Collette Calls: Will These Players Pan Out?

Our in-season projections say Harper will be the ninth-most valuable batter the rest of the season, projecting him to hit 16 homers, drive in 48 runs, score 51 times, steal five bases and hit .286. The first four numbers pass the sniff test, but that last number should grab your attention as it is 68 points higher than his current batting average. It is not an unattainable number as Harper has hit .319 or higher in two of the last three seasons, sandwiching his disappointing .243 season in 2016.

The easiest thing to do is look at Harper's BABIP and believe better days are ahead. His.228 BABIP is a career low and nearly 90 points lower than his career average of .314:

That line has been above .300 more often than not, so there should be some hope. His expected batting average by StatCast is .258, which would be a 40-point improvement. Last season, as well as in 2015, Harper overperformed his expected batting average by 32 and 44 points, respectively. Only in 2016 were his expected batting average and actual batting average within single digits of one another.

The larger problem for Harper has been that when he has played into the shift with a pulled ground ball to the right side, it has been about as successful as Confederate blockade runners in the Civil War:

Harper does use all parts of the outfield when he hits the ball out there, but nearly everything he has put into play on the infield has gone to the right side. Harper is 1-for-72 on the season with infield ground balls and has a 198-point difference between his .211 expected batting average under those circumstances and his actual .013 average.

In short, things should get better for Harper the rest of the way because it will be very tough to remain this unlucky over the course of a full season.

Even Gattis is good proof of that. On May 11, Gattis owned a .196/.264/.278 batting line while striking out 29 percent of the time. A .277 BABIP did not present much hope, but a 4 percent HR/FB against the backdrop of a 1.4 groundball-to-flyball raio did. Those are two numbers that have never been present in Gattis's career, so clearly something was amiss with baseball's version of Braun Strowman.

StatCast offered no relief saying that the poor quality of contact was legit as his xwOBA and wOBA were perfectly aligned. Simply put, Gattis was making a lot of poor contact, and when it was not on the ground, it was not going very far either:

That is no longer the case. Since Mothers' Day weekend, Gattis has hit .285/.337/.640 with 17 home runs, 54 runs driven in and has reduced his strikeout rate 10 percentage points and has his groundball-to-flyball ratio back to a more familiar 0.55. He stopped hitting balls into the ground and has been hitting them harder as well as further:

The launch angle charts below show Gattis in both phases of the above chart, and it seems inconceivable those two images represent the same player within a season:

How does a pitcher who has lived below the league-wide strikeout average for the last three seasons suddenly surge past it like this?

It certainly is not a velocity thing, because Zimmermann's average fastball velocity continues to decline after a slight bounce last year. Gone as his days of sitting in the mid-90s:

He has made a bit of a shift on the pitching mound as he now starts about four inches further toward the first base side of the rubber than he did the last few seasons. This was something he discussed doing in a late August 2017 article after yet another disappointing outing that season:

His latest outing – Friday against the Dodgers – was a second consecutive struggle, in which he once again tinkered with his delivery with hopes of shaking what has been an otherwise subpar season. As the Dodgers kept piling up hits – they doubled six times – he moved his starting point on the pitching rubber from the third base side to the first base side for the first time in his career.

"It just feels like I can't get the extension and get over on that side of the plate," he said afterward. "So my next move is to move over on the rubber and we'll see how it goes but I feel very confident it will be a smooth transition."

Yet, that combination of moving on the rubber and re-emphasizing his slider has clicked well this season when he has been able to pitch. Zimmermann has dialed back the usage of his declining velocity fastball and has ramped up the usage of his slider this year:

Zimmermann has more shape to his slider this year as the pitch is whiff rate on the pitch he had back when he was last fantasy relevant with the Nationals. There is the secret sauce in what has helped turn a pitcher with a very below average strikeout rate into one with an above average strikeout rate, and a pitcher who is returning quite a bit of value when he pitches. He has made just 11 starts, but is an unblemished 4-0 with a 3.51 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP in those outings. His $0 value comes from the fact he has worked only 56.1 innings this season, but he is just one of 20 pitchers in baseball (min 50 IP) who can claim at least a 25 percent strikeout rate and a strikeout-minus-walk rate higher 20 percent: