The calendar hasn’t even flipped to September and I’m already champing at the bit with regard to doing an MLB and fantasy baseball season recap. I’ll show some restraint for now as I still need to see how the Dodgers handle the return of Clayton Kershaw and whether Giancarlo Stanton can clear the 60-homer threshold. But one takeaway from the season I did want to mention was how we really need to start handling these first half monsters and what we should expect from them in the second half.
Listen, I get it. It’s really easy to get caught up in the hype of what a young player is doing and the desire to own someone who is clearly in the midst of a breakout campaign. When Aaron Judge was raking throughout the entire first half of the season, I was all-in on the young slugger. I actually said back in late June that if Judge wins the Home Run Derby, he’s going to go on and lead the league in home runs, win AL Rookie of the Year and, unless the award went to Chris Sale, would also earn AL MVP honors. Brash? Yes? Bold? For sure? Right? Not at all.
Actually, the voting still could land him the Rookie of the Year honors, but this second-half debacle is going to be fresh in everyone’s minds come voting time. Nevertheless, Judge’s .179-7-16 second half should serve as a testament to pumping the brakes on the excitement when a young player, in this case a rookie, starts posting numbers never seen before. I mean, in my defense, I expected some drop-off, for sure, but I honestly didn’t think he’d go into the tank THIS badly.
Mind you, I’m not jumping off this kid’s bandwagon. Not at all. He was able to put up a .329-30-26 first half for a reason. He was able to effortlessly cruise through and win the Derby for a reason. But the spotlight, the over-excitement, the pitching adjustments made and the psychological impact of a slump are a lot to deal with and that’s not even touching on the fact that it was all on the biggest stage in the baseball universe.
There is definitely middle ground here and just as Judge learned to hone his plate discipline between 2016 and 2017, he will learn his lessons from this season and be a better ballplayer as a result. We as fantasy owners, though, need to make sure that we too learn from this season and make sure that when potentially faced with something similar, we don’t make the same mistakes. We need to become better fantasy players and learn from this season.
Another great example from this season is Reds outfielder Scott Schebler and this one, I actually got right. I know I wasn’t alone in saying he was this year’s Adam Duvall, but the comp was dead-on-balls accurate. Schebler posted a .254-22-44 first half this season which was eerily similar to Duvall’s .249-23-61 during the first half of 2016. Schebler’s plate discipline and peripherals were slightly better, but everything about these two made you wonder if there was some baby mix-up at the hospital and the twins were somehow separated.
For those who failed to listen to the comparisons, they either stuck with or traded for the Reds 26-year old outfielder and have now been saddled with a .193-4-12 batting line since the All Star break, and that includes his grand slam from Tuesday night. The power drop-off has been awful and everything about his game at the plate makes his owners wish they could go back in time and re-work their trade deadline moves.
Let’s face it – it’s a long season. Long and grueling. It’s extremely tough on youngsters who simply aren’t used to the daily grind of being an MLB player. They will eventually, but it’s tough to see the forest through the trees when you’re that young, that inexperienced and have that much adrenaline pumping through your body. And it’s not just the youngsters who have a tough time dealing with sustaining their level of play. Look at some of the guys like Yonder Alonso, Jose Ramirez, Ryan Zimmerman and Corey Dickerson. They were first-half heroes this season and none of them are following through with a strong first half. Pitchers too. Look at Michael Fulmer, Jimmy Nelson, Jordan Montgomery just to name a few. The season is long and taxing and it’s tough for these players to maintain throughout the season. That’s what makes guys like Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, Mike Trout and Paul Goldschmidt so special. Not only do they keep it going all year, but they also do it year after year.
Now this isn’t meant to be a piece that craps on young players and says you shouldn’t buy into them. This is more about hedging your expectations, understanding what it takes to win a fantasy baseball league and learning from mistakes we’ve seen made over and over again. It’s unbelievably easy to fall in love with your players who are producing. Unbelievably easy. But we need to make sure that we’re not taking that love and enthusiasm and projecting it onto what we should truly expect from a player.
Aaron Judge has always been a strikeout machine and all the wishing in the world wasn’t going to change that. The handwriting was already on the wall but images of 50 bombs danced through our heads and clouded our judgement. It’s certainly not the worst thing in the world to happen to us. We just have to make sure we learn from it and when we look to draft Rhys Hoskins next year, we judge him for who he is, not for who we want him to be.