Greetings and welcome to the latest edition of our Positive and Negative Regression report. As crazy as it sounds, we’re now nearly halfway through the regular season and have just over a month left of regular-season games.
We’re also at the trade deadline for many fantasy leagues, and the right move or two could be the difference between a fantasy championship and fading in the second half. Our sample sizes are still small, but we at least now have a few weeks of data and trends to analyze.
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Negative Regression Candidates
Renato Nunez is off to a strong start after a breakout season in 2019 that saw him hit 31 home runs. Through 26 games in 2020, he is slashing .287 / .348 / .853 with five home runs. The power is legit, and his Hard Hit % is 42.9%, slightly above league average and up from his 36.6% number in 2019.
But regression is coming, and I’m selling in redraft leagues.
As you can see, the Hard Hit and Barrel numbers are good. The rest is…not so good. But we already knew most of this about Nunez. He has some power, but he’s going to strike out a bunch, walk slightly less than the league average, and go on pretty extreme hot and cold streaks.
Just take a look at his monthly batting average and home runs splits in 2019:
- Mar/Apr: .266, six home runs
- May: .217, eight home runs
- June: .212, four home runs
- July: .304, seven home runs
- August: .237, three home runs
- Sept/Oct: .213, three home runs
He’s batting .287 through the first month of 2020, but I think we all know that’s going to drop to the .240-.250 range. If he hits .250 with eight home runs the rest of the way, that’s great. If he hits .213 with three home runs like he did last August, that’s a problem.
The numbers tell us that the latter is more likely. His .369 BABIP is nearly .100 points higher than his 2019 number of .272. He’s striking out more, his xBA is .237, and his xwOBA of .311 is both not great and nearly 50 points below his current .357 wOBA.
But here is my main concern:
Nunez is feasting on fastballs and has exactly zero barrels of breaking or offspeed pitches. Against breaking pitches, he is batting .133 with an xBA of .122. In 2019, those numbers were .225 and .219.
More offspeed pitches are coming in September, and so is regression.
Cease is currently graduating from top prospect status to reliable major league pitcher, but he isn’t all the way there yet despite what his 3.16 ERA would currently have you believe. You can normally expect some bumps along the road with young pitchers, and Cease is about to blow a tire.
Just by taking a broad look at Cease’s expected statistics, you can find some pretty glaring red flags. For starters, his FIP coming into Sunday’s start against the Cubs was 6.16, a full three runs higher than his ERA. His xERA (5.96) and xFIP (5.80) paint an equally concerning picture.
And if you head over to his Statcast profile, you’ll see a lot of blue at the top of the page:
As the velocity and spin rate numbers indicate, Cease has excellent stuff. But his strikeout numbers are down (5.96 K/9 compared to 9.99 last season and double-digit numbers throughout the minor leagues), his ground ball numbers are WAY down, his BABIP has been favorable, and he just isn’t missing many bats.He has been relying on his fastball/slider combination because his changeup and curve are being hammered with a 50% Hard Hit rate and a .400 and .500 average against, respectively. And if he doesn’t start missing more bats soon, his actual numbers are going to look a lot more like his expected ones.
Positive Regression Candidates
Shohei Ohtani (DH - LAA)
It’s easy to be down on Shohei Ohtani right now. He was shut down from pitching in early August after two disastrous outings with a forearm strain and entered Sunday batting .165 after going 0-for-15 over his last four games.
But he’s due for some positive regression, and not just because he went 2-for-4 with a home run on Sunday. His .170 BABIP indicates some pretty rotten luck, especially for someone with a sprint speed in the 95th percentile.
He’s hitting more fly balls and his Hard Hit and Barrel numbers are both well above league average, but his HR/FB numbers are down significantly over 2018 and 2019. Ohtani’s xBA is still below the league average at .243, but this is someone who could very well hit .250-.260 the rest of the way with a handful of home runs and steals.
In September of 2018, he batted .310 with seven home runs and four stolen bases. In June of 2019, he batted .340 with nine home runs and four stolen bases. We’re talking about someone with an incredibly high ceiling who can get hot and carry a fantasy squad for a month.
His ownership recently dropped below 80%, so you might not even have to trade for him. If you do, reach out and ask what the price is. In redraft leagues, it’s likely pretty low right now. I was just able to grab him on waivers in a keeper league and almost dropped my phone when I saw his name hit the wire.
At the very least, you’re grabbing cheap power and steals for your utility spot. But his best-case scenario is as good as anyone in baseball. With some positive regression looming, now is the time to make the move to add him.
Tyler Glasnow has walked 13 batters in 21 innings this season. That’s a problem, and those walks contribute to his 1.52 WHIP and 6.00 WHIP. He is, however, still striking out batters, with a 15.00 K/9 and 35 strikeouts over 21 innings.
Even with a 6.00 ERA, that means he won’t just be given away in most formats. But in a short season, that ERA and WHIP could frustrate a fantasy owner, especially if that owner feels good about the rest of their staff and needs an upgrade on offense.
Glasnow’s FIP (4.16), xFIP (3.56), and xERA (3.74) all point to some imminent positive regression. And while he has been giving up some hard contact, his
There are some red flags, though. His GB % was 50.4% in 2019 and 49.8% in 2018. This year, it’s 28.3%. Again, we’re dealing with a small sample size, but that is a concerning drop. His Hard Hit % was 28.8% in 2019 and is up to 48.9% so far this season. Again, concerning.
His .349 BABIP indicates some amount of bad luck, and his 20% HR/FB rate should normalize a bit if he can start to turn around some of those hard contact numbers. And even with those hard contact numbers, his expected statistics are above league average numbers across the board and all point to positive regression.
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Mike Maher is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him on Twitter @mikemaher
