Welcome back to Week 9 of our Patience or Panic series, where we take a look at three struggling players and provide recommendations on how you should react to their slow starts and subpar performance. In Week 8, I reviewed Texas’ Adolis Garcia, Baltimore’s Adley Rutschman, and New York’s Tylor Megill.
As always, feel free to let us know in the comments or by tagging us on social media what players you would like to see us focus on in the future! Let’s dive right in.
Kristian Campbell, INF/OF, Boston Red Sox
Kristian Campbell looked like the best rookie in baseball at the start of the season, with a monster slash line helping him produce in big situations and become more than just an everyday guy in Alex Cora’s lineup. That was great all the way up until April 29th. Since then, his bat has produced little to nothing:
Verdict: Patience. It’s simple, really. He adjusted to the league, now the league is adjusting to him. This is a common rookie slump. The whiff and hard contact rates have both gotten worse, but that’s natural. I’m not concerned about it. That being said, his ground ball rate has skyrocketed (+20%) which is something to keep an eye on. Boston drafted him as a ground ball bat and developed him into a guy who consistently hits the ball in the air with authority. I still believe he can work this out, like he’s showed in a recent small sample size of games heading into play today.
Jackson Chourio, OF, Milwaukee Brewers
Chourio, 21, has mightily struggled to start the year. For many fantasy managers, this was supposed to be a big breakout sophomore year. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case… he comes into today slashing just .246/.273/.422/.695 with a 90 wRC+.
To make matters worse, he’s still outperforming his expected numbers — notably the .396 xSLG and .289 xwOBA — despite slumping in a big way.
Verdict: Patience… mostly. Chourio is young and has done this before. He’s an elite talent when he gets right, and it seems he may be on his way to doing so — 9-for-29 (.310) with 2 XBH and a stolen base over the past week entering play today. His issue has been the opposite of Campbell, where he’s hitting far too many fly balls (~10%) and needs to get the ball on the ground and let his speed do some work.
Chourio started to heat up in the month of June last season last season, where he posted a 144 wRC+ and help a wRC+ over 130 for the rest of the season. I’d give him until around that time before I truly hit the panic button.
Zac Gallen, RHP, Arizona Diamondbacks
Gallen, 29, has really struggled in a contract year. He made on exceptional start dicing up the Yankees (13 Ks in 6.2 IP), but other than that has given up 3+ ER in seven of his other ten appearances this season.
Verdict: Panic. His numbers (seen above) and stuff (98 → 92 → 91 / Stuff+ via FanGraphs) have been regressing for quite some time now. The command (103 Loc+) hasn’t helped, and the underlying numbers (99 Pitching+ / career: 105, for example) don’t do him any justice, either. I don’t think it’s crazy to say we could see Gallen return to form, but similar to a Tanner Houck or Sandy Alcantara, this will take time and there are unfortunately better fantasy options out there.
Photo courtesy of Icon Sportswire | Adapted by Aaron Polcare (@abeardoesart on Bluesky and X)
