The Baller Ranks: Top 200 Hitters Weekly Rankings (Week 5)

When I started writing up the column for this week, it was going to focus on the esteemed gentlemen of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Bo Bichette as well as the broader shortstop landscape. Then I started looking at first base and DH and got fixated on what was happening with Cody Bellinger and Shohei Ohtani, and whether or not Luke Voit had the potential to be a top-five first baseman. Now it turns out that Yordan Alvarez is done for the season and off the chart. That's an unhappy turn of events, but there's nothing more to say about it for this season.

Similarly, Bichette's injury is a frustrating development. I had Bichette slotted just between Baez and Bogaerts. Supposedly, it's only a mild knee strain, and he'll be back before you can say, "Whoa Bichette!" Until then, I'm keeping his ranking steady. Expect an update after Bichette returns from the IL. Jon Heyman is now reporting that Bichette's injury has no timetable, but it's possible he's done for the season. If you can sell for a player at $10 or better, you should do it. If you feel like you need to settle for less, go for it.

Also, as long as we're on the subject, Jayce Tingler owes Fernando Tatis Jr. an apology, and that's all I have to say about that.

Week 5 Overview

This week gives us quite a bit of stabilized data and the human tornado that his Jesse Winker. I'll get to him in a moment, but one anomaly that caught my attention is that Paul Goldschmidt (and other Cardinals) have seen their value jump now that they're playing baseball again. Those extra games go a long way to turning the Cards into value plays. Game limits will still apply, but there's some real room for profit from the extra at-bats.

I've added two new features to the Meta Report this week. On the Early Indicators sheet, you'll see a column labeled PA%. Plate Ratio is designed to be a simple indicator of how often a player is getting to the plate relative to their team. I'll cover it in a follow-up article, but it should help fantasy managers to see player usage in a season when there are huge discrepancies in games played.

The other new feature is the addition of a column for new max exit velocity. I pulled hitter data from the last three seasons and grabbed the maximum exit velocity from hitters over that time period to give us a baseline for this season. The column is solely there to show us if someone has recently hit a ball harder than their previous high. Given max EV's relationship to offensive breakouts, I'm hoping it will prove useful to managers.

Here are the top-200 hitters and the week 5 Meta Report. If you missed them yesterday, be sure to check out Nick Mariano's top-101 SP rankings and his top-101 RP rankings.

Jesse Winker (Reds, OF)

One player who could definitely use some extra at-bats is the Yankees' 29-year-old first baseman. Despite owning a career .229 ISO and .273 batting average, Luke Voit entered 2020 as something of a sleeper pick. There were still plenty of analysts championing his value, but the projection systems were way down on him. A close look at the playing time showed why: Voit was only projected for somewhere between 60% and 75% share of the at-bats.

Some of that was an already crowded Yankees' lineup, and some of it was tied to lingering injury concerns. However, unlike Judge and Stanton, Voit's injuries have been a bit more discrete and limited in nature. For instance, 2019's sports hernia should be a less chronic concern than Stanton's troubled legs or Judge's wrist/shoulder/rib issues.

Where does that leave Voit now? Well, it's pretty close to where he's been the last few weeks. Voit appeared to be in good health during March when he played ten games without issue. Rather than adjusting for that, the projections held steady on Voit's playing time, and it's only over the last two weeks that they've started to trend up towards where we've had him since the preseason. At this point, Voit would need a season-ending injury or a four-week slump for him not to outperform even his updated projections that put him around a $3 player and rank 140. Instead, this new rank bumps him into the top 100 and projects him to maintain production a bit below his current pace.

I'd love to push Voit into the top 70 right now, but there are two major impediments: playing time and his BB/K ratio.

The Yankees still don't seem committed to playing Voit nine games out of ten. The injury to D.J. LeMahieu may change that, but it remains to be seen. Secondly, Voit's K% has edged higher from 2019's 27.8% to 31.1% this year. Meanwhile, his BB% has fallen from 13.9% to 6.8%%. Yes, this is the year of high-K hitters who are dominating the fantasy rankings (e.g., Fernando Tatis Jr., Matt Chapman, and Luis Robert), but I'm not convinced that a .22 BB/K rate is OK. Strikeout rate is one of the first predictive stats to stabilize, and Voit's number suggests he might be selling out for power. That 31.1 K% puts Voit too close to boom-or-bust players like Franmil Reyes, Teoscar Hernandez, and Maikel Franco. That's a valuable group, but it's not the same territory as rocks like Jose Abreu.

Fortunately, Voit still only has 74 plate appearances, so there's plenty of time for those ratios to normalize. Voit is probably a buy-high candidate in many leagues, but right now, his value likely maxes out in the $12 range.

Cody Bellinger (1B, Dodgers)

It's easy to blame these early-season struggles on Bellinger's swing change, and maybe we should. It's difficult to fathom how a player can come off an MVP season and think that he needs to change his swing, but that type of motivation and desire for progress are what push guys like Bellinger to become MVPs in the first place. Moreover, if Manfred and the owners had consented to give us more than our 60-game pittance, there would be less anxiety and compulsion to downgrade a player like Bellinger before we've even played a month of baseball.

In this context, Bellinger's poor start demands attention and adjustment. Even if he settles in by the end of this week, Bellinger would need a remarkable hot streak to reach the $43 value we had for him at the start of the year. At this point, ZiPS, Steamer, and Depth Charts have all dropped Bellinger's projection from a comfortable 4^th overall to around 30^th. That's the fickleness of early-season projections, but there's good evidence to support the change.

Bellinger's contact profile is dramatically different than last season. His infield-flyball rate has increased from 8.9% to 12.9%. His ground-ball rate has surged from 31.5.% to 41.0%. Similarly, his line-drive and flyball rates have dropped by 7% and 3.5%, respectively.

Those are not the kind of changes you want to see in a batted-ball profile. Bellinger's sweet-spot ratio is a career-worst 21.5%. Despite his launch angle being almost identical to last year's, Bellinger is not actually launching the ball the same way he was last season. The similarity is primarily coincidence. If there is any good news here, it's that Bellinger's max exit velocity and average exit velocity are basically the same as last year, and his xwOBA (.317) is far better than his actual wOBA (.236). His five home runs have been nice, and the Dodgers have padded his counting stats, but managers who drafted him are definitely operating at a loss.

Shohei Ohtani (Angels, DH)

Ohtani might be the only player in history where an injury has actually improved his fantasy value. Now that the Angels have committed to using him as an every day DH, Ohtani will see more at-bats, and managers will be able to start him with greater confidence, especially in weekly leagues. Since returning to the lineup after straining his flexor-pronator mass, Ohtani has batted .276 with 2 HR, 6 R, 3 RBI, and snuck in a stolen base for good measure.

At the risk of over-hyping the value, Ohtani's per-game projections would make him more valuable than Nelson Cruz if the Angels keep him in the lineup for the rest of the season. To be clear, that will push him into the top-15 hitters. What would that look like over 162 games? 88 R, 32 HR, 104 RBI, 16 SB, .272 BA, and .345 OBP.

Mitch Moreland (Red Sox, 1B)

As I'm writing this, Moreland is the fifth most valuable first basemen so far this season. Despite his middling projections and not having particularly strong predictive stats, I struggled with what to do with him last week when his sustained performance had pushed him past hitters like Matt Olson, Yuli Gurriel, and Pete Alonso. I'd like to admit that I failed you.

In this case, another week has boosted Moreland's batted-ball-events over 30 and his plate appearances to just under 50, so we're approaching some stabilization points for his data. Moreland's 2020 barrel rate has been an impressive 16.3% so far, but the smallish sample means that his seven barrels have had an outsized effect (6 HR) on his $6 earned value so far.

We've seen more Moreland go on hot-streaks like this before, so this type of production isn't out of the question for him. It's whether he can stay on the field and sustain something close to a 110 wRC+ for the rest of the season, and that's where things seem less likely since he's only done it three times in the last decade. Despite those limitations, Moreland did provide a 112 wRC+ last season, but his final stats calculate out as a negative value because he only played 91 games. If we extend his numbers out to 140 games played, he ends up closer to a $7 player, which would have made his performance the rough equivalent of Rhys Hoskins in 2019.

Moreland's track record and ability to provide per-game value is significant. He's currently owned in just 33% of Yahoo and ESPN leagues, so his price is perfectly reasonable. Moreland has already had knee trouble, and the Red Sox have practiced gentle use with him. The $3 ranking reflects his ability to sustain something like that 112 wRC+ pace from last year and the fact that he might disappear to the IL at any time.

Miguel Andujar (Yankees, DH)

Seven days ago, I dropped Andujar down to around 250 on my list — I don't publish that many. When the Yankees left him at their reserve site, I just reconciled myself to the fact that no matter his talent, Andujar wasn't going to be fantasy relevant this season. Even with Judge missing time, the team seems inclined to use Clint Frazier and Mike Tauchman to bridge the gap. Then the Yankees recalled Andujar and played him two games in a row. Welcome back,  Miggy! Just kidding, they sat him back down last night. So long, Mr. Andujar.

At this point, it's not at all clear what will happen with Andujar. His ceiling is top-50 hitter, but if he's not going to play, it's an automatic drop. Monitor the situation, but I don't think Andujar is likely to be useful this season.

Mitch Garver (Twins, C)

I counseled someone to be patient with Garver the other day, and I've regretted it ever since. Even for a catcher, Garver has been unsustainably bad. Most notably, as he approaches the 60 PA threshold, his K% is lingering at 37.9%%.

Like Bellinger, there are still some positives with Garver. His sweet-spot percentage is down by only 1.6%. His average exit velocity is down by only 1.3 MPH. And his max EV from 2019 was 109.7 MPH, only 1.6 MPH higher than the 108.1 that he already has this season. Last but not least, Garver's chase rate is down by 7%, a huge drop.

It's too early to write off Garver entirely, but his drop here does consider the unexpected nature of his 2019 breakout. Given that Garver has been taking more pitches this season, it's possible that it's just a matter of him needing to be more aggressive at the plate, but managers should start looking for more useful options.

Teoscar Hernandez (Blue Jays, OF)

Hernandez is an interesting case. His walk rate is down to almost unsustainable levels (2.5%), and he's chasing more pitches out of the zone (32.8 O-Swing%). However, he's hitting the ball harder and with a better launch angle than ever before, and Hernandez was a Statcast darling before this season.

Hernandez is swinging a bit more than last season (48.5% versus 47.3%), and he's actually swinging at pitches inside the zone less often (63.3% versus 72.9%). He's simply pummeling the baseball, as demonstrated by his 11.3% barrel rate.

The 27-year-old wouldn't be the first high-velocity hitter to eschew walks in favor of driving the ball, but that walk rate is in the 6^th percentile, and it's hard not to forecast meaningful regression. However, Hernandez may be evolving into a player like Javier Baez, who has made a career from hitting the ball hard and walking only if the pitcher walks over and rips the bat out of his hands.

Matt Chapman (Athletics, 3B)

Like Hernandez, Chapman has been more aggressive this season. His 4% walk rate is a career-low. Unlike Hernandez, Chapman has an established history of patience and plate discipline. Chapman's 44.6% swing rate is a bit higher than last year 42.2%, but it's really his Swinging-Strike rate that has spiked from 9.2% last year to 13.2% this season.

That huge bump suggests that Chapman is being more aggressive early in the count and then hitting more defensively later on. The change would explain his increased power that has allowed him to smack six home runs and 17 RBI already this season.

The underlying stats are even more compelling. Chapman's barrel rate has soared to 10.9% while his exit velocity has improved to 93.3 MPH, and his launch angle has peaked near the optimal 25.7°. The combination has Chapman's xwOBA at .351, so there's a real chance we haven't seen his best yet.