Contact Rate Risers and Fallers for Week 10: Buy or Sell?

Welcome to Contact Rate Risers and Fallers! Our premium tools allow us to get out ahead of trends in player performance, including contact rate. Every Wednesday, we'll be looking at some players that have seen an increase in contact rate and some that have seen it decline.

Contact rate can foretell a player's batting average and general hitting statistics, and any drastic change could signal a shift in performance. Contact rate shifts often act as a precursor to hot streaks and slumps.

Here is a breakdown of some of the biggest fantasy relevant risers and fallers in contact rate over the last seven days.

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Risers

 Jake Lamb (3B, ARI): 89% contact rate last seven days (+21%)

Lamb’s contact rate jumped up in the past week, but that didn’t translate to great fantasy production. He hit .211 with one home run and .753 OPS over the last seven days. He was still good in OBP leagues since he had a 3.0 BB/K and .385 OBP during that stretch. Lamb’s poor performance through last week and on the season looks like rotten luck. He had a .176 BABIP over the last seven days yet he season-long batted ball distribution aligns almost perfectly with his career mark. His 75% contact rate and 25% strikeout rate this season are within two tenths of his career averages.

Statcast loves what Jake Lamb has done in limited playing time this season. He has a 90.8 MPH average exit velocity, 43.2% hard contact rate, and expected stats predict big leaps for him. Lamb’s .288 xBA, .529 xSLG, and .403 wOBA are all career bests by at least 38 points. He’s only had 76 plate appearances due to injury which skews the sample size, and expected stats shouldn’t be taken literally either, but rather they show that Lamb is hitting well despite bad results. He gives us every reason to think he’s going to return to being the .250 AVG, 30 HR hitter he was the past two seasons. Since he’s missed time with injury and isn’t hitting well upon return Lamb’s owner’s patience may be wearing thin. He’s someone to try and buy before the results match the underlying stats.

Michael A. Taylor (OF, WSH): 88% contact rate last seven days (+21%)

Contact has never been Taylor’s strong suit. He has a career 31.6% strikeout rate and 69% contact rate. He’s been a discount Billy Hamilton this season, since prior to this past week he had 11 steals but a .192 AVG, .259 OBP, and 33% strikeout rate. He had a low-key monster week last week, yet no one seemed to notice. He hit .292 with four extra-base hits, four steals, and only three strikeouts in 27 plate appearances. Even with such a good week he is only hitting .204 with a .273 OBP. Taylor also has a .204 xBA and .277 xWOBA, suggesting he’s earned every bit of his poor batting line. It’s hard to believe he’ll hit this bad however, since he is sporting a .279 BABIP on the season. Since league average BABIP is .300 a .279 BABIP might not seem that low, but Taylor’s speed means he should be able to maintain an above average BABIP over the course of a full season, something he has done throughout his career. He will probably never be a positive or even neutral contributor in batting average, but he could realistically gain 20-40 points on his BABIP and hit above .230. With the amount of steals and the occasional home run he’d be a good Roto outfielder even if the batting average hurts you. The only problem for him is the impending return of Adam Eaton.

Carlos Gomez (OF, TB): 90% contact rate last seven days (+20%)

Think Jake Lamb had a rough week despite improved contact rate? Gomez hit .100 (2-for-20) with a 1.0 BB/K ratio and .600 OPS. His two hits were a triple and a homer and he threw in a stolen base for good measure. Gomez has never been a great contact hitter, but his 76.2% represents a three year high by 5% and is above his career average. He is still striking out 27% of the time and has just a .187 average on the year. His batted ball profile looks like he heard about the “launch angle revolution” and tried to dive in head first. He has a 50% flyball rate and 20 degree average launch angle, both by far career highs. That doesn’t do much if you can’t hit the ball hard and pop-up too much, two things of which Gomez is guilty. A 30.6% hard contact rate represents a career low since Statcast’s introduction and he has a 17% infield flyball rate. Sure he only struck out twice, but he hit 61% of his balls in the air last week and 27% of those were infield flyballs. That is not conducive to a good batting average, and his .221 BABIP this season isn’t just bad luck. Gomez has Ian Desmond’d us. He looked left for dead, had a big turnaround with the Rangers, and now drops in the occasional homer or steal but can’t find the Mendoza line. His superstar years are long gone, and now it looks like his usable years have faded too.

Fallers

Cody Bellinger (1B/OF, LAD): 42% contact rate last seven days (-30%)

Bellinger was a faller a few weeks ago, and there was legitimate concern at the time, but he has fallen to new depths this past week. Over the last week Bellinger hit .105 (2-for-19) with zero extra-base hits and 11 strikeouts in 23 plate appearances. Bellinger’s 69% contact rate this season is bad, but it was 69.7% last year. The problem (prior to this past week) has been quality of contact. The worrying trends from three weeks ago have not been corrected. His groundball rate is up to 41.3%, 6% higher than last season. His hard contact rate is down to 36%, a 9% drop from last season. His .225 average is bad, but a .200 xBA is even worse. Bellinger’s fastball performance has cratered too. Last season he hit .266 with a 21% strikeout rate against the heater, but this year he is hitting .209 with a 33% strikeout rate. He’s hit seven of his eight home runs off fastballs, but this is a troubling development. He’s having trouble with the high fastball this season, and pitchers are attacking him high in the zone more this year. Here is a comparison of 2017 pitch location and whiff rates for Bellinger

And here’s 2018. Pitch location is on the right, whiff rate is on the left.

Less pitches low in the zone, more up high, and more whiffs from Bellinger. Pitchers are playing with fire pitching so much in the zone, as Bellinger can crush these pitches when he makes contact, but he’s clearly having issues being pitched like this. His zone contact rate dropped from 78% last season to 71% this season, the second lowest among qualified hitters behind Matt Olson. If that doesn’t scare you, Bellinger has a worse zone contact rate than Lewis Brinson and Byron Buxton this season. There’s an opportunity to buy low here, but you would be shouldering serious risk. There isn’t anything in his profile right now to suggest a turnaround. A turnaround is possible, but Bellinger has only one major league season under his belt and a mammoth 25% HR/FB ratio aided much of his success last season. Trading for him is a Hail Mary move to try and thrust yourself towards contention.

Jose Altuve (2B, HOU): 61% contact rate last seven days (-23%)

Only Jose Altuve could find himself on this list and still hit .321 over the last week. He struck out 11 times in 30 plate appearances but had a .500 BABIP. Altuve actually has some would-be alarming trends in his overall stats. He has career highs with a 15.2% strikeout rate and 8.7% swinging strike rate, both still above average in this era of baseball. His 82% contact rate is also a career low but still significantly above average. In many players a dip in contact rate coincided with a jump in strikeout rate would be a huge red flag. Altuve is still hitting .330 on the year with a 28.5% line drive rate and .303 xBA. The lack of power is concerning and he’ll have a lot of ground to make up to meet the 20 homer threshold. His .497 xSLG is higher than his mark last season and his 6.3% HR/FB ratio will likely correct around 13-14%, where it was the last two seasons. With so many things to worry about, both in fantasy baseball and our lives, don’t waste too much energy worrying about Jose Altuve.

Aaron Judge (OF, NYY): 45% contact rate last seven days (-17%)

Monday’s 0-for-9 with eight strikeout performance in a doubleheader certainly did some damage to Judge’s contact, and he has struck out 17 times in 33 plate appearances over the last seven days. He is hitting .194 with two walks and four extra-base hits during that stretch. We knew he wasn’t a good contact hitter going into the season, and his 66% contact rate is in line with his 67% rate last year. High strikeout players like Judge can be susceptible to weeks or even extended periods like this. If this week teaches us anything it’s that high strikeout players will always be volatile, no matter if they are waiver wire fodder or studs like Judge. He still provided good power and he’ll probably hit around .270 at the end of the year. He has a .277 xBA and 96.2 MPH exit velocity on the season and still had a 50% hard contact rate last week. There is no reason to worry with Judge.

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