MLB Barometer: Biggest Hitter Projection Changes

Last Thursday, I had Jordan Rosenblum as my guest on the RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Podcast, where we discussed his OOPSY projection system, the latest entry into the group of publicly available baseball projections. 

In contrast with many projection systems which have been around for a longer period, OOPSY factors in new metrics, like bat speed for hitters and Stuff+ for pitchers. Those stats become meaningful in smaller samples, which has a knock-on effect on the projections, allowing OOPSY to change its mind on players more quickly than a traditional projection system can.

For this week's MLB Barometer, I'm going to take a look at the hitters who have moved the needle on their rest of season OOPSY projections by the largest amount, for better or worse. Next week, we'll look at pitchers through the same lens. Rather than going position by position, we'll go tier by tier according to each player's preseason projected wRC+.

Rest-of-Season Projection Risers

Ketel Marte, 2B, Diamondbacks: Up until very recently, Marte's career had been defined by inconsistency. He had a 92 wRC+ from 2015 to 2018, then shot up to 150 in 2019, then fell back to 94 in 2020. He jumped back up to 141 in 2021, only to fall back to 102 in 2022. Since then, though, he's made a steady climb from average all the way up to elite, with his wRC+ improving from 102 to 126 to 151 and now 177. 

OOPSY is buying in, likely driven by Marte's continued improvement in his quality of contact. Marte averaged a modest 5.5 percent barrel rate across his first nine seasons, never rising above 9.1 percent, but he reached 12.3 percent in that figure last season and is up to 16.4 percent this year. That increase in hard-hit balls tracks with his increase in bat speed; that particular metric is unavailable prior to 2023, but he's risen from the 67th to the 78th to the 87th percentile over the last three years. The fact that he swings this hard while also striking out just 14.2 percent of the time makes him a rare breed. Marte is in his age-31 season, so it's fair to wonder how many more years he'll have at this level, but for the time being, he belongs among the league's best bats.

James Wood, OF, Nationals: You probably didn't need an improved OOPSY projection to tell you that Wood was the real deal, but it's nice to see the machines backing up what we can see with our human eyes. Wood's .264/.354/.427 slash line (120 wRC+) in 79 games as a 21-year-old rookie last year was already impressive enough, but there were elements to his profile that skeptics could lean on to argue that he wasn't ready for stardom just yet. His 6-foot-7 frame came with the expected contact concerns, as seen in his 28.9 percent strikeout rate, and while he made very loud contact (52.0 percent hard-hit rate), too much of it was pounded into the ground.

This year, he's started to lift the ball much more, increasing his flyball rate from 22.2 percent to 32.2 percent, and he's taking steps forward across the board elsewhere as well, as you'd expect for a player who at 22 years old should have plenty of development still ahead of him. His hard-hit rate has gotten even better (57.3 percent), which, combined with the increase in flyballs, has helped his barrel rate jump from merely good (10.6 percent) all the way to elite (19.4 percent). He's also seen a big increase in his bat speed, which has gone from an already high 73.9 mph all the way up to 76.1 mph. He already looks like a perennial All-Star and fantasy first-rounder, and the only question that remains is just how high his ceiling could be if he can shave a few more points off his strikeout rate, which sits at 27.5 percent.

Nick Kurtz, 1B, Athletics: The fact that Kurtz was already projected by OOPSY to be 10 percent better than league average after playing just 12 professional games last year is impressive enough, though I suppose if anyone is to be projected that high that quickly, it would be someone who slashed .368/.520/.763 in those games after being selected fourth overall in the Amateur Draft. Other projections ranged from an 89 wRC+ (THE BAT) to 103 (ZiPS), making OOPSY something of an outlier, perhaps spurred by Kurtz's Cactus League bat speed data.

When Kurtz struggled to a .208/.259/.299 slash line (55 wRC+) in his first 23 games, homering just once, it looked like perhaps the algorithm had gotten ahead of itself. At this point, though, it looks like Kurtz simply needed a bit of a chance to get used to MLB pitching. He went on to hit four homers in his next five games before missing two weeks with a strained hip flexor. Since his return, he hasn't msised a beat, hitting six more homers in 15 games while slashing .271/.306/.627. There's still a significant red flag in his profile, as his 32.4 percent strikeout rate is quite poor, but he has the elite bat speed necessary to counteract those contact problems. At 77.6 mph, he'd rank in the 99th percentile if he had enough plate appearances to qualify for the leaderboard.

Mickey Moniak, OF, Rockies: While it's encouraging to see Cagilanone improve his projected wRC+ despite posting an actual wRC+ of 43 in his first 20 MLB games, Moniak's improvement is the one that caught my eye the most. I would have unscientifically projected Moniak for a similar mark to the one OOPSY gave him heading into the season, as the 2016 first-overall pick looked to have fully earned the "bust" label, slashing .230/.272/.404 (83 wRC+) through the end of his age-26 season. If he's really going to be a league-average hitter going forward while filling the large side of a platoon at Coors Field, that's a legitimate fantasy asset. 

Moniak has shown growth in multiple areas in his age-27 campaign. He still has poor plate discipline, but his 25.0 percent strikeout rate and 6.6 percent walk rate both represent meaningful progress compared to the 32.3 percent strikeout rate and 4.5 percent walk rate he carried into the year. He also has an above-average hard-hit rate for the first time, with his 44.4 percent mark blowing away his 35.0 percent hard-hit rate through the end of last season. Combined with a flyball-heavy approach (43.4 percent, in line with his career norms), that's helped him to 11 homers in 212 plate appearances. His .292 on-base percentage holds back his real-world value and creates problems in OBP leagues, but in standard formats, Moniak should be on your radar, at least for his home games.

Rest-of-Season Projection Fallers

Note: only hitters who have come to the plate at least 100 times are considered for the following tables.

Carlos Correa, SS, Twins: Many of the players on this list have spent time on the injured list (or have been playing through a broken finger in the case of Contreras, something I doubt any projection system can account for properly). Correa, somewhat surprisingly given his track record, has been active all year, so his 10-point decline in projected wRC+ stands out as the most worrisome. Even with his body taking a beating the last several years, Correa still managed a .310/.388/.517 (155 wRC+) in 86 games last year, but he's slashing just .262/.304/.387 (95 wRC+) in 70 games this season. For a player who hasn't stolen a base since 2019, that's not nearly enough in most fantasy formats.

Much of Correa's underlying numebrs don't look all that worrisome, however. His 42.4 percent hard-hit rate is his lowest mark since 2021, but it's also just 2.1 points below where it sat last season. His 19.0 percent strikeout rate is 2.4 points above where it sat last season but remains 1.4 points below his career mark. It's worth noting that OOPSY was the highest on Correa heading into the season (with THE BAT in second at a 129 wRC+), so some of his drop may be due to projection system getting overly excited about what turned out to be an unsustainable half-season run last year. There is one area that stands out as a big red flag for Correa going forward, though: his chase rate, which sat between the 64th and 72nd percentile the last four seasons, has collapsed to the 23rd percentile this year, causing his typically strong walk rate to fall all the way to 5.9 percent and knocking his on-base percentage down to .304.

Michael Harris II, OF, Atlanta: Campbell's big drop in projected wRC+ is arguably the most worrisome on this list, but it's more surprising to see a big recalibration in Harris' fourth MLB season than it is to see that kind of movement for a player who had yet to make his major-league debut. Harris entered the year projected similarly to Corbin Carroll and James Wood but now projects similarly to Trevor Larnach and Jesse Winker, and even his projected 109 wRC+ aguably seems too high. Harris managed a 125 wRC+ over his first two seasons, but that fell to 99 last year and now sits all the way down at 51 this season.

Harris is still just 24 years old, so you'd expect to see a big step forward in his numbers rather than a big step back. The good news, if you can call it that, is that his underlying numbers show more of a moderate decline in several areas rather than one massive red flag. The biggest concern is his hard-hit rate, which has dropped seven points compared to his previous career average, though at 40.0 percent, it's very close to league average (40.7 percent). He also hasn't seen his strikeout rate change, as his 20.4 percent mark is a near match for his career 20.8 percent rate. A second-percentile chase rate is a red flag, but it's also nothing new; he's never been above the seventh percentile in that category. He's also still managed 11 steals. Harris' offensive outlook hasn't cratered as much as his .215/.241/.323 slash line would suggest, but I doubt we'll be taking him anywhere near the same range of the draft next season.

Matt McLain, 2B/SS, Reds: McLain was hittting a horrendous .178/.273/.300 at the end of May, but he's pulled himself back from the brink with a .257/.350/.429 line in June, holding off a potential loss of playing time or demotion. Still, the awful start has taken a big bite out of McLain's projections, with older systems such as Steamer dropping him significantly as well (from 117 to 96). McLain flashed plenty of fantasy appeal by hitting .290/.357/.507 with 16 homers and 14 steals in 89 games as a rookie in 2023, but it was difficult to form an accurate assessment of him given that a torn labrum caused him to miss all of 2024, preventing us from seeing how he'd follow that up.

The confusing thing with McLain is that many of his underlying numbers still look much the same as they did in that promising rookie campaign. His 28.3 percent strikeout rate is poor, but it's a near match for his 28.5 percent mark as a rookie, and this time it comes with an above-average walk rate (10.1 percent) instead of a below-average one (7.7 percent). His barrel rate is down from 10.8 percent but still sits at a solid 8.2 percent, and his hard-hit rate has barely changed, going from 42.0 percent to 40.9 percent. 

It's tempting to view his big decline as being almost entirely BABIP-related, as he's gone from an unsustainably lucky .385 in that category to an unlucky .255, but the projections don't see it that way. Perhaps OOPSY is concerned about his 0.8-mph loss in bat speed, which may be contributing to his inability to pull the ball. At 29.8 percent, he's tied for the fifth-lowest pull rate among qualified hitters and sits five points below his 34.8 percent pull rate as a rookie. He's dropped still further to 24.5 percent in the month of June despite posting better surface stats.

Patrick Bailey, C, Giants: Most of the players on this list already weren't earning much (if any) fantasy interest, but given the lower offensive bar at catcher and his firm grip on a starting role, Bailey still had some value in deep two-catcher leagues, going 24th off the board at the position in NFBC drafts. If his updated projections are an accurate reflection of his ability, it's going to be hard to roster him anywhere. OOPSY has him slashing just .219/.285/.337 with five homers the rest of the way, though even that poor performance would represent a nice rebound from the .190/.256/.268 line with one homer that he's managed thus far.

Bailey's excellent glove is keeping him in the Giants' lineup in the regular basis, as he's actually been worth 1.2 fWAR despite his awful .190/.256/.268 slash line, but there's little reason to believe he can help fantasy teams going forward. He's making far less contact, with his strikeout rate spiking from 22.3 percent to 31.7 percent, and his hard-hit rate has dropped significantly as well, falling from 42.4 percent to 35.5 percent. His xBA according to Statcast is all the way down at .196, fourth-worst in the league. Toss in his very pitcher-friendly home park and it becomes hard to envision any fantasy format where Bailey would be viable other than a deep, two-catcher NL-Only league, where his steady workload at least means he'll give you more runs and RBI than a backup catcher would.