It’s easy to look back and say we should have known better. Perennial breakout candidate Byron Buxton finally showed a half-season’s worth of fantasy goodness, helping many with late-season pushes off the waiver wire in 2017.
With stolen bases down league-wide, the former number-two overall pick fit the bill this spring as an elite speedster with legit 20/40 potential. Drafted on average at pick 48.92 per NFBC ADP, Buxton cost someone in every league a pretty penny.
In the one league where I made this unfortunate decision, Buxton is now on the waiver wire, waiting for an owner more patient than me to give him a second chance.
Let’s consider the reasons for moving on at this juncture from an obviously talented player.
First, Buxton’s 2017 hot streak only covered about two and a half months. Here are the 2017 splits:
April: .147/.256/.176 (68 at bats)
May: .254/.321/.380 (71 ab)
June: .184/.237/.287 (87 ab)
July: .387/.457/.516 (31 ab)
August: .324/.354/.619 (105 ab)
September: .268/.330/.464 (97 ab)
At a glance, it looks like Buxton flipped a switch, transforming into a 23-year-old superstar sometime around America’s birthday. A strained groin cut his July short by a couple weeks, but the outfielder continued the pace over August and September with no lingering speed issues. From July 1 through the end of the season Buxton went .309/.358/.538 with 12 home runs, 37 RBI, 16 stolen bases and 47 runs. It’s fun to imagine doubling these totals over a full season, but we shouldn’t have done it.
Buxton certainly hit the ball well during this span (eight doubles and five triples to go with the 12 bombs), but a .391 BABIP foretold problems, even for someone with his elite speed. The Twin was still striking out 26.9% of the time and walking just 6.2%, right around his career rates. When it takes a .391 BABIP for one of the game’s fastest players to hit .309, something’s up. (Unfair comparison: last year, Jose Altuve’s .370 BABIP produced a .346 average.)
Looking under the hood this year, there’s really nothing jumping out to suggest a correction is coming. Through his 17 games so far (admittedly a small sample size), Buxton is swinging more but hitting the ball less hard. Statcast has him at a 24.4 hard hit% compared to 32.3% and 31.6% the past two years.
If he qualified, his average exit velocity of 85.8 would place him in the 300s in baseball, among the ranks of Hunter Pence, Chase Headley and Orlando Arcia. And that’s pretty much where he’s been for his career — and actually higher than last year’s 85.0 mark. That’s how you end up with a .050 ISO (.160 last year, .161 career).
We’re only talking about 63 at bats, but Buxton is walking even less (4.8% compared to 7.4% last year) and striking out at his customary 28.6% rate. Considering the changing profile of top of the order hitters — OBP + pop > speed — maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised when the Twins relegated Buxton to the bottom of the lineup to start the year. Paul Molitor is batting him eighth and ninth like he’s a grown-up version of Billy Hamilton, who has the ultimate one-dimensional game.
Buxton is still a 24-year-old elite athlete whose defense will keep him on the field, so there’s plenty of time for Buxton Breakout 2.0 (I guess), but we can’t torpedo our ratios any longer just because it’s him. At least not until he falls into the late rounds next season.
Follow Danny @_dannycross_.
