Sometimes you find a sleeper that benefits your team, but other times you draft a player who busts and hurts your Fantasy Baseball team. We are currently longing for a resolution to the Major League season, but Fantasy Baseball draft prep must go on for now. Talking about busts is never fun, but today we come to the table(unlike MLB owners) to discuss some first base busts.
If you can avoid inevitable landmines that end up being “busts,” you will be in much better shape for the season. Let’s classify a bust as someone who will not return the expected value based on ADP. I am not necessarily saying these players will be bad either. The first base busts we will discuss today are players who have a slim chance to return a profit at their current ADP.
2022 First Base Busts for Fantasy Baseball
I won’t lie to you; this practice was very hard for me. Looking at the first base player pool, many of the players seem to be appropriately valued or even undervalued to an extent. Finding several “busts” at this position was not an easy task, but I have done my best to identify several first base busts who may be worth avoiding at their current ADP.
Jose Abreu, Chicago White Sox
Fantrax ADP: 74.5/NFBC ADP: 84.8
Jose Abreu has been as steady as they come at the first base position since he debuted in 2014. Excluding 2020, Abreu has just one season where he did not have more than 100 RBI. He also possesses a .290 career batting average and seems like a safe lock to hit 30 home runs. With that being said, what would lead me to call him a bust for 2022?
The first deterrent is that Abreu is now 35 years old, and there have been signs of a decline in his profile. Age has not slowed down Abreu to this point, but the drop-off will happen at some point.
Abreu did post just a .261 batting average last season after being a career .294 hitter in the first 4186 plate appearances of his career. Was it flukey? It does not appear so.
While looking on the surface, you’ll find a 10.4-degree launch angle, which is not far off his career average. But, you will find that Abreu hit the ball in the “Sweet Spot” (a batted ball between eight and 32 degrees, far less often in 2021. Abreu’s standard deviation of launch angle rose from 25.2 degrees in 2020 to 27.6 degrees in 2021. Using the standard deviation of launch angle, lower numbers are better. You can see this illustrated below.
Abreu’s other red flags in 2021 were the lowest contact rate of his career(excluding 2020) since his rookie season in 2014. Abreu also saw a drop in barrel rate. In 2020, Abreu’s barrel rate was better than 91 percent of hitters. Last season, Abreu’s barrel rate was in the 66th percentile.
Jose Abreu will likely drive in plenty of runs again and should score a solid amount as well. But if the batting average and power continue to trend in the wrong direction, Abreu will certainly be among first base busts.
Ryan Mountcastle, Baltimore Orioles
Fantrax ADP: 125.4/NFBC ADP: 112.9
Fading Ryan Mountcastle was a pretty easy choice for me in 2022, even before Baltimore decided they would move their fence back. Mountcastle did enjoy a pretty solid rookie season in 2021, mashing 33 home runs and posting a .255/.309/.487 slash line. His 2021 season earned him his current ADP.
It is easy to point to Mountcastle’s 114.6 mph max exit velocity and believe the power is legit. Max exit velocity does not do a great job of predicting future power output. 80th Percentile exit velocity is the best predictor of future home runs. Mountcastle’s 80th percentile exit velocity was just 102.4 mph in 2021, which ranked 107 out of 327 hitters with at least 250 plate appearances.
Mountcastle also had just a 70.6 percent contact rate in 2021. Anything below 70 percent gets very dicey. His zone-contact rate was 16th worth among qualified hitters with a 79.8 percent rate. Not to mention, Mountcastle has below-average OBP skills.
Those were my reasons to fade Mountcastle before the Orioles changed the dimensions of their outfield wall. The tweet from Andrew Perpetua below signifies that 94 home runs would have been lost at Camden Yards between 2019 and 2021. It is also worth mentioning that Mountcastle hit 22 of his 33 home runs at Camden Yards last season. For those reasons, Mountcastle finds himself among the potential first base busts.
Looking at homers in left field of Camden Yards from 2019 through 2021 and comparing to new dimensions. I made the following groups by eye, nothing scientific. 94 homers lost. 110 homers over new fences. 37 Maybes. Assume half the maybes are homers and you get a 47% reduction. pic.twitter.com/SYw5vg4tS2
— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) January 15, 2022
Max Muncy, Los Angeles Dodgers
Fantrax ADP: 108.4/NFBC ADP: 163.4
I will keep this short and sweet on why Muncy is a potential bust at first base. It has nothing to do with performance. In fact, in 2021, Muncy had an MVP caliber season hitting 36 home runs with a .895 OPS.
On the final day of the regular season, Max Muncy was injured on a play at first base. He stretched to catch a ball, and the runner coming down the first baseline hit his arm. It caused Muncy to miss the entire postseason. Muncy’s health was already in question, but on November 29, he dropped a bomb in an interview on MLB Network that he had a torn UCL. He was quoted saying: “That’s what happens when you do some serious damage to your body. A torn UCL is a slow process.” If not for that interview, we would have no clue Muncy tore his UCL.
Muncy has not had surgery and instead has decided to let it heal on its own, it seems. There has been minimal info on Muncy since November, but his ADP since January 1 is only 175. It is nearly impossible to project how many games Muncy will play in 2022 or if he will be healthy. If we knew he was healthy, he would not find himself on the first base busts list.
Statistical and Visual References: Baseball Savant, Fangraphs, Andrew Perpetua