Even though numbers and statistics can tell a clear story about a player, we know that narratives and subjective value play a major role in how we approach draft season. For example, we can argue that a player had a “down year” in 2023 and that it suggests the beginning of a downturn.
Or we can highlight that same player, compare the numbers to the career averages, and look for a return back to the mean.
This is how we identify positive regression and bounce-back candidates.
We aren’t picky about how or why those numbers dipped, either. Sometimes, underlying injuries played a role. Other times, we can’t exactly find the cause, but we have the history that suggests it was an outlier.
All we care about is the rebound.
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Fantasy Baseball Bounce-Back Candidates to Draft
Aaron Judge (OF – NYY)
If we’re looking at qualified hitters from 2023, then Aaron Judge’s name doesn’t appear on most leaderboards. Therein lies the heart of the question around Judge: Will he remain healthy throughout the season? He played at least 148 games in both 2021 and 2022 and finished fourth and first in the MVP race, respectively. Last season, he appeared in just 106 games, which was more aligned with the 2018 and 2019 campaigns of 112 and 102 games, respectively.
The good news for fantasy managers is that, when Judge is in the lineup, he continues to deliver to an elite level. Among all players with at least 200 plate appearances, Judge ranked first in hard-hit percentage and home run rate. He actually finished in the top 10 for total home runs despite trailing everyone else in that category by at least 130 plate appearances — or approximately 30 games.
Suffice it to say that the same caveat is placed on Judge this year as has been used in the past. If he can stay healthy, he is in line for another big — and, in this case, bounce-back — year. But he also lands on this list because he has still shown the potential to outperform his numbers even if he does miss time yet again.
Aaron Nola (SP – PHI)
Aaron Nola has quietly become one of the most reliable pitchers in the league in terms of staying on the field. He made exactly 32 starts in each of the last three seasons, 12 starts during the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign and then 33 and 34 starts in 2018 and 2019, respectively. He’s a rare example of stability and avoiding injury at a position where that is no easy task.
In terms of production, however, “stability” is not the word for Nola. He has had alternating years of high and low ERAs since 2020, but last season’s numbers were concerning throughout. Nola produced his worst strikeout rate since his rookie season in 2015.
Why, then, should we expect a positive regression? Largely because there were no underlying reasons why he should have struggled as he did. His average fastball velocity was the same in 2023 in 2022, and his actual ERA was significantly higher than his xERA and xFIP. There’s simply room to improve now, and his historical trends have shown that he can make such adjustments. We even saw that in his strikeout rate taking a nice step forward in the second half of last year.
Carlos Correa (SS – MIN)
One of the key elements of this article is to find players whose 2023 numbers appear to be outliers compared to their season averages. Enter Carlos Correa. Correa was eventually diagnosed with an injury that ended his season early, and the ailment likely played a role in his decreased output.
So let’s take a look at that output.
Correa’s 2021 and 2022 numbers are as follows, taken from FanGraphs:
2021: .279 batting average, 26 home runs, .366 on-base percentage, .364 wOBA, 36.5 hard-hit percentage
2022: .291 batting average, 22 home runs, .366 on-base percentage, .362 wOBA, 36.0 hard-hit percentage
And now let’s look at 2023:
.230 batting average, 18 home runs, .312 on-base percentage, .309 wOBA, 36.5 hard-hit percentage
We’re not exactly splitting atoms here to conclude that everything about Correa’s 2023 campaign was a massive disappointment from what we’ve come to expect, but there was one number that stayed almost identical for three consecutive years. That is hard-hit percentage. Correa was still driving the ball just as well as he had been in the past, but the results weren’t there. If he can keep making hard contact and stay healthy, 2024 will be a bounce-back year for the Twins’ shortstop.
Yu Darvish (SP – SD)
Yu Darvish has actually been the perfect example of a regression candidate for both sides of the equation. In the past, he was outperforming his numbers by an extreme level and needed to snap back to the mean. Now, he is underperforming and needs to do the same. Fortunately for him, returning to his averages should mean a move in the positive direction.
Darvish has had wild swings in his numbers over the past few years, but his consistent trend might appear concerning at first. That is, his xERA has risen in each of the last three seasons. The twist in the story is that it is still low enough for him to return to be effective. Even if he matches his 3.89 xERA from 2019 — his personal highest in the last five seasons — he should still see his actual ERA move down from its 4.56 mark of last year.
Historically, Darvish has not easily carried one season’s numbers into the next, but his drop-off in 2023 — he also went from a 16-8 record to 8-10 from 2022 — was so extreme and swift that we should be ready for some type of rebound in 2024. If that is set as his floor, then we might have a pleasant surprise on our hands if he also moves toward his ceiling.
Matt Chapman (3B – SF)
Matt Chapman is quite an interesting case. He entered March unsigned, and there’s a growing belief that he will hardly carry value into 2024 even now that he has a team. If that’s because of his numbers from last year, then he becomes the perfect candidate for this list.
We already noted that Aaron Judge led the league in hard-hit percentage among players with at least 200 plate appearances, but I’ll let you guess the player who ranked second — according to Baseball-Reference. That’s right. Matt Chapman.
Chapman saw a dip in home runs to go with his already-low batting average, but the inspiring future comes from the underlying numbers. His wOBA and xwOBA were just a hair below their respective values from 2022 — .331 vs. .328 and .341 vs. .339 — where it looks like it was simply his lack of power that pulled his fantasy value down. The extremely high hard-hit percentage leads to a major rebound possibility in 2024.
Triston McKenzie (SP – CLE)
If it’s not a decline in numbers that lands a player on this list, it’s injury. In the case of Triston McKenzie, it was everything. 2023 led to multiple ailments for the young pitcher and numbers that were so bad they could only be explained by a small sample size — a 5.06 ERA but in just 16 innings pitched over four starters.
2024 brings a much brighter expectation for McKenzie, if only because of his relative value. It’s easy to see his numbers from last year and forget that, in 31 games and 191.1 innings pitched, he delivered a 2.96 ERA and struck out an average of just under one batter per inning in 2022. Essentially, it appeared as if he had turned a corner, and even if he was struck by some negative regression, he would still deliver as a worthy fantasy asset.
Even if we conservatively ask McKenzie to land somewhere between his career averages and his high point of 2022, we would still gain tremendously from drafting him at his current ADP. He’s the prototypical low-risk-high-reward player who also has the characteristics of a bounce-back candidate.
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Mario Mergola is a featured writer at FantasyPros and BettingPros and the creator and content editor of Sporfolio. For more from Mario, check out his archive and follow him @MarioMergola.