Each week, I’m going to give you my take on three baseball and/or fantasy baseball topics. This week, I wanted to focus on two players who I think are going to be major busts in both real and fantasy baseball considering how people view them, and then another player who I think is undervalued and could be a sleeper in 2021.
Strike 1
I can’t believe Trevor Bauer is the highest paid player in baseball in terms of average annual value, after signing with none other than the Los Angeles Dodgers. Bauer adds to an arsenal that already features Walker Buehler, Clayton Kershaw, Tony Gonsolin, Julio Urias, Dustin May, and David Price. Gonsolin, Urias, and May could all be featured out of a deep bullpen to start the season as well.
As far as the fantasy baseball impact, Bauer is going to a historically more pitcher friendly park than Progressive Field in Cleveland, and Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, which I’m sure factored in his decision. His career HR/9 is over 1.0. Another knock against him is that he walks A LOT of batters. His average number of BB/9 is nearly 3.5. Imaging putting nearly four batters on base in every nine innings you pitch. That’s what Trevor Bauer does. A lot of people are going to look at his spectacular 2020 numbers and say he’s the best pitcher in baseball, and they’re going to draft him super high. They’re going to look at his Statcast data like spin rate, and say that he’s increased the spin rate on all of his pitches, and so his strikeouts are increasing. But there’s a lot to be desired. If you really dig into the 2020 data, you’ll see that all the advanced ERA metrics like FIP, xFIP, and SIERA think that his ERA should have been at least a run higher, and for good reason. He walked over two batters per nine innings in 2020. He allowed over a home run per nine innings. He had an insanely low .215 BABIP (a sign of luck for a pitcher) – meaning he was getting lucky on fly balls and line drives either going right to his defenders or having them make good plays. His left on base rate was 90% (he’d never even touched 80% before). His ground ball rate was lower than it’s ever been. He’s only had an ERA lower than 4.18 twice in his career, and in both of those years – 2020 and 2018 – each advanced ERA metric thought his ERA should have been higher than what it was. The one thing Bauer is guaranteed to give you in 2021 is strikeouts.
So if you draft him, that’s what you should be drafting him for – do not draft him assuming you’re going to get 2020 Bauer. 2020 Bauer was the product of a small sample size.
I think players like Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, Shane Bieber, Yu Darvish, Max Scherzer, and Lucas Giolito will all produce similar strikeout numbers with a better ERA than Bauer. Or at least they have less of a chance of giving you the 3.90 career ERA of Bauer. I’d also take young talented pitchers with upside like Walker Buehler, Jack Flaherty, and Luis Castillo ahead of him too. For me, Bauer is sitting around Starting Pitcher 10-12 with Aaron Nola, Clayton Kershaw, and Brandon Woodruff. But he’s too risky of an option for me, so you won’t see him on my team. Someone in your league is going to draft him way too high, but he’ll be on my no draft list. I can’t believe a career 3.90 pitcher has the highest average annual value ever, but good for him cashing in on a fluke of a season.
Strike 2
What a huge trade! After years of speculation, the Rockies finally moved Nolan Arenado. He joins Paul Goldschmidt on the St. Louis Cardinals. Since Coors Field became Arenado’s home in 2013, it has been the number one hitters park six out of eight seasons. And in those other 2 seasons, it was the second-best park for hitters. So that must be factored into projecting what he will do in his new park. In that same time frame, Busch Stadium in St. Louis has finished above 19th in park factors only once, making it a decidedly more pitcher friendly park than Arenado’s old home.
I think it’s almost guaranteed we won’t see him touch 40 home runs. The difference between his career home and away splits is pretty drastic. He’s a .322 batter at home and a .263 batter away. He has hit 136 home runs at home, compared to 99 away. His slugging, OPS, and BABIP are all significantly higher in Coors Field, which prove that the park positively impacts his overall performance.
In particular with Busch Stadium, his new home, he’s only had 90 at bats there, so it’s hard to look at that as a true gauge for how he’ll perform there over a full season, but in his career there, he’s batted .278 with 5 home runs in 24 games. That, projected to 81 games, gives him 17 home runs at his new home. If you compare that to his previous home splits in Colorado, it would be a loss of several home ballpark home runs. Overall, I think you’ll see potentially a 5-10 home run dip for Arenado in 2021.
This move negatively impacts his batting average. He has been buoyed by an advantageous BABIP in Colorado because the huge outfield renders Coors Field better for hits than homers, and he’s a career .290 hitter because of that. In St. Louis, we’ll likely see a batting average closer to his career away split of .263 than his career .290 batting average. I still think he’ll be a productive hitter in St. Louis because there are a lot of positives about him. He doesn’t strike out very much, he has solid hard contact numbers, and he puts the ball in the air – giving him a chance for home runs. He’s a very disciplined hitter – he doesn’t chase pitches outside of the zone, and he doesn’t swing and miss much. But you have to know what you’re getting going into this season. I think the move lowers his value some, and moves him outside the top 5 3B. I’d rank Manny Machado, Anthony Rendon, Rafael Devers, Alex Bregman, DJ LeMahieu, and Jose Ramirez ahead of him in most types of leagues.
Strike 3
One player I love going into 2021, who I think will fly under the radar for most people is pitcher Joe Musgrove, who was traded from Pittsburgh to San Diego. In eight games in 2020, he looked excellent, getting his K/9 up to 12. The fact that his HR/FB ratio was higher than usual means that he probably could have done even better last year – he was just unlucky with how many fly balls turned into home runs. He induced more ground balls and more medium contact than in his previous four seasons, which definitely helped keep the ERA down. If he can do that again with a solid defense behind him in San Diego, he should be able to maintain a mid-high 3 ERA. One tangible thing he did that you can attribute the increase in strikeouts to in order to see that it’s a legit improvement is that he threw more than twice as many curveballs last season than in any of his previous seasons. That’s something he can replicate going into 2021 that can make him successful. I think Musgrove could be a huge sleeper going into 2021.
