the kind of protection that could push him to historical heights.
Trea Turner (6)
If Soto is the overhand right then Trea Turner is the leading jab that sets up the big blow to come. While he will not pace the league in homers, Turner will hit his fair share to go with tons of other hard contact that he fully leverages with his best in league athleticism. Unlike most stolen base providers he shows that he is a complete hitter who might lag a bit on walks, but can go on runs where he re-establishes the willingness to be patient. He has almost always struck out at a better than average clip with spikes above short-lived and most of the time showing well above average, sub-20% rates. The exit velocity waned around some wrist issues, but has been consistently average or better showing a slight tilt upwards over his last 800 or so balls in play. The launch angle is typically down or on a line, which plays well to his skillset. A less physically gifted batter might see average or worse results more in line with expectations, but given the persistence of his overperformance bodes well for future above average results on contact. He will have all the opportunity in the world, but with the lineup taking steps back a few years in a row the counting stats might get dinged without an aggressive buttressing of assets.
Max Scherzer (23)
There is no doubt that Max Scherzer has been one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball over the past several years. Long swathes of outstanding performance have been a hallmark, but this past season continues a more recent trend of increasingly normal human performance. He has been at levels like this before, but with more rapidity of late. The surge in actual results that preceded the most recent climb to the middle is something that has cropped up before, though perspectives have realigned following what is likely a cluster of big flies. The strikeout rate has been slowly falling off from best in the league levels to still well above average around 30%, and outside of a recent spike he has almost never shown an above average walk rate of note going back to 2015. Scherzer has had success on contact for much of his career due to his ability to get softer contact up in the air. Good exit velocity suppression has mostly continued within the normal bands, of late, though trajectories have dropped enough to see batters going from mishitting to squaring up a bit more often. Production on contact had continuously come in at average to pretty good levels, but the most recent run shows a player getting hit a good deal harder. Expectations have never stayed trended this high for this long, though even with the rougher performance there was a solid stretch where he showed he can still own batters. The louder contact may indicate he can’t get away with pounding the zone like he used to, which is a humbling, but easily made adjustment.
Stephen Strasburg (84)
The fourth horseman during this standout run of Nats teams, Stephen Strasburg, is coming off a season that resembled a post-apocalyptic nightmare as he tried to pitch hurt before ultimately succumbing to the knife. Missed time rather than poor performance due to injury keeps the data mostly looking crisp as the 2020 contributions are a drop in the bucket. This has been the case for a lot of Strasburg’s history as he has either been pretty good or on the shelf. From that perspective there should be some more in the tank since we have always seen him bounce back well from issues, but at some point the sentiment will stop being true. He hasn’t lost much off the strikeout rate as he can still live around 30% with walks typically coming in better than average. Production on contact has mostly lved on the good side with occasional spikes above average fizzling out quickly. He seems to have made real strides to lower his launch angle over the years and now does an excellent job of continuously keeping contact down. The issue with only using the data, however, is that this naïve perspective does not know that he just missed a bunch of time for an injury teams don’t have a ton of past history rehabbing, and at an advanced age with a ton of mileage there might just come a time when he doesn’t come back. As a fifth or sixth rounder in your league you know he can make good on the investment, but few picks in the top-100 have the downside of Strasburg, which we just saw last year at a higher price point.
Victor Robles (158)
Throughout his career Victor Robles has shown the ability to outrun weak production expectations due to otherworldly speed not unlike his teammate Trea Turner, but obviously at a lower level of output. The truncated season showed what it might look like if he stopped seeing that overperformance, and it wasn’t particularly pretty. Notes about coming into camp bulked up with muscle following the unprecedented layoff might be an easy scapegoat, though it would not surprise if less mobility was the byproduct of increase muscle mass for a player who had always tilted so hard in the other way. He has seen something like this before, but back then it was due to expectations rising up to meet average actual production so it will be interesting to see if this most recent alignment sticks going forward or sticks out as a blip. Focusing on the more recent timeline you can see elevated strikeout rates that mean outs without the defense even having to stress and sweat. Consistently running average or so walk rates has helped him get the wheels on, and helped shore up contact that comes in quite weak. In addition to the league laggard-type of exit velocity he also gets a bit of lift on the ball that is really important for batters who hit the ball hard, but mostly leads to easy, unproductive outs for those who cannot. It is more likely he will see a bounce back to previous overperformance on contact rather than some out of nowhere improvement that can offset less athleticism, but if it’s more of what we just saw then it becomes awfully difficult for the team to keep running him out there on an everyday basis.
Adam Eaton (295)
He won’t be back with the club next season after signing with the Chicago White Sox, but Adam Eaton has built a career on being the kind of overperformance on contact guy that we have seen from both Turner and Robles. Expectations have mostly been average or worse since his very best performance more than a thousand plate appearances ago, but due to actual performance very often riding higher he has been a contributor on some pretty good teams. Most perspectives fell off in this most recent career, and it should be no coincidence that he was also running some of his worst strikeout and walk performance over these times. That is especially striking when looking at how important the walk had been to his overall performance for quite a while now. Whatever it takes to get the wheels on, I suppose, but the walks have been a real way for him to keep adding value to a lineup despite production on contact that has taken a tumble prem past heights. Both perspectives see him below average of late, something that has been true for awhile, but earlier years show strong enough runs to help uplift the entire seasonal line. No longer an everyday starter he can definitely play the savvy veteran that helps a good team become great. Just don’t count on any of that mattering to your fantasy team.
Tanner Rainey (341)
After four players in the top-100 according to the mockers, the Nats only had three guys taken in the next 250 showing the unbalance mentioned above. Tanner Rainey coming in at this spot isn’t a total surprise given the uncertainty in the bullpen and his absurd strikeout rates, which go well beyond the spike seen this season. Taking a chainsaw to his walk rate was the best thing he could have done as total production has mostly moved downward in lockstep after walking guys more than 20% of the time for a fairly long run of leash. Despite finding the zone much more often it appears he also lowered the average exit velocity against him, though launch angles have mostly moved in opposite directions. Halving the walk rate was a big step, and so big you have to wonder if he will give back some of the gains this year, but with improvement virtually across the board Tanner Rainey shows a lot to like and might be doing it live in the team’s ninth inning role as soon as this year.
Daniel Hudson (356)
While drafters had Rainey a full round higher than Hudson it says a lot about the guy already in the saves role that the gap isn’t much wider given the difference in performance. The marvelous 2019 season for Hudson stands out rather prominently despite being at level he had well established. Performance stands out, though next to the more recent run where things looked far worse. Not really the fault of the strikeout as the 30% rate on the year matches or exceeds career peaks, but he also saw walks take a wild ride upward after doing so well to cut things down in the World Series year. He doesn’t suppress exit velocity like he used to and tons of balls in the air have probably made things dicey at times, but has added up to better than average production on contact for quite a while now. Inertia is a wonderful thing, and it looks like he has been doing just well enough to maintain the lion’s share of the saves until further notice.
Andrew Stevenson (363)
It has taken Andrew Stevenson a good chunk of his 20s to accrue these 200+ plate appearances in MLB as they come spread out over four seasons. The lackluster performance in earlier trials was rather obvious, though we do see some nice, gradual progression to his twOBA even to the point of crossing over the average. Real results soared well past the modest gains, perhaps leading to big eyes for those in the market, but little noticeable change to his underlying data. The walk rate ticked up slightly, but he still struck out too much, and exit velocity was also fairly soft, especially given the need for the bat to play in a corner. As something like an average producer on contact who walks a good deal and strikes out a bit too much he can certainly contribute to both real life and fantasy teams, and, yes, it is unlikely anyone expects him to put up a .366/.447/.732, but how far he falls is certainly open to interpretation.
Asdrubal Cabrera (396)
It will likely be yet another new team for Asdrubal Cabrera in the upcoming season, which will mark eight in fifteen years, but you can see why teams just can’t quit him. He’s as prone as anybody to go on a tear at the plate with downsides that aren’t far from acceptable as a guy who can fake it at second base or give a more competent third. With the positive has usually come some giveback in the negative with strikeout rates mostly around the average, though pushing lower during the good runs. His walk rate has been sustaining at previous peaks showing an evolving approach that might change the shape of his production, though what he provides via contact hasn’t fallen off much with similar periods of above and below average performance.
Carter Kieboom (428)
It’s been mostly two uninspiring campaigns for Carter Kieboom, though the team has been quick on the ripcord in both years upon lackluster results. The more recent was a little better, but imperceptibly so, and still nowhere near even average production. Encouragingly, he made strides to chip away at the strikeout rate, while furthering his very strong walk rates. With both so elevated he has put fewer balls in play on a rate basis than most, and when he has made contact it has generally been awfully weak. Despite liner angles the production on contact also looks well below average, while being nearly in lockstep with actual results. This coming season will have something of a sink or swim flavor, though the team might be just as quick at yanking the leash.
Starlin Castro (451)
Over the course of his career Starlin Castro has mostly been below average, but with enough spikes that thinks look a little better in the seasonal line. This past season ended abruptly due to a broken wrist and at his age there is no guarantee that he will get back to normal. An aggressive approach has lent well to strikeout avoidance with walks looking more like earlier low rates, of late, compared to a legitimate, sustained step upward prior. Average exit velocity has helped contact production reach similar levels.
Yan Gomes (507)
The definition of an unflashy name, Yan Gomes finds himself well down the ADP board likely due to uncertainty about how wide his role will be going forward after something of an even split the past couple of years. Alternations between above and below average performance have been frequent, though anything above average would be fine considering the position and this price point. Strikeouts have come down a couple of ticks with walk rates usually below average, but occasionally spiking in better places. Exit velocity has been more around the average of late, though shows several lower troughs throughout his career. He has also done a solid job of getting the ball off the ground. The combination of both assets has led to a couple of strong runs on balls in play, but with corresponding downturns and much more time spent around the average the expectation should be average or so production.
Kurt Suzuki (508)
The guy getting the other half or so of the playing time has been Kurt Suzuki who has been a better hitter over his last thousand or so plate appearances than what came before. Walking around the average with very low strikeout rates is one way to add value, and has been particularly helpful as exit velocity has trended down linearly in the twilight of his career. Production on contact has been around average despite the cratering exit velocity leaving him as an unexciting option.
Howie Kendrick (543)
Another player likely at the end of the road is Howie Kendrick who enjoyed, perhaps, his finest season in 2019 before losing much of this past year to injury. The career year stands out starkly, and we don’t have much since then. With it unclear whether he will return for another year this probably serves best as a retrospective of a professional hitter. He has dodged the strikeout fairly well, while generally walking at an acceptable walk rate even if it comes in below the average. Exit velocity was long a strength of his game showing average or better other than a rather deep trough that may have been injury-related. An increase to launch angle is what really keyed his strong 2019, though so much more of his career saw balls pounded into the ground with regularity lending less confidence he will continue the more productive northern exposure. We can see a good deal of above average production on contact for a player who won’t end up in the Hall of Fame, but was always a tough out.
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