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You know the drill by now. Each week we will check out three players, and break them down in sabermetric detail to determine if they are "Champs" or "Chumps".
We help you cut through the fog to understand what's really going on with a player and whether or not their performances are sustainable (if they're hot), or due for a turnaround (if they're cold), or neither.
This week, we look at a perennial All-Star that has completely forgotten how to play baseball, a pitcher whose last name would be worth 32 points in Words with Friends, and the first player in MLB history to be elected to the Hall of Fame on the strength of one strong Spring Training.
Chase Utley, 2B, PHI
Warning: The following numbers are not suitable for viewing by small children - reader discretion is advised. Utley currently owns a triple slash line of .143/.222/.252, with only three homers and a steal. Despite this, his walk and strikeout rates are comparable to his career norms, and his BABIP stands at an unsightly .141 - less than half of league average. Surely this means he will rebound, right?
Maybe not, as his batted ball profile reveals some disturbing trends. His liner rate is down to 17.8%, well shy of his career 20.7% mark. While this stat is known for random fluctuation, it is supported by a massive drop in Hard% (Fangraphs' new metric), from 30.4% to 17.6%. On a more granular level, Utley's groundballs have been particularly weak (8% Hard on the campaign), while his flies and liners have been around 22% a piece. This could mean that he needs to sell out for power by trying to start his swing early and pull everything. When he guesses right, that works. When he is wrong, the result is weakly rolling the ball onto the infield. While this stat is new and has no clear correlation with line drive rate, it seems to prove that Utley is simply not hitting the ball with any kind of authority. This fact, combined with the reduced liner rate, justifies a lower than average BABIP.
Perhaps more troubling is a declining flyball rate, down to 36.6% this year from a 41.3% career total. It is still too early to exclusively pay attention to 2015 data, but Utley's 2014 demonstrated the same trend - he finished the year with just a 36.1% figure. No one noticed the decline last season because his line drive rate randomly spiked (24.6%), masking the decline in Utley's overall line. With the liner rate now overcorrected, Utley may not even be a Triple-A player at this point. Other than the two seasons above, the only other time Utley posted so few balls in the air was an injury plagued 2012 (36.3%) capmaign, a terrible showing by any metric. Utley's BABIP and batting line will likely improve a little, just because they are currently so bad. But there is really no reason to think they can resemble anything remotely useful in fantasy. As such, what was once a first round pick now must be labelled . . .
Verdict: Chump
Jeff Samardzija, SP, CWS
Can anyone actually spell "Shark's" name without looking it up? Regardless, he has been a disappointment to the owners that managed to pronounce his name on draft day, with a 4.58 ERA and a middling 3-2 record on the season. FIP suggests that he should be a little better going forward with a 4.09 mark, but his owners likely want more than that as well. The first number that jumps out of his profile is a low 6.79 K/9 rate for the year thus far. That is below league average as well as Samardzija's track record (8.28 last year). If the Ks come back, the effectiveness probably will as well.
Normally, I would cite Pitch f/x 100 to determine whether his stuff is still strikeout quality or if the downturn will become a trend going forward. I would need to use 2014 data though (the stat gets wonky in small sample sizes) and there is reason to suspect that it may have deteriorated this year. Contact rates stabilize before Pitch f/x, and they do not like Shark much so far. His SwStr% has declined from 11.1% to 8.5%, so batters are swinging and missing less often than they used to. Contact against is up 6.6%, with a similar increase both inside and outside of the strike zone. Batters are also swinging at more strikes in the zone (83.9% against 77.3% last year), so Shark has had fewer called strikes as well. Still, the reduced SwStr% would still support a higher K rate than Samardzija currently has, and his walk rate has held steady. He may have lost something, but not everything.
That leads us to suspect some unfavorable luck, and Shark's BABIP is slightly elevated at .316 (career .295). This is largely driven by a sky high line drive rate (26.6%, six points higher than his career norm), a stat that randomly fluctuates and generally regresses on its own. When it does, the Sox ace should be better. Likewise, Samardzija's strand rate is slightly unlucky at 68.5% (average 72%). Unfortunately, Shark has also seen his flyball rate rise to 37% (from 30.5%) while pitching in one of the worst stadiums in all of baseball to allow balls in the air. He'll need to return to the 50.2% groundball rate (currently 36.4%) he posted last season to have any chance of success at the Cell.
So what do we make of him? I'm going to call him a Champ because I do think he will get better than he currently is, but the uptick might not be enough for the White Sox to contend or for fantasy owners expecting a true ace.
Verdict: Champ
Kris Bryant, 3B, CHC
Allow me to preface this by stating that Spring Training stats are worthless for in season analysis - pitchers still are not at peak velocity in mid May, so what chance did they have in March? Bryant has torched big league pitching thus far, hitting .291/.426/.476 with four HR and three SB. His strikeout rate is entirely too high at 30.2%, and his walk rate is also elite at 18.6%. To post a strong average like that with a K rate like that generally requires an enormous BABIP, and Bryant's does not disappoint - .426! So he will regress and the average will drop and he'll hit a bunch of bombs and we're done. Right?
Maybe not, as Bryant has a history of extremely high BABIPs in his minor league career. Consider the table below:
Level BABIP PAs
Rookie .449 92
Low A .404 77
High A .400 62
AA .440 297
AAA .367 297
Note that AA and AAA are from 2014, the others from 2013. These minor league seasons also support the high K and BB rates Bryant has posted, so in that sense Bryant is doing nothing that was not suggested by his minor league performance. There are two ways to a sustainably high BABIP: elite speed and a high line drive rate. Bryant can run a little, but he is not an elite speedster and is nowhere near fast enough to sustain .400 BABIPs. So, he must be great at liners.
Batted ball type is not available for minor league seasons, but in the majors Bryant enjoys the elevated liner rate of 16.9%. Wait, what? Not only is that not elite, it actually falls far short of the league's 21%. Furthermore, his BABIP on liners is only .727, a figure only slightly higher than the league's .680ish norm. Nothing about line drives explains what Bryant is doing. Instead, Bryant has posted elite BABIPs on grounders (.429, league average .239) and flies (.310, league average .207). This really should not be sustainable and yet Bryant's minor league track record suggests that it is.
Ultimately, I am inclined to disregard the minor league data as small sample shenanigans - the first three levels have less than 100 PAs each, while high BABIPs have continued for entire seasons only to correct in subsequent years. 2013 uses lower minors data that I normally would not bother to consider, and the .367 AAA mark - against the best competition in the sample - could represent the beginning of regression. In the hundred years of modern professional baseball, there is no precedent for what Bryant is doing, and I tend to favor that sample over two seasons for one player. The minors data is there, and there may be something to it. You would not be crazy to hold Bryant, as he could win leagues if he keeps this up the rest of the way. If you traded him at his current level, however, the return could virtually guarantee a title.
Verdict: SELL (I can't call him a chump with those numbers)
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