Welcome back to our Patience or Panic series! For my last installation of the regular season, I’ve opted to look back and evaluate how I did with my hitter recommendations this year. I did something similar last year and found it to be instructive, not to mention a good way to keep myself accountable. After all, what good does it do anyone if I dive into players’ profiles, predict how I think they’ll do the rest of the season, and then don’t check to see how it went? Let’s dive in.
I provided Patience or Panic recommendations on 15 hitters this season. Four times, I called for patience, but panicking was much more frequent, with 11 instances. Below is a table showing each player’s stats since the article date and a verdict on whether I was right or wrong in my conclusions. 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 also ran the list by fellow PL staff writers to make sure I wasn’t off base with any of my conclusions. Some players are marked “Push” if it seemed too close to call or “Incomplete” if they suffered an injury or were covered very recently. The date range of the stats goes from the day before publication through the games of Monday, September 22. I use the day before publication instead of the day of because my articles were submitted prior to the completion of the previous day’s games.
Correct (7): Rafael Devers, Willson Contreras, Royce Lewis, Xander Bogaerts, Jung Hoo Lee, Jac Caglianone, Ceddanne Rafaela
Incorrect (3): Ozzie Albies, Freddie Freeman, Kyle Tucker
Push/Incomplete (5): Dylan Crews, Marcus Semien, Yainer Diaz, Lawrence Butler, Teoscar Hernández
To provide a further breakdown, of the 11 instances where I recommended “Panic,” three were correct, three were incorrect, and five were pushes or incomplete. As for “Patience,” I went a perfect four for four! That tells me I may be sounding the alarm bells a little too often, which is something I also noticed about myself last year. It wouldn’t make sense to shoot for a certain Patience to Panic ratio, but the “Incorrect” list being composed of three well-established veterans tells me I might want to place a little more weight on historical track record as opposed to recent production. After all, that was the case for basically all the guys for whom I recommended patience. As for Royce Lewis, he started stealing bags out of nowhere, so I can’t take too much credit for that one.
My Biggest Miss
I am happy to announce that no one made me look as foolish as Corbin Carroll and Jackson Chourio did last year when I called for panic in response to their slow starts. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Kyle Tucker seemed to be heading in that direction before going down with a calf injury less than two weeks after I featured him. That leaves Freddie Freeman as my clearest whiff. In my breakdown of Freeman, I highlighted a nagging ankle injury, the worst rolling Process+ we’ve ever seen from him, and a struggling Dodgers offense. While the runs and RBI were only decent the last two months, the average and power were stellar, and he started chipping in steals again.
Freeman’s rolling Process+ bottomed out shortly after being covered here. But by the end of August, it had recovered to be right in line with where it was the first couple months of the season. One of the most challenging things in fantasy is knowing when to jump off the boat when veterans start scuffling. If you did so quickly this year, you would have been ahead of the curve on guys like Christian Walker and Marcell Ozuna, but potentially regretted selling low on Freeman or ignoring George Springer’s hot start after an awful 2024. I actually broke down Springer last year, calling for patience. I ended up ruling that one a push, as he was decent but not great down the stretch. I guess I was just a year early!
Conclusion
Overall, I’m pretty happy with my work on hitters this year. My accuracy rate improved, and like I mentioned above, there were no huge misses. I think some of the improvement has to do with my increased reliance on our rolling Process+ charts, which paint a more complete picture of how a hitter’s approach and production have evolved over the season than something like a rolling xwOBA chart. Because we have multiple years of these charts at this point, I find it useful to compare their current process to years past so I can see if they have ever dipped this low before. If someone’s reaching a new low, that raises more red flags in my eyes than a dip that they’ve gotten out of at least once before.
Time permitting, I hope to get another one of these out in a couple weeks to see how I did with pitchers. Unfortunately, I think my pitching calls weren’t quite as sharp as they were for the hitters. My first pitcher recommendation, which was to exercise patience with Bailey Ober, sure didn’t work out! Nevertheless, I hope I was able to provide you with some insight over the course of the year, and hope that everyone finishes their fantasy season strong if you haven’t already.
