For most of the season, we have focused on players who fell into the bargain bucket more than we have looked at players who could be considered stars. Largely because I am not doing you a service by talking about players that you are already very familiar with and are going to be rostered in 90 percent of leagues or better. However, with the end of the season quickly approaching it’s a good time to take a closer look at some players who live higher on the food chain and may have been drafted in the first few rounds this year, to get an understanding of if they are going to be worthy of high selections next season. 

 

 

 

Fantasy Baseball Player Spotlight: Kyle Tucker

We are starting that this week with the suddenly red-hot Kyle Tucker. Tucker had an ADP this season of 13.4 and was a little higher than that in NFBC leagues at 10. Coming into the season, Tucker was seen as a player who could go 20/20 and hit for an average that could be close to .300 but might be a floor for his average putting him more in the .275 range. He has largely done what his owners had hoped, he could finish the season with 30 home runs, and close to 25 steals, but his average has dropped significantly from .294 he had last season all the way to .259. He still has about six weeks to bring that average up further, and given that he is hitting .400 over the last two weeks, it wouldn’t be crazy to think that he could still bring his average up 10 points and put it right in line with his floor.

All of these numbers sound great and certainly seem worthy of a first-round pick. If his batting average was to bounce back closer to something in the .300 range, he could be a top-five pick with how valuable his combination of average/OBP (he does walk 15 percent of the time too), power, and speed are  — all while playing in an extremely potent Houston Astros lineup. You have to really start to nitpick to find flaws even in Tucker’s advanced stats. You can say that his launch angle is too high (20 degrees), and that is likely a catalyst to him having an 8.7 percent infield flyball rate (IFFB), which is twice as high as his 2021 number. That increase will account for some of the decline in batting average we have seen this season.

 

 

 

The other most likely factor in his batting average decline is likely a bit of bad luck, as his BABIP (batting average on balls in play) has dropped 40 points this season over his previous two years. Outside of his sprint speed (which is low and makes me question his ability to steal a lot of bases long-term), everything in Tucker’s profile backs him being a legit fantasy superstar. He is in the 70th percentile of maximum exit velocity, xwOBA, xSLG, xAVG, barrel percentage, strikeout percentage, walk percentage and whiff percentage.

Moving into next season, Kyle Tucker should be seen as a legit first-round fantasy star. His combination of power, speed and batting average have very few peers (we are talking Ronald Acuna Jr, Trea Turner territory here), so if we see his ADP continue to be back closer to the first round that is a value we should be very satisfied to take him at, and in higher stakes leagues I think there is an argument to be made for him to be in the top five, as it isn’t hard to see how his batting average could find itself back into the .285+ range simply just by having his BABIP normalize next season, and if he can move up a bit in the Astros lineup the added at-bats could also lead to increased counting stats as well. I don’t think anyone is forgetting about Kyle Tucker at this point, but you certainly shouldn’t be shy about taking him early and often moving into next year.
 

 



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