This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
Last week, we looked at a few pitchers that underperformed their expected contact while revisiting an earlier story about hitters that were doing the same back in June. The purpose here is to look for hitters whose 2017 numbers were not as good as they should have been so that the market and perhaps even the projections undervalue them for 2018. We'll look at a few players by comparing them to the player above them and below them in the xwOBA leaderboard.
Mitch Moreland: xwOBA - .371, actual wOBA - .335
Moreland had the most power of the group, and set a career-high walk rate last year, but it was a one and done situation for him in Boston. Truth be told, Moreland had the impossible task of replacing David Ortiz in the lineup so he was set up for failure. Moreland has never been a good option against lefties, but the Red Sox did limit his exposure to them allowing him just 85 plate appearances against them. The larger issue is that even against righties, he was just a league average and that has been the case in four of the past five seasons. A contributing factor was a toe injury that he played through
Mitch Moreland: xwOBA - .371, actual wOBA - .335
| PLAYER | xwOBA | wOBA | PA | HR | R | RBI | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| Joe Mauer | .373 | .349 | 597 | 7 | 69 | 71 | .305 | .384 | .417 |
| Mitch Moreland | .371 | .335 | 576 | 22 | 73 | 79 | .246 | .326 | .443 |
| Austin Barnes | .370 | .386 | 262 | 8 | 35 | 38 | .289 | .408 | .486 |
Moreland had the most power of the group, and set a career-high walk rate last year, but it was a one and done situation for him in Boston. Truth be told, Moreland had the impossible task of replacing David Ortiz in the lineup so he was set up for failure. Moreland has never been a good option against lefties, but the Red Sox did limit his exposure to them allowing him just 85 plate appearances against them. The larger issue is that even against righties, he was just a league average and that has been the case in four of the past five seasons. A contributing factor was a toe injury that he played through
Last week, we looked at a few pitchers that underperformed their expected contact while revisiting an earlier story about hitters that were doing the same back in June. The purpose here is to look for hitters whose 2017 numbers were not as good as they should have been so that the market and perhaps even the projections undervalue them for 2018. We'll look at a few players by comparing them to the player above them and below them in the xwOBA leaderboard.
Mitch Moreland: xwOBA - .371, actual wOBA - .335
Moreland had the most power of the group, and set a career-high walk rate last year, but it was a one and done situation for him in Boston. Truth be told, Moreland had the impossible task of replacing David Ortiz in the lineup so he was set up for failure. Moreland has never been a good option against lefties, but the Red Sox did limit his exposure to them allowing him just 85 plate appearances against them. The larger issue is that even against righties, he was just a league average and that has been the case in four of the past five seasons. A contributing factor was a toe injury that he played through over summer and a look at his rolling game average shows you exactly where he was playing through his injury:
Morales is in good company in terms of his xwOBA, but his production overall comes in third. His actual wOBA underperformed his expected output as much as the other two overperformed theirs. One of the reasons I was excited about Morales's potential in 2017 was that he was moving to a very friendly home environment, yet by the metrics, he was barely league average at home last year whereas he has been a very productive hitter at home throughout his career whether in Anaheim, Seattle or Kansas City. This too was odd:
2014 used to be the outlier due to him missing so much time that year to begin the season, but now that 2016 and 2017 have happened, it is looking more and more real. The quality of his contact in terms of medium and hard contact remain the same as does most of his batted ball profile from the left side the past two seasons yet the production has not been great. Morales had nearly 200 plate appearances against lefties in 2016 which helped push up his numbers whereas he had fewer than 140 in 2017 so his numbers only went up so much.
Brandon Moss
Moss was the guy Kansas City brought in to replace Morales. Nobody expected for Moss to fully replace the production Morales brought to the table, but even against that backdrop, what the Royals got out of him was disappointing. His bookends by xwOBA are interesting as Jaso lines up rather well with Moss yet Contreras got a lot more out of his actual production than what his quality of contact was expected to bring. A peek at the StatCast leaderboards show that Moss was in the top 20 in terms of barrels per plate appearance and was just outside the top 50 in terms of average exit velocity. More will be expected of him this year in the middle of the lineup with so many Royals departing via free agency. Like Moreland, Moss appears to be a decent end game target in AL-Only leagues for those looking for cheap power at a discount because the quality of contact is there even if the actual production did not show up in 2017.
Hanley Ramirez
Isn't expected production versus actual production the best way to sum up Hanley's career? Occasionally we get fun years such as 2013 and 2016, but then he level sets our expectations by backsliding statistically as he did in 2017 despite not changing home parks. His xwOBA bookeneds are interesting in that Frazier makes Ramirez seem normal while Cespedes had the abbreviated season Ramirez was having in 2016. If we look at the same measures we used for Moss, Ramirez falls well short in terms of barrels per plate appearance as well as average exit velocity. That could be due to the bum shoulder that he had surgery on after the season ended. I'm always fearful of guys bouncing back from shoulder surgeries quickly, especially older players, and the 2016 performance is too recent to ignore and move on from HanRam just yet.
Yandy Diaz
Have you seen this picture?
Yep, there is Diaz with a higher average exit velo than Paul freaking Goldschmidt and yet he has zero homers. If Cleveland can get his launch angle above zero, we could see something like what happened with Kirby Puckett from 1985 to 1986. We have seen what Pollock and Taylor have done with similar expected contact and it could happen for Diaz as well if he stops trying to create craters in the infield with hard contact into the ground.
Mitch Moreland: xwOBA - .371, actual wOBA - .335
| PLAYER | xwOBA | wOBA | PA | HR | R | RBI | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| Joe Mauer | .373 | .349 | 597 | 7 | 69 | 71 | .305 | .384 | .417 |
| Mitch Moreland | .371 | .335 | 576 | 22 | 73 | 79 | .246 | .326 | .443 |
| Austin Barnes | .370 | .386 | 262 | 8 | 35 | 38 | .289 | .408 | .486 |
Moreland had the most power of the group, and set a career-high walk rate last year, but it was a one and done situation for him in Boston. Truth be told, Moreland had the impossible task of replacing David Ortiz in the lineup so he was set up for failure. Moreland has never been a good option against lefties, but the Red Sox did limit his exposure to them allowing him just 85 plate appearances against them. The larger issue is that even against righties, he was just a league average and that has been the case in four of the past five seasons. A contributing factor was a toe injury that he played through over summer and a look at his rolling game average shows you exactly where he was playing through his injury:
If we could take out that valley of awful performance, we could see where the difference in his expected and actual production is based. Mitchy Twobags should benefit from a change of scenery and a healthy foot. He has hit 22 or 23 home runs in each of the past three seasons and has had 30 points of variance in his batting average around these seasons. Moreland seems like a boring fallback player for 2018 given the lack of impact the past few seasons, but that is just the type of player to fall back on in the late rounds. After all, we are coming off a year where we saw guys such as Logan Morrison, Justin Smoak, and Yonder Alonso rise from the ashes.
Kendrys Morales
| PLAYER | xwOBA | wOBA | PA | HR | R | RBI | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| Buster Posey | .358 | .380 | 568 | 12 | 62 | 67 | .320 | .400 | .462 |
| Kendrys Morales | .358 | .326 | 608 | 28 | 67 | 85 | .250 | .308 | .445 |
| Cody Bellinger | .357 | .393 | 548 | 39 | 87 | 97 | .267 | .352 | .581 |
Morales is in good company in terms of his xwOBA, but his production overall comes in third. His actual wOBA underperformed his expected output as much as the other two overperformed theirs. One of the reasons I was excited about Morales's potential in 2017 was that he was moving to a very friendly home environment, yet by the metrics, he was barely league average at home last year whereas he has been a very productive hitter at home throughout his career whether in Anaheim, Seattle or Kansas City. This too was odd:
2014 was the season where he missed so much time due to his contract situation, but Morales has otherwise been good against righties. This was not the case in 2017 and although he is increasingly better against lefties, he is still facing righties 70 percent of the time and the issues against them dragged down his overall performance. The expected contact issue appears to be around batted ball misfortunes when we look at his BABIP year over year against righties:
| SEASON | PA | BABIP |
| 2009 | 478 | .332 |
| 2010 | 133 | .352 |
| 2012 | 446 | .331 |
| 2013 | 425 | .302 |
| 2014 | 255 | .239 |
| 2015 | 377 | .303 |
| 2016 | 423 | .244 |
| 2017 | 471 | .236 |
2014 used to be the outlier due to him missing so much time that year to begin the season, but now that 2016 and 2017 have happened, it is looking more and more real. The quality of his contact in terms of medium and hard contact remain the same as does most of his batted ball profile from the left side the past two seasons yet the production has not been great. Morales had nearly 200 plate appearances against lefties in 2016 which helped push up his numbers whereas he had fewer than 140 in 2017 so his numbers only went up so much.
Brandon Moss
| PLAYER | xwOBA | wOBA | PA | HR | R | RBI | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| John Jaso | .336 | .324 | 302 | 10 | 28 | 35 | .211 | .328 | .402 |
| Brandon Moss | .336 | .305 | 401 | 22 | 41 | 50 | .207 | .279 | .428 |
| Willson Contreras | .336 | .368 | 428 | 21 | 50 | 74 | .276 | .356 | .499 |
Moss was the guy Kansas City brought in to replace Morales. Nobody expected for Moss to fully replace the production Morales brought to the table, but even against that backdrop, what the Royals got out of him was disappointing. His bookends by xwOBA are interesting as Jaso lines up rather well with Moss yet Contreras got a lot more out of his actual production than what his quality of contact was expected to bring. A peek at the StatCast leaderboards show that Moss was in the top 20 in terms of barrels per plate appearance and was just outside the top 50 in terms of average exit velocity. More will be expected of him this year in the middle of the lineup with so many Royals departing via free agency. Like Moreland, Moss appears to be a decent end game target in AL-Only leagues for those looking for cheap power at a discount because the quality of contact is there even if the actual production did not show up in 2017.
Hanley Ramirez
| PLAYER | xwOBA | wOBA | PA | HR | R | RBI | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| Todd Frazier | .352 | .340 | 576 | 27 | 74 | 76 | .213 | .344 | .428 |
| Hanley Ramirez | .351 | .328 | 553 | 23 | 58 | 62 | .242 | .320 | .429 |
| Yoenis Cespedes | .351 | .381 | 321 | 17 | 46 | 42 | .292 | .352 | .540 |
Isn't expected production versus actual production the best way to sum up Hanley's career? Occasionally we get fun years such as 2013 and 2016, but then he level sets our expectations by backsliding statistically as he did in 2017 despite not changing home parks. His xwOBA bookeneds are interesting in that Frazier makes Ramirez seem normal while Cespedes had the abbreviated season Ramirez was having in 2016. If we look at the same measures we used for Moss, Ramirez falls well short in terms of barrels per plate appearance as well as average exit velocity. That could be due to the bum shoulder that he had surgery on after the season ended. I'm always fearful of guys bouncing back from shoulder surgeries quickly, especially older players, and the 2016 performance is too recent to ignore and move on from HanRam just yet.
Yandy Diaz
| PLAYER | xwOBA | wOBA | PA | HR | R | RBI | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| A.J. Pollock | .331 | .347 | 466 | 14 | 73 | 49 | .266 | .330 | .471 |
| Yandy Diaz | .331 | .312 | 179 | 0 | 25 | 13 | .263 | .352 | .327 |
| Chris Taylor | .331 | .368 | 568 | 21 | 85 | 72 | .288 | .354 | .496 |
Have you seen this picture?
That is a picture of Yandy Diaz he recently posted on Instagram. How is it that a guy that looks like Dwayne Johnson's stunt double can hit as many home runs in 2017 as you and I did? Oh yea, he has a 59 percent ground ball rate! As players continue to look for launch angle, Diaz has a track record of not lofting the baseball either in the minors or the majors.
Below is the top-10 average exit velocity leaderboard for all players with at least 100 batted ball events:
| PLAYER | BATTED BALLS | AVG EXIT VELO |
| Aaron Judge | 338 | 94.9 |
| Nelson Cruz | 423 | 93.2 |
| Joey Gallo | 253 | 93.1 |
| Miguel Sano | 252 | 92.4 |
| Khris Davis | 378 | 92.2 |
| Giancarlo Stanton | 437 | 91.9 |
| Yandy Diaz | 122 | 91.5 |
| Paul Goldschmidt | 415 | 91.4 |
| Ryan Zimmerman | 403 | 91.4 |
Yep, there is Diaz with a higher average exit velo than Paul freaking Goldschmidt and yet he has zero homers. If Cleveland can get his launch angle above zero, we could see something like what happened with Kirby Puckett from 1985 to 1986. We have seen what Pollock and Taylor have done with similar expected contact and it could happen for Diaz as well if he stops trying to create craters in the infield with hard contact into the ground.
