Welcome back to my final edition of the “Is It Legit” series for this season! Because of how little time remains in the regular season, I’ve opted to do a retrospective on the players I featured this year. I find it a good way to keep myself accountable while learning from my successes and mistakes, though I hope that the former are larger in number than the latter.
This year, I covered 21 players, 10 hitters and 11 pitchers, across 10 iterations of the series. In 12 instances, I believed that the player’s performance was either “legit” or “possibly legit.” I came to the conclusion that someone was “not legit” or “probably not legit” eight times, with one player receiving a determination of “too early to tell” back in April. Below are two tables (one for hitters and one for pitchers) showing each player’s stats since the day before the article date and a verdict on whether I was right or wrong in my conclusion regarding the legitimacy of their strong performance. In coming to a verdict, I considered what each player’s stat line would look like when extrapolated to 600 plate appearances and made a decision in the context of both their performance to date and preseason expectations. I used the day before publication because my articles were submitted prior to the completion of the previous day’s games. These stats are updated through the games of Monday, September 14.
Correct (10): Brice Turang, Miguel Vargas, Brandon Marsh, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Cam Schlittler, Bryce Elder, Brandon Young, Trevor Rogers, Jesús Luzardo, Brandon Pfaadt
Incorrect (8): Oneil Cruz, Josh Jung, Otto Lopez, Alec Burleson, Emerson Hancock, Randy Vásquez, Eduardo Rodriguez, Bryce Miller
Push (3): Chase DeLauter, Nick Gonzales, Foster Griffin
Of the 12 times where I had more conviction in the player and believed their breakout to be at least somewhat legitimate, six were correct, one was a push, and five were wrong. Among the eight more pessimistic prognostications, four were correct, two were pushes, and two were incorrect. Lastly, there’s Oneil Cruz, who continued to excel on both sides of a long-term injury, so I’m marking my “too early to call” a loss for that one. Chase DeLauter and Nick Gonzales get graded “Push” because they continued to be decent but not exceptional or awful after being featured. As for Foster Griffin, he was incredible for a couple of months after my article before falling apart after being traded to the Guardians at the deadline (22 ER in 33.1 IP). His overall numbers since the publication date are poor enough that one could argue I was correct, but he was beneficial to have in your lineup for so long that I believe that would be a disingenuous verdict.
In my review, I noticed that on the hitting side, I only came down on the negative side for two of the 10 players profiled. Given that my forecasts were more diverse and also more accurate on the pitching side, maybe I should’ve been more skeptical when it comes to hitters like Josh Jung, Alec Burleson, and Otto Lopez. To be sure, Burleson and Lopez are a cut above Jung, but they all have somewhat lengthy track records of serviceable, but not exceptional, fantasy production. Jung has an ugly injury history as well, and that problem reared its head again down the stretch, squashing any hopes of a 2026 breakout.
As for my biggest miss of the year, Cruz could have easily been it had he stayed healthy, but I will have to go with Eduardo Rodriguez. I felt nearly certain that the bottom was going to fall out on him expeditiously. Instead, he’s positioned to end the season in the top 10 in ERA among qualified pitchers. He might not be much of an asset in strikeouts and WHIP, but you’ll take 15 wins and a sub-3.00 ERA from a free agent add every day of the week. I don’t think E-Rod’s resurgence is going to cause me to change my process altogether, but it might make me more open to command-focused veterans who are on a good run. Nick Martinez, Michael Wacha, and Cal Quantrill are two other guys who fit that bill this year despite lacking whiffs. On the other hand, Seth Lugo and Merrill Kelly have been burning managers all season.
Overall, I’m pleased that I was right more often than I was wrong while also spreading out my conclusions relatively evenly across the spectrum. I think it also makes sense that I was more accurate as the season went on, including nailing my final four pitching calls. Later in the season, you have more sample size to evaluate, making it easier to separate the signal from the noise. I want to end my contributions to this series this year with a word of caution. While I used only part of the season’s stats for my samples here, the whole thing matters! Don’t cross a player off of your draft board for having a bad August and/or September if he was great before the All-Star Break. Had you done so this year, that would have left you with no shares of Pete Crow-Armstrong, James Wood, and CJ Abrams.
