Aaron Judge (+10)
Tweaked the swing to pull the ball more in 2020, his Pull % is up to 65.5%, and the end result is 7 tanks so far this season. His contact rate hasn’t changed much, but he’s swinging at balls in the zone (76.2%) and especially meatballs (92.3%) at a rate much higher than his career averages. Batting 2nd in the order should give him a few more PAs over the course of the year as well. If he stole some bags he’d be an elite-tier player.
Xander Bogaerts (+2)
His batting eye is locked in early on. Specifically, he’s finding fastballs to hunt and kill (61.5% first-pitch swinging percentage is higher than his career average). He’s lining them up and driving them with authority (.824 SLG, .515 wOBA), and posting the highest barrel rate of his career thus far (10.3%). He’s cemented himself as the Red Sox cleanup hitter, and he’s surrounded by productive teammates who have had a rough start to the small sample of 2020 thus far.
Pete Alonso (-6)
The Polar Bear has scuffled a bit early on, but I’m not super concerned. He’s swinging over the ball at the moment, leading to a bunch of topped (40%) mishit balls and ground balls (46.7%). Alonso simply doesn’t have a track record of hitting the ball on the ground this much in his career, so I’d expect a pretty drastic swing back to fly balls at some point when he gets the timing worked out. Until his timing gets there he receives a light bump down the rankings.
Eloy Jimenez (+3)
Eloy has picked up in 2020 where he left off at the tail end of 2019. His initial rookie months were tough, as pitchers were feeding him breaking stuff low and away and Eloy was eager to swing the bat. But he made the adjustment, and looks like a potentially dominant hitter moving forward. His key Statcast metrics are all beautiful shades of red. He’s lethal on fastballs, whiffing only 7.1% of the time against them. And his whiff rates against breaking balls and offspeed pitches are down relative to 2019 as well.
Joey Gallo (+13)
If he’s going to keep swiping bags and hitting over .270, he’s a top-20 hitter. Just don’t hold your breath on either one. He’s whiffing at basically the same rate he has throughout his career, so I think some batting average correction is likely from this point moving forward. But he should still be moved up rankings.
Josh Donaldson (-6)
Slight downgrade for the calf injury, just in case it becomes a lingering issue. Baldelli said he’s “almost positive” that he’s joining the team on the road trip this weekend though.
Eugenio Suarez (-8)
The guy I own everywhere is just ice cold to start the season. Maybe I should have seen it coming a bit? His 14.0% barrel rate in 2019 looks like an outlier. He hit 49 home runs, but that came from converting 89% of his barrels into home runs--a more reasonable expectation is something in the 60-65% range. He’s mis-hitting the ball a lot so far this year but he’s especially getting under it, resulting in a rough 11.1% popup rate. On the positive side he’s still barreling the ball and talking walks at a double-digit rate. Keep being patient.
Edwin Encarnacion (-5)
Dealing with a shoulder issue this week, but it doesn’t like anything that will keep him out for an extended period of time. Slight downgrade.
Dansby Swanson (+15)
He still looks like he’s for real guys. He’s performing like a Top-10 fantasy hitter so far this season. And he’s batted second in the order on four occasions this week.
Mike Yastrzemski (NEW)
Sometimes this stuff can be simple. Mike Yaz has a career OPS of .880 now. His OPS is over 1.000 in 2020. You can deride OPS if you’d like, but it’s such a handy quick guide to evaluate hitter productivity for fantasy. .600/.700/.800/.850/.900/.1000. Under .700? Stay away. Over .800? Could be usable. Over .850? Grab him right away. Over 1.000? Hall of fame!
Trent Grisham (NEW)
The young center fielder has locked himself into hitting 2nd in the batting order between Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, so he will accumulate. He’s got a fantastic power/speed profile as well, so there’s potential 5-category production here. Give him an extra bump in OBP, sim, and points leagues as well.
Willie Calhoun (-16)
He’s just not been impressive early on. Close to dropping off the list completely.
Justin Upton (OUT)
The Jo Adell call-up has Upton moving into a possible timeshare with Brian Goodwin. Goodwin is out-performing Upton at the plate to begin the season, and is a far better defender as well. I moved him up last week, that was foolish. He’s out of the Top-100 for now.
Joey Votto (OUT)
His jump back onto our Top 100 was brief. He’s still flashing elite contact, making him a nice batting average buddy for a player who struggles in that regard. But he’s not hitting the ball with authority at all, and his Hard Hit % is in the bottom 5% of the league.