2017 Fantasy Baseball Player Profile: Brandon Drury

Brandon Drury

24 years old

Bats/Throws: R/R

Height/Weight: 6’1”, 190 lbs

Position: Outfield, Third Base

THE NUMBERS

Minor League Overall Rankings.

THE SKILLS

Drury doesn’t have a standout skill, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to look his way which will be enumerated below.

Let’s look just at the numbers he’s posted in 154 career games. Given that he’s likely to play second base this season, see below, how does his 5x5 line of .275-16-53-59-1 stack up amongst second baseman in 2016? Here are the only second baseman to have hit all five numbers last season: Ian Kinsler, Daniel Murphy, Jose Altuve, Jason Kipnis and Jean Segura. It’s a pretty small list.

Drury posted a .285/.333/.439 slash line over 641 minor league games. Is he that type of hitter? In his young big league career the numbers are .275/.321/.449 which is roughly the same as his minor-league work with the slight downturn we expect during the transition to the big leagues.

Drury has posted a mere 0.31 BB/K ratio in the bigs. That’s below the league average the last two years is 0.39. It’s not because of the strikeouts, but the lack of walks. Drury has a 5.9 percent walk rate through 154 games which is below the 7.9 percent rate the league has the last two seasons. A bit more discernment would go a long way toward solidifying his outlook as a strong daily option.
 
Drury posted a solid .327 BABIP last season, with a league average 20.3 percent line drive rate. His hard hit ball rate of 32.9 percent was slightly above the 31.4 percent league average. He could stand to hit the ball to the opposite field a bit more as his 46 percent pull rate is a bit elevated. Nothing impressive, nothing alarming. 

Though he hit only 16 homers, don’t overlook the fact that Brandon showed a nice skill set when it comes to power. In just 461 at-bats he posted a solid .458 SLG thanks to those big flies and 31 doubles. He also posted a .176 Isolated Power mark which was above the .162 league average rate. 

Drury is going to need to keep the damage quotient up because of the fact that he hits an awful lot of ground balls. Last season his ground ball rate was 50.1 percent to lower his career mark to 50.8 percent. Given that the league average was 44.7 percent last season in the ground ball column, you can see just how much work Drury has to do in order to be viewed as a legitimate 20 homer bat. Of the 18 batters who qualified for the batting title, and posted a ground ball rate of 50 percent, there were only a handful of guys who went deep 20 times last season: Eric Hosmer 58.9 percent, and 25 HRs), Christian Yelich (56.5 and 21), Ryan Braun (55.7 and 30), Wilson Ramos (54.2 and 22), Ian Desmond (53.4 and 22), Jean Segura (53.1 and 20), Carlos Correa (50.1 and 20). Drury could hit 20, but appreciably more is highly unlikely, even with his 15.1 career HR/FB ratio, unless he starts to lift the baseball more. If he does that then his batting average would be at risk. 

Look at the splits. The only negative comes in his away numbers which are pretty poor. Would also suggest if he’s at home, against a righty, in the second half, you want him active. 

As for the speed on the bases, not much to like there as he’s simply a relative nothing in the steals department. 

PLAYING TIME

Brandon Drury appeared in 94 games in the outfield last season (79 starts), 29 at third base (25 starts) and 16 games at second (eight starts). The Diamondbacks current plan is for Jake Lamb to play third and for the outfield to be Yasmany Tomas, A.J. Pollock and David Peralta. That leaves second base as the likely full-time home for Drury. If that is indeed the play with Drury, that means he will qualify at three positions in 2017. 

"We've simplified it for him," manager Torey Lovullo said. "He's not bouncing all over the place. We told him that [second base] is where he needs to focus. I think it's helped him this offseason prepare for this moment. He's looked very good. He's very agile, good angles to the ball, playing through the ball, all the common phrases that you like to hear from an infield standpoint. I've been very impressed with his quickness in turning two. I see a guy that's really agile right now."

Drury did spend the offseason working on his agility to full-fill the role of playing second base full-time. "In the past, I always trained really hard, probably not as smart as I should have, so this offseason, I really tried to train as smart as I could to be the best baseball player I could be." Drury lost 10 lbs this offseason while gaining strength and muscle. 

AVERAGE DRAFT POSITION DATA

As of this writing, here the ADP data for Drury.

The positional rank for the NFBC relates to the outfield.

The positional rank for the MDA relates to the outfield. 

Fantasy Alarm Player Rankings

CONCLUSION

Is he really any different than Logan Forsythe who has an ADP of 225 (NFBC)? I don’t think so. Drury’s offensive game isn’t sexy, but as a multi-position player, who is on the cusp of adding a third defensive spot, he’s a very appealing draft day target that many aren’t talking enough about. 

10-Team Mixed: No reason to look his way here unless you just want to wait to make him your last offensive player on the bench because of his positional flexibility.

12-Team Mixed: There aren’t any standout skills, but solid is as solid does. He should play in this format, even if he’s not a breakout candidate. 

15-Team Mixed: You can make the argument that he’s a solid middle infield option in this format especially, stop me if you’ve heard this, cause of all the gloves he’s eligible to wear. 

NL-Only League: That flexibility is huge. A 2B/3B/OF who gets 500 plate appearances should at least be a $10 player. 

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).