Risers & Fallers: Hitters Edition

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  • By Anthony Kates

    Last Updated on July 3, 2025 9:38 pm by Anthony Kates | Published: May 17, 2024

    Last week on risers and fallers we focused exclusively on pitchers, so this week the focus will be on hitters. There are plenty of good, young bats that are seemingly finding another level they didn’t have before or solidifying breakouts that we’ve been waiting for. On the flip side, determining the bats that are falling and struggling was tough, because there were far more than I care to admit. So let’s buckle in and get to it.

    RISERS

    Josh Naylor has always possessed a ton of power, but has struggled to unlock it at the pro level. Way back in 2018 he hit 17 home runs in 574 plate appearances in AA, then followed that up with 10 in 252 PA in 2019 at AAA, prompting the Padres to call him up to the big leagues, where he hit eight home runs in 279 PA. He struggled during the covid season and was subsequently traded to the Guardians in a package for Mike Clevinger and additional pieces. He’s been up in the majors with the Guardians since then. In 2022 he hit 20 home runs, but struggled to get on base, with just a .319 OBP. Last year, everything began to click for Naylor, as he hit .308, had a .351 OBP, hit 17 home runs and stole 10 bases while driving in 97 runs. The big key was dropping his strikeout rate all the way down to 13.7% and becoming more aggressive at the plate, swinging at far more pitches than ever before and making more contact with balls outside of the strike zone than he ever had.

    This year, though, Naylor has focused on another aspect of his game that needed to improve: his power. He is making a higher quality of contact (11.5% barrel rate and 43.5% hard hit rate, both career highs), while elevating the ball at a higher angle (13.6 degrees) and hitting it harder, on average, than he ever has (career high 91.4 MPH average exit velocity), even though his maxEV has dropped by almost four miles per hour. Add that to a career high walk rate (10.7%), nearly the same strikeout rate from last year (13.6%), a solid swinging strike rate (10.7%) plus an elite called strike rate (10%, top five in all of baseball) and a hitter in their “peak seasons” and you’ve got an elite recipe. I would be shocked if Naylor doesn’t hit 30 home runs and set career highs in nearly every single offensive category. He’s a buy high kind of guy, someone I would hold onto in a dynasty or keeper unless I was blown away by the offer.

    It might be a year or two later than we expected, but the Riley Greene breakout is finally happening. So, if you held on through the tough rookie rookie and the injury-broken sophomore season, here, in his third year, Greene is ready to reward you. He already has nine home runs, two less than he had in 2023 (in 232 less plate appearances), he’s raised his walk rate to over 14%, his launch angle, barrel rate and hard hit rate have risen each year he’s been in the majors and he’s hitting the lowest amount of ground balls of his MLB career while hitting the most fly balls he’s ever hit.

    I mean, just look at this chart:

    I know the red lollipops aren’t the end all, be all, but when someone is rocking with that many of them, it means they are definitely doing something right. He lowered his swing rate, but maintained his contact rate. He’s been a tad unlucky hitting the ball, as his contact skills tell us he should (and will) be a better hitter than a .238 batting average, so even if he can just get his BABIP up to the league average or so (.300), he’ll see even more value added to his overall production. There’s probably no way to reach out and buy Greene in any kind of dynasty or keeper league right now, but it doesn’t hurt to see what his current price is. He is in a small slump over his last two weeks or so, so maybe you can find a sympathetic manager who thinks he was just on a hot streak and not a breakout.

    Jeremy Peña is having the overall great season Astros fans (and fantasy managers) expected him to have after his 2022 rookie and World Series MVP season. The 2023 season saw Peña’s home runs numbers cut in half (from 22 in 2022 to 10 in 2023), his stolen base total only went up by two even though he had nearly 80 more plate appearances and his ground ball and fly ball rates went in the wrong directions (GB% went up, FB% went down). The reverse has happened this year, his ground ball rate has dropped nearly 8%, his fly ball rate has risen nearly 3% and his line drive rate (remember: more line drives equals more hits) is up nearly 6%. He has a career low strikeout rate (14.2%), thanks to a career low swinging strike rate (11.5%) and a higher contact rate (78.3%, 5% higher than 2023).

    He is in the top 2% of all big leaguers in sprint speed, so you’d love to see him be more aggressive on the base paths, both steals wise and stretching out singles into doubles and doubles into triples. Over the past 20 days or so, he’s been batting in the heart of the order (4th or 5th; two games batting 2nd), which correlates to the best performing time frame of the season, so far, for the Astros offense as a whole. Though he won’t ever walk much (4% rate on the year, 6.8% career high last year), his high contact rate, high line drive and fly ball approach with the addition of his elite wheels and decent hit tool means he should be able to maintain a .270 or higher average. Add that to a career-high pace of steals and an Astros team that is starting to get hot at the plate and you have all the ingredients for a career year in Pena’s age-26 season. He wasn’t on my top 30 dynasty shortstops coming into the season, but if he keeps up this pace, will find himself inside the top 20 for 2025.

    FALLERS

    Is this the beginning of the end, for George Springer? Springer, who will be 35 in September, is struggling in many, many aspects at the plate. He is posting one of the lowest walk rates of his career (in fact, from 2022 through now, Springer has posted the only seasons of his career with a walk rate under 10%), the lowest fly ball rate of his career, one of the lowest line drive rates of his career, lowest hard hit and barrel rates, the lowest average exit velocity, lowest maxEV, one of the lowest launch angles, the highest first-strike rate and the highest ground ball rate of his career (over 50%). I mean, there’s some good things too.

    He has the third best strikeout rate of his career (17.5%), a ridiculously low BABIP (.229) and he has underperformed both his expected batting average and expected slugging percentage by at least 50 points (.201 BA, .253 xBA; .295 SLG, .376 xSLG). Which, yeah, okay, still not great, but does mean there should be SOME positive production regression, but how much? He’s on pace to reproduce another 20 steal season; when he is healthy he is still batting leadoff, so he can still score a ton of runs and all of the projection systems believe he still has 14-17 home runs in the tank for the season. How much it hurts me to say this, as an Astros and George Springer fan, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t expect him to play in another 100 or so games the rest of the season, since he has been plagued with a variety of injuries and/or illnesses every year the last three to four years and Toronto cannot continue to let a .200 average, .277 on-base percentage hitter lead off for a team with higher expectations than last place. Now might be the time to get out of Springer, before it is too late.

    Manny Machado has been on one heck of a power run, hitting somewhere between 28 and 37 home runs for the last eight, non-covid seasons (and he hit 16 in 60 games during the covid season, a 40 homer pace), with more season of 32+ home runs than not (five to two and only one year under 30). It seems like that streak will be coming to a halt this season (or turned into a 20 or more home runs over the last nine, non-covid seasons streak, or something), as he has struggled to elevate the ball this season. HE’s currently sporting the worst ground ball rate of his career (50%) and lowest line drive (15%) and fly ball (35%) rates of his career. Interestingly enough, these last two seasons (2023 and ‘24) have seen the two lowest line drive rates of his career, resulting in a 40 point and 36 point drop in batting average over these two seasons. His walk rate is the lowest it’s been in nine seasons and his strikeout rate is the highest it’s ever been.

    Unsurprisingly, he’s seen the most first-pitch strikes ever and has the highest swinging strike rate of his career (albeit by only 0.1%, but it was under 11% every year before these last three). His statcast data, though, would have you thinking he was having a great season, as he has his second best average exit velocity (92.2 MPH), third highest barrel rate (10.7%) and highest hard hit rate (52.1%) of his career. So, I don’t know if this is a year early, a blip on the season or a preview of what is to come. If you have him on your roster, I’d see what’s the best player I could get in return (be it a very highly rated prospect or the best MLB bat or arm you could get). If you don’t roster him, I’d see just how cheaply he is available for. I think that picking him up is a risk worth taking, so long as that risk doesn’t cost you much. I just know that I was out on Machado coming into the season and felt like this would be my “getting out a year early” instead of worrying about getting out a year too late.

    What is going on with Bo Bichette? I know this seems like I am picking on the Blue Jays, I promise you I am not, but they’ve got some “star” players struggling quite a bit this season (and seeing their stats fall ever since that 2021 Buffalo aided season). Bichette’s power numbers have been dropping every season since 2021, when he hit 29 home runs. He hit 24 in 2022, 20 in 2023 (in less plate appearances, but his ISO was also lower) and now only two home runs through 164 plate appearances this season. His average exit velocity is decent (90.3 MPH), his maxEV is solid (111.2 MPH) and his hard hit rate is pretty dang good (46.4%). But, his barrel rate has been abysmal this year (only 2.4%) and he has been absolutely hammering the ball into the ground (career worst 51.2% ground ball rate), with the worst line drive rate of his career (15.2%) but the best fly ball rate of his career (33.6%). This has led to less hits (less line drive and more ground balls means more outs) and, combined with his low 6.2 degree launch angle, those career high fly balls aren’t getting far enough off the ground to clear the fence anywhere, even if they are being hit hard.

    He has elite contact rates (84.1%) and swinging strike rates (9.1%) for someone who swings the bat as often as he does (57.4% – he is one of only four hitters with a swing rate over 50% that has a contact rate of at least 84% and swinging strike rate of 9.1% or lower). So, Bo Bichette managers, you have to ask yourself, what is the true productive ceiling of your hitter? Can he hit 20 home runs again? What about stealing 20 bases again? Is he still one of the safest bets to hit .280 or higher at the position? How long will he hit in the heart of the Toronto order with such a low batting average and OBP? I would be trying to sell him as high as humanly possible (he’s only 26, he has three straight 20 or more homer seasons, he’s running more this year and he’s never hit lower than .290 would be my arguments) if I rostered him in a dynasty or keeper league. If I didn’t and still believed in a high ceiling (a guy in one of my leagues has him as a top 25 dynasty piece and top 6 dynasty shortstop), I’d see just how low his owner is willing to sell him and how high I was willing to pay (like, could you get him for a top 100 dynasty player? A top 20 prospect and top 150 player?). I’m not out on Bichette, I just don’t know how far in I am.

     

    May 17, 2024, 7:57 am