RADIO
BALLER MOVE: Draft target ~pick 375
CURRENT ADP: ~403 overall
ANALYSIS: Orioles hitting coach Don Long compared Iglesias to Hanser Alberto just before the start of the 2020 MLB season, suggesting that improved plate discipline rather than a swing change would help Iglesias be a more productive hitter. Four months later, Iglesias finished the 2020 season with a characteristically high 37.7% chase rate (38.4% career average) but a league-best .358 xBA and a career-high .956 OPS.
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including Best MLB Series, NFL Series, NBA Writer, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!Instead of changing his plate approach, Iglesias posted career-best contact quality metrics across the board, including a 36.5% hard-hit rate, an 86.2 mph average exit velocity, and a .401 xwOBAcon. After never ranking higher than the fifth percentile in average hard-hit rate since Statcast began tracking the metric in 2015, Iglesias managed to crack the 36th percentile in 2020. Notably, Iglesias’ hard-hit gains were exclusively localized to fastballs, his max exit velocity was not a career-high, and he had a similar hot streak back in 2013. And although hard-hit rate tends to stabilize around 45 batted balls (Iglesias hit 83 fastballs and 43 non-fastballs in 2020), 2020 was still a fairly small sample size for Iglesias. That said, Iglesias never hit the ball so consistently hard since at least 2015, and there’s a real chance that his power increase will stick in 2021 as a result. The move to a loaded Angels lineup rather than the Orioles means fantasy managers should target Iglesias as a high-upside MI pick in drafts as a result.
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