2017 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Wil Myers

Wil Myers
26 years old
Bats/Throws: R/R 
Height/Weight: 6’3”, 200 lbs
Position: First Base
THE NUMBERS

THE SKILLS

Here’s what I wrote about Myers last season in his 2016 Player Profile (in italics).

Myers is still just 25 years old.

He has the pedigree of future all-star.

He’s been waylaid by injury.

He’s cut his strikeout rate a bit.

He’s upped his walk rate a bit (10.7 percent last year versus 9.5 for his career).

He will qualify at first base and the outfield in most leagues.

Alas, he doesn’t steal bases. He doesn’t hit for average. He doesn’t drive the ball into the seats with enough frequency to be a prime target in 2016. A Mark Canha season, with health, would appear to be the low end of expectations in 2016 with the upside to pull off a Shin-Soo Choo type effort.

Yep, Myers was a Choo type performer last season going 20/20 since he did indeed steal those bases. Let’s get right to it – the steals – the unforeseen level of performance booster that he reached last season.

Let me reiterate what was written above. Here are Myers yearly steals totals since becoming a pro:

2, 12, 9, 6, 12, 9, 7 and 28

So, prior to last season, if we remove his 2009 effort (he only appeared in 22 games), Myers had averaged 9.1 steals a season. He tripled that mark last season. No one ever predicted that Myers would be a 20-steal man in the big leagues. After attempting 21 steal attempt his first three seasons, over 235 games, he ran 34 times in 157 games last season. Let’s look at Speed Score. Created by Bill James, it rates players based on their speed and base running skills. Over at Fangraphs, a mark of 4.5 is average and a mark over 6.0 is an all-star effort. Myers was subpar his first two seasons at 3.3 and 3.8, but the last two years the mark has been 5.4 and 6.3. Speed Score supports the increased running. Logic though says pump the breaks at least a bit, expect half of last year’s total, and be pumped up if he swipes 20.

Myers had all that success last season, but folks seem to have missed that he’s still a flawed hitter. Myers hit .259 last season, a 3-year high, and nearly a direct match to his .257 career mark. Myers has hit .261 against lefties and .258 against righties in his young career. He hasn’t hit either side very well. The metrics suggest not much is likely to change. Myers has a .313 career BABIP (.305 last season). Myers has a 19.2 percent line drive rate (21.4 last season). Myers had a 0.43 BB/K ratio last season (career 0.41). That’s just a few ticks above the league average. Myers had a 33.6 percent hard hit ball rate last season, just 82^nd out of 143 qualifiers last season (his career rate is 34.5). I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that he hit just .223 his last 70 games in ’16. He didn’t exactly finish on a hot streak and that’s yet another level of concern.

It’s true that the baseball community always though that Myers had the bat to hit 30 homers, so it’s hardly a shock that he went deep 28 times. Can he replicate that effort in 2017? Certainly, but there are some concerns.

1 – Myers hit nine homers in the second half last season. Nine. His slugging percentage also dropped to a sickly .381. 

2 – For his career that Myers has a mere .396 SLG, a below league average rate, against left-handed pitching.

3 – Myers has a 34.6 percent fly ball rate for his career. That’s an exact match for the league average. Last year, despite the 28 homers, the fly ball rate fell a tad to 33.9 percent. It’s very hard to hit 30 homers with a mark that low (Myers was 90^th out of 146 qualifiers). A few guys manage to pull off the feat every year – Hanley Ramirez, Yasmany Tomas – but it’s just not easy to do since the players are dependent on their HR/FB ratio. Is this the hitter that Myers is? Kinda think it is. Check out the ground ball rates each of his four seasons: 46.0, 48.1, 47.6, 44.7. That’s a lot of grounders. Myers posted a 4-year best in the HR/FB category at 18.7 percent in ‘16. That’s four percent above his 14.5 percent career mark. If Myers drops back to his career level, a very fair position to take, it will be difficult for him to hit 25+ homers in 2017 unless he changes his approach.

4 – Myers didn’t exactly crush the ball, in terms of distance, last year. Myers had one “No Doubt” homer in 2016. Anthony Gose had two. Myers had six homers designated as “Just Enough” (to see what these terms mean check out All About the Home Run). Amongst players who hit at least 18 homers last season, Myers was 57^th out of 117 with an average of 403.0 feet per homer. Pretty much exactly at the middle point of those 18 homer bats.

5 – Myers has been beset by a few injuries over the years as well. It usually hasn’t been his wheels though as he dealt with a right wrist issue in 2014 (80 days on the shelf) and a left wrist situation in 2015 (104 days). Though he played 157 games last season he’s far from being removed from “injury risk” category after just one healthy effort in three seasons.

PLAYING TIME

Myers played 149 games at first base last season, one at third (for an inning), and appeared in 10 games (six starts) in the outfield. Hence, in the vast majority of leagues he will only qualify as a first baseman in 2017.

CONCLUSION

Myers is a fantasy star in some folk’s eyes. Those folks seem to be “buying” the steals and overlooking the concerns with his batting average. He’s more Carlos Santana than Paul Goldschmidt. Don’t forget that fact.

10-Team Mixed: You can’t simply turn away from a first baseman with 20/20 potential. At the same time, you’ve read about the concerns above so avoiding getting into a bidding war in a league this shallow makes a lot of sense.

12-Team Mixed: Counting category production should be there with Myers. The concerns about fly ball rates, the homer rate, and the massive steals increase should, again, cause some pause. There’s plenty to like here though making him a first base option, starting style, in this format without question.

15-Team Mixed: Myers lack of average hurts a bit less here making the rest of his game stand up a bit more.

NL-Only League: He’s a second tier first sacker in this format. Even with a pullback in homers and steals, a potential 20/20 run, even with a lowish batting average, still marks him as someone you can roster with nary a real concern.

Also, here’s a link to the award winning Player Profile Series.

Ray Flowers can be heard Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday, 8 PM EDT, Wednesday 7 PM EDT on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 9 PM EDT PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).