The Minnesota Twins have a lefty-hitting outfielder that had a pretty good 2021 rookie season with the bat. He only received a bit over 200 at bats, but he showed he could sting the ball, with a Statcast hard hit rate greater than 44%. His maximum exit velocity was not elite, but it exceeded 108 mph and was solidly above average. A groundball rate of around 50% may have held back his overall production in 2021; but he’s still pretty young, so maybe he can lift the ball a bit more often in 2022 and have a breakout season.
I could be writing about Alex Kirilloff. I am, sort of, as those few lines above all describe Kirilloff’s rookie season. But those lines also fit Nick Gordon’s rookie season.
Gordon and Kirilloff had even more in common in 2021. In addition to their high groundball rates, their low-ish walk rates also held back their production (about 6% for each). Especially for guys that don’t walk a ton, each had moderate issues with strikeouts (22.5% for Kirilloff and 25.5% for Gordon – Gordon, swings, chases, and misses a bit more than Kirilloff; at least he did so in 2021).
Getting back to raw power: we are dealing with small samples, but each had 50% of their home runs be of BaseballSavant’s “no doubter” variety (which, with the small sample caveat, is basically average). And each had a maximum exit velocity of 109 mph (well, 108.4 for Kirilloff, but I will bump him up to 109 to keep playing this game).
Barrel rate is where Kirilloff and Gordon diverge: Kiriloff’s was 12.8% (right around Jorge Soler and Matt Olson) and Gordon’s was 6.8% (right around César Hernández and… Nolan Arrenado?) Arrenado had an average launch angle of 20 degrees versus 9 degrees for Gordon, so even though overall his batted ball metrics look worse than Gordon’s in several key ways, I won’t fall down that rabbit hole right now – maybe later, when I get a look at launch angle histograms for each player…
I don’t expect a big power breakout from Nick Gordon in 2022. But he does hit the ball hard enough to have one, and the César Hernández comparison may be apt, at least from a power standpoint (Hernández has always walked more and struck out less than Gordon did last year). It took several years before Hernández started hitting for home run power, and 2021 was his first 20+ HR season.
Moreover, Gordon probably shouldn’t focus too much on jacking the ball out, as he already has chase issues and swing-and-miss issues. If he curtails his swing and miss tendencies a bit, he can still whack the occasional meatball out while still just focusing on good contact. Overall, using the stats over at Fangraphs, his soft contact rate was just 7.5% (medium: 48.6%, and hard: 43.8%).
So where does this put me from a fantasy perspective? I am still in on Kirilloff inside the top 200 picks – that 12.8% barrel rate is too enticing, and he certainly passes the eye test. But I do have a bit more trepidation regarding him as a potential breakout.
And Gordon? In my previous post on the Twins, he was pretty much an afterthought. And I still don’t think the Twins really want to get him much more than 200 plate appearances this year. But if he somehow stumbles into 400+ PAs, with a bit of luck (or selling out a bit more for pull power) he could hit up to 15 HR while maintaining an ok batting average, as well as steal 20 bases, and he is worth a late roll of the dice.
And one parting thought: Gordon is a couple years older, but let’s disregard that and just scout the stat line: he doesn’t look that different from Jazz Chisholm. Gordon is fast and Chisholm is super-fast. Beyond that? Hmmm.
Jay Stellmach's Fantasy Baseball Musings 