Is It Legit? 9/24/24: Victor Robles and Connor Norby

It seems like just yesterday we were preparing for fantasy drafts, honing in on our favorite sleepers, and letting our league-mates know just how badly they’d be crushed by our unbeatable fantasy squads this year. Somehow, twenty-six weeks later, we’ve arrived at the end of another fantasy baseball season. Whether all your leagues have wrapped up or you’re still fighting hard to bring home a trophy, let’s take a look at two players who have made large impacts in fantasy leagues over the past month to see if their impressive production is sustainable and whether we can trust them come 2025 draft season.

Victor Robles, OF, Seattle Mariners

Half a decade after Robles was one of baseball’s highest-ranked prospects, he’s finally performing well at the big league level, and it must feel like some cruel joke to Nationals’ fans. During his eight years in D.C., Robles slashed a paltry .236/.311/.356 with an OPS+ of just 81. After his long-time club finally released him in June, Robles made the cross-country move to the Pacific Northwest and looks like a brand new player, hitting .333/.399/.469 in 238 plate appearances for the Mariners.

That’s a batting line that’ll play in any fantasy format, but he’s been particularly valuable in category leagues as a threat to swipe a bag any time he reaches. He has 28 steals in Seattle, and his 32 on the season are the 10th most in the sport. Robles has been able to maintain his plus baserunning despite a continual decline in sprint speed. Although he was once an elite runner, now in his late 20s, his sprint speed has dropped to just the 59th percentile at 27.6 ft/sec.

Although stolen bases are Robles’ biggest fantasy contribution, it’s been his upturn at the plate that’s been turning heads. Since debuting in 2017, he’s only had two seasons of better-than-league-average production in terms of wRC+, but both of those seasons featured minuscule sample sizes: a 131 wRC+ in 66 PA in 2018 and a 113 wRC+ in 126 PA in 2023. In 238 PA as a Mariner, Robles’ wRC+ is 156. That’s the 12th highest wRC+ in baseball since he made his Seattle debut on June 5th.

Robles has gotten to the strong results without much change in terms of his batted ball distribution. All of his batted ball types and his pull rate as a Mariner are within two percentage points of his career averages:

Although Robles hasn’t changed how he’s distributing his batted balls, he has made a huge change to how hard he’s hitting them. His 7.5% barrel rate is by far the highest of his career and is right in line with the league average mark. Other batted ball metrics don’t paint as rosy a picture, though. Robles’ 29.9% hard-hit rate is the second-highest of his career but is still in the bottom quartile of hitters. Both his 33.7% ICR and 23.7% IPA% are also in the bottom 25 percent of batters.

Taking a look at PLV metrics, Process+ is not buying into Robles’ sudden breakout.

After an early surge that looked somewhat legitimate, Robles has fallen off pretty much across the board. His decisions have worsened, his contact ability has hovered around average, and as we’ve already seen, there’s almost no power to be found in his profile.

Since the beginning of his Mariner career, Robles’ .399 OBP is the sixth-highest in baseball, but it seems to be more of a factor of a high BABIP than it does good plate discipline. Let’s give him credit for his 17.2% strikeout rate which is over five points better than his career clip, but the way he’s getting there is questionable. He’s an aggressive swinger, offering at more pitches than 90% of batters, and both his contract and swinging strike rates are below average. That’s not the typical underlying numbers you see from a hitter with a 72nd percentile punch-out rate. Most of that stellar OBP seems to be coming from his unsustainable .396 BABIP.

Verdict: Not Legit. Robles looks a whole lot less like a post-hype breakout than he does respectable fourth outfielder. Seattle’s putrid offensive showing this season has pushed Robles into everyday duties that he’s made the most of, but this isn’t success I think will be replicated in 2025 even if the Mariners do plan on him being a big part of their lineup entering the new year. If your fantasy league is still playing the final week of the season, feel free to pick him up and ride out what’s left of this hot streak, especially if you need some stolen base help. He’s available in 65% of Yahoo! leagues and 92% of ESPN leagues.

Connor Norby, 2B/3B, Miami Marlins

Norby has hit the ground running after landing in Miami as part of the return for Trevor Rogers at the Trade Deadline. In 130 plate appearances, Norby is slashing an impressive .271/.331/.517 with seven home runs, 26 runs, 16 RBI, and three stolen bases. That’s about a 35 homer/15 stolen base pace with a 130 wRC+ to boot.

PLV likes what it’s seen during Norby’s tenure in the Sunshine State, particularly giving him excellent Decisions and Power grades.

A word of caution: we’re dealing with a small sample here. Norby has just 39 big league games under his belt, so this exercise is like trying to make a decisive call on a player breaking out in late April/early May. It’s almost impossible. What we can decipher though is that Norby’s excellent start is right in line with what we’ve seen from him in the minor leagues. In 375 plate appearances with Baltimore’s Triple-A affiliate this season, Norby hit a stellar .297/.389/.519. He did struggle in a much smaller sample with Miami’s Triple-A squad, but a .711 OPS over a miniscule 65 plate appearances with the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp is loaded with noise.

One of Norby’s best tools is his hit quality. Although he has a middling hard-hit rate, his 15.2% barrel rate would rank in the 97th percentile of batters if he qualified for leaderboards. Similarly, his LA Sweet-Spot% is one of the best in the game at 47.5%. Putting the barrel on the ball at productive launch angles is an award-winning recipe for success, but there is a downside made obvious in the Process+ chart above – Norby doesn’t make contact often enough.

Contact, or the lack of it, is the major flaw we can hone in on in Norby’s profile. His 33.2% chase%, 33% whiff%, and 32.1% strikeout rate all rank among the bottom 20 percent of hitters. He’s particularly struggled to catch up to four-seamers swinging through 28.1% of the ones he’s seen. He’s not just swinging through four-seamers though, he also isn’t doing much with them, particularly at the edges of the strike zone. Even in his small sample of at-bats, he’s already generated a -11 run value on all pitches in the shadow zone. Here’s a good look at where he’s succeeding against four-seamers, and it’s pretty much middle of the zone, low, or bust.

Another encouraging area for Norby is his speed. His 29.2 ft/sec sprint speed is 94th percentile, but he’s just 3 for 5 in stolen base attempts. We know that aside from speed, stolen bases are almost entirely a factor of deciding to run. Miami’s middle of the pack in stolen bases this season, but with Skip Schumaker’s departure looking likelier by the day, fantasy managers will have to hope that Miami’s new managerial hire will give the perpetual green light to runners on base. Norby easily has the speed to swipe 20 bags in a season given the opportunity, but he’ll have to cut down on how often he’s caught to be given the green light.

Verdict: Legit tools with highs and lows. Norby’s a player I’m already excited about drafting next spring, but I don’t think consistency will be the name of his game. It’s unfair to expect a rookie to not go through ups and downs, but with big power and speed yet dangerous swing-and-miss, I expect you’ll love rostering Norby when he’s hot while ruing the day you drafted him during his downturns. If your league is playing out the final week of the year, he’s a great power option to fill out a middle-infield spot.

Featured image by Doug Carlin (@Bdougals on Twitter)