Surprise batters who could be for real

This is my weekly article for ESPN Insider.

It’s barely two weeks into the season and we are still within the period of insufficient sample sizes. Most batters have fewer than 40 plate appearances. Starting pitchers have appeared maybe three times. And yet, fantasy owners have been scouring the free agent pool for replacements, upgrades and speculations.

He who hesitates is lost, after all.

But some early performances are clearly outliers, some are clearly for real and some, well, who knows?

To validate the “who knows?” category, we can look to skills metrics, history and contextual changes. These are clues to that can support a player’s numbers. The following four players may have been drafted, or at minimum, already gobbled up by voracious prospectors. All are currently earning far more than expected. Are they gold, or fool’s gold?

(Minimum 30 plate appearances)

The career path of Tim Anderson (pictured) is not all that uncommon yet is one that often provides surprise fantasy profit. He was a highly ranked prospect (17th overall pick in 2013) who finished his minor league career as a .301 hitter. He swiped 49 bases for Double-A Birmingham in 2015, then made the leap to the bigs after a few months in Triple-A.

His rookie year wasn’t half bad; he hit .283 with nine home runs and 10 stolen bases. His sophomore campaign showed some growth, but his 17-HRs and 15-SBs were offset by a pedestrian .257 average. The bigger knock on Anderson has always been his lack of plate patience. In the minors, he walked only 4 percent of the time; that rate fell to 2.5 percent in his first two Major League seasons. All of that depressed his value coming into 2018. His ADP this past draft day was only 194.

But in the earlygoing, he’s showing a bit more patience, with four walks in 33 PAs (12 percent), helping to boost an on base average over .350. He already has three home runs and five stolen bases. Plate patience is a skill that can be learned, which makes his sudden surge potentially more sustainable. He won’t continue at his current $43 earnings pace, but he could well produce in the low $20s. Think: Trea Turner lite.

Matt Chapman clearly defined who he was during his minor league career – massive power, sub-.250 batting average. His peak minor league season was 2016 when he hit 36 HRs in only 135 games… and batted just .237.

His debut performance in the Majors offered no surprises – 290 at-bats, 14 HRs, .234 average. Despite being earmarked for a full-time job this spring, baseball’s power-rich environment relegated his skill set to an ADP of only 277.

Chapman has opened 2018 with his classic power, but a batting average of .375, enough to earn $25 thus far. After more than 1700 plate appearances with the same statistical profile, is there anything to these most recent 45 PAs?

Possibly. Chapman’s contact rate is up a full 10 points from last year, to 78 percent. We need a bit more time to validate the stability of that metric, but contact rate is one of the first stats to stabilize during a young season. If it’s for real, that growth would be significant.

Chapman’s hard contact rate is up over last year as well. Working against him, however, is a .430 BABIP which is sure to tail off. A .375 average is not realistic, and neither is a .300 level. But even a .275 average would make him a completely different ballplayer. Think: Justin Smoak.

Joe Panik is in his fifth Major League season, so by now we should know what he can do. His track record has shown consistent 10 HR power and a batting average with perhaps .300 potential. That empty productivity merited an ADP of 392 last month.

His early numbers – three homers and an average over .300 – are not too far from what we might expect over a small 36 PA sample. But there may be more sustainability here.

Panik has boasted a near-90 percent contact rate for his entire career, which provides a solid foundation. He made some mechanical adjustments at the plate this spring, which are already showing up in an elevated hard contact rate. His current 25 percent line drive rate is a career high.

It’s early, for sure, but these are the seeds of a potential breakout year. And batting at or near the top of the order will give him the playing time to fully display those skills. Think: Somewhere between Starlin Castro and Justin Turner.

Dansby Swanson was the No. 1 overall pick in 2015 and profiled as a future perennial .300 hitter with moderate power. He supported those expectations by batting .302 in his first 129 at-bats in the Majors and entered the 2017 season with an ADP of 185.

But Swanson came out of April 2017 with a .156 average and couldn’t push past .185 after two months. Though he batted .306 in June, he regressed in July and was demoted, eventually finishing the season at a disappointing .232.

That performance was enough to make him nearly irrelevant in 2018 drafts, his ADP falling outside the top 400. But he’s opened the season flirting with .350, which is not nearly as much of a surprise as his ADP would indicate.

His early contact rate is at a career high 81 percent. This is particularly encouraging given that he’s been more aggressive at the plate. Swanson’s BABIP is around .400, which does indicate some regression, but his profile as a potential .300 hitter does stand. Think: DJ LeMahieu.

BABS Notes: As most of you know, BABS was all over Anderson (S+,a) and he quickly bubbled up to the top of your draft lists. I rostered him in Tout Wars, and wrote: “Anderson is the only member of this high-end asset group, however his performance to date doesn’t seem to support BABS’ lofty optimism (she thinks he could earn 4-5 times what I paid for him). It’s a gamble, but I am curious what she sees in him.” It’s early, but we’ll see.

BABS was less enamored with Chapman (PW | -AV), Panik (AV) and Swanson (*) beyond their expected ratings. Frankly, this entire exercise is more about drawing eyeballs than conducting serious analysis. If you need to look at your league standings each morning this month, you should just play DFS. The small samples have about equal relevance to the big picture.