We all want our fantasy players to get off to the best start possible. April success gives us hope that our convictions will be rewarded, and that we will be successful and profit over the long haul. It doesn’t always happen that way. Sometimes the success is a mirage, sometimes it is sustained but then derailed by injury, and then other times, you drafted Luis Castillo. Very little in fantasy sports is more frustrating than a player with a strong track record who has stayed healthy but failed to perform not just to reasonable expectations within their probable outcomes.
What do you do with such a player? You likely have allocated enough draft capital to them that you’ve held on to them thus far but having done so also has made it difficult to find adequate replacements on the waiver wire. Do you ride them out hoping the underlying talent takes over given the extremely long sample size that a baseball season allows for? Or do you cut bait hoping you can find emerging talent elsewhere that will make up for your lost production? Today we will explore a couple case studies on players who have underperformed to start the season, and what we can expect from them going forward, starting with the most obvious…
Luis Castillo
Until this season, you knew pretty well what you were getting with Castillo. While perhaps not a real-life ace, he was a DFS and fantasy dynamo due to his elite K% and ability to manage hard contact and baserunners. He was a top 15 starting pitcher, and the upside was there for more, despite pitching in an extreme hitter’s park. His success was derived mainly from missing bats, so the park effects had their limitations on him.
But this season? Hoo boy… it’s a litany of misfortune and just downright awful performance. Early in the season there was some concern with velocity and that he might have been playing through an injury, and while the velocity is a tick down, it has mostly come back and normalized to previous levels. He also hasn’t really had any issues with control, as the 9.2% BB rate is roughly what we’ve come to expect and also a very passable if not elite number. The BABIP is also extremely high at .371, which is probably a combination of luck and the Reds not being very good on defense (24th in DRS) and they probably won’t get much better. He’s also striking way fewer batters out at only 19.3% as opposed to the 28-30% range we’d expect him in. He is allowing less hard contact, but also virtually no soft contact, with an outlier 61.7% medium contact allowed. The massive decrease in strikeout ability and the corresponding lack of soft contact are certainly cause for concern.
As far as all of this normalizing the further we get into the season, it will be an uphill battle, but I think he’ll improve. The strikeouts are likely what will come back first, and we’ll likely see a few more double-digit strikeout performances before the season is over. He’s been allowing more fly balls and line drives at the expense of fewer ground balls, and that’s probably a command issue more than a velocity issue, so I’m less optimistic about that improving. Still, the BABIP number and the lack of any major red flags are signs for optimism going forward. Is it possible to be cautiously optimistic when we are approaching the halfway point of the season? It all depends on the roster context and your risk/reward calculations, but if you have a buy low opportunity and can afford the downside risk on Castillo not rounding into form, we know what he is capable of when he’s right.
Francisco Lindor
While we shouldn’t diminish the atrocious start to Lindor’s season, it is also worth mentioning the negativity has been amplified as the poor performance comes on the heels of him signing an astonishingly large long-term contract with the Mets after being traded in the off-season. While he is certainly an All-Star caliber player that is underperforming, we also need to be objective about what is going wrong and how much we can expect it to improve going forward.
I’ll start with the obvious- everything about his hitting profile so far suggests that improvement is on the horizon. That makes sense of course- we all know he’s better than this. But the important things- BB%, K%, Hard hit %… all of these things are eerily similar to years in which he has performed well. He’s actually walking a little more frequently than he has in the past, allowing him to achieve an OBP over .300 despite only hitting .211 thus far. He’s hitting the ball on the ground more, but those are coming at the expense of line drives, not fly balls, and he is actually hitting more fly balls too. The areas of concern are that his ISO (.106) and BABIP (.234) are way down below both league averages and also his own personal baseline expectations. He’s also not stealing a ton of bases- only 4 so far- which is a result of the Mets being a less aggressive base stealing team than the Indians (the Mets only have 17 SBs so far this season as opposed to the 29 the Indians have) and him just being on base less so having fewer opportunities. He’s only been caught once though, so the skill is likely there and just hasn’t had much opportunity.
If you want to consider me an optimist on Castillo for being cautiously optimistic, then you’d consider me extremely bullish on Lindor. He’s doing all the Lindor things, and just not yet getting Lindor results. When some of the ground balls turn into line drives, we’ll see the batting average climb steadily. When the hard hit balls stop getting caught, we’ll see both batting average and ISO climb as well. The HR and SB numbers will follow, and as the rest of the lineup gets healthier, the Rs and RBIs will spike
Suffice it to say this is an All-Star caliber talent, playing a premium defensive position, hitting at the top of a lineup that has had more than its fair share of injuries, and the normalization is coming. What’s more, if you don’t have Lindor on your roster, other team managers are likely frustrated and looking to make a move to shake up their team. If you can trade from a position of strength to buy low on Lindor, I’m not sure there are many other buy-low candidates out there.
