2021 Review: Hitter Average Distance FB+LD Laggards

Yesterday, I listed and discussed the leaders in average distance of fly balls and line drives (ADFBLD). Let’s now flip to the laggards.

As you might imagine, I had to go deeper into the laggards to find enough surprising or interesting names to discuss. Most of these guys are obvious, but some are not.

I found Yonny Hernandez pretty intriguing last year when he was recalled. He wasn’t a top prospect, but has walked at insane rates in the minors, and combined that with super low SwStk% marks. His strikeout rates were good, but not great, likely because of his extreme patience, which I’m guessing has led to a higher rate of called strikeouts. He has excellent speed, stealing as many as 46 bases in the minors in a year. What he doesn’t have, though, is power. He hit just four home runs during his professional career, going back to 2015. So while his appearance on this list is no surprise, as a result, it gave me an opportunity to discuss his name, since it was easy to forget he debuted after his .265 wOBA. With the Rangers making over their middle infield, his path to playing time got far more difficult. But if he finds himself with regular at-bats again, I’m interested, especially in OBP leagues.

Yeah yeah, we know Nick Madrigal has little power. The question now as he starts his journey on the North side of Chicago with the Cubs is whether he’ll start running again. The intrigue here was the potential for a strong batting average, combined with steals. The batting average was there before he got hurt, but he had stolen only one base. Without any power, he needs to steal double digit bases, or he’ll be a one category guy.

Franchy Cordero qualifies as the first surprise on this list and a real shocker. While he has a number of flaws, including staying healthy, power hadn’t been one of them. Somehow, Cordero managed just a mid-single digit HR/FB rate, .071 ISO, and one homer over 127 at-bats. Has he run out of chances? It’s possible. That’s unfortunate, because he also owns speed and I was really curious to see what a full season of at-bats would bring us.

According to RosterResource, Derek Hill figures to open the season on the short side of a platoon with Akil Baddoo. Hill has shown excellent speed in the minors, while posting double digit HR/FB rates during his time at both Double-A and Triple-A, so the potential is there for a nice little speed and power mix. His flies and liners didn’t travel very far, but surprisingly, he posted a better than average Barrel FB%. Combine that with some other strong metrics, and he actually underperformed his xHR/FB rate. So I wouldn’t be totally scared off by this low ADFBLD, though I would think the other metrics are a bit more fluky and harder to sustain to keep up that xHR/FB rate. Strikeouts are an issue, especially since it doesn’t walk often, but the speed alone means he’s worth a look in deep leagues if he falls into regular playing time.

J.P. Crawford continues to appear on lists that suggest limited power, and for some reason, it continues to surprise me. While he only posted double digit HR/FB rates (and just barely) twice during his minor league career, I figured his power would grow and he would be posting double digit marks in the Majors by now. The problem here is that he doesn’t steal many bases and actually stole fewer bases this past season than he had in each of the two previous in like double the PAs. So if he’s not stealing bases, his power will need to blossom to be worth caring about in anything but deep leagues.