In a recent 15-team draft-and-hold draft, I was picking at the end of round 35 and in need of a reserve outfielder. Drew Waters was still on the board at well past his ADP, and he seemed the most likely to have the opportunity for playing time, so I said, “welcome to the team, pick 525”.
Prior to the 2022-2023 offseason, my knowledge of Drew Waters boiled down to: 1. Good prospect (formerly top 100) and 2. Has plateaued due to strikeout issues. I also recalled that he got a callup in 2022, and was good, but his K% was bad. I didn’t pick him up in any leagues last year, and I don’t recall if I ever did any real digging into his underlying performance. Was he good in 2022? Yes. The “why” or “how” is a bit harder to figure out, especially regarding his 2022 season’s pertinence to predicting his 2023 performance.
I am outsourcing the basic summary of Waters’ 2022 to Rotowire (2023 Fanatsy Outlook on Waters’ player page): “Something clicked after the change of scenery (traded from Atlanta to KC), as Waters hit .295/.399/.541 with seven home runs and 13 steals in 31 games for the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate while almost doubling his walk rate (14.0 BB%, up from 7.6%). He got a well-deserved promotion to the majors in late-August and hit .240/.324/.479 with five home runs, an 11.0 BB% and a 36.7 K% in 109 plate appearances…”
I will get to Waters’ batted ball stats in a bit, but the most interesting thing about Waters (as a prospect, and in his first taste of MLB action) is his plate discipline, most basically notable in his K% and BB%.
For his MiLB career, Waters has posted a 27% K% and an 8.3% BB%. For reference, in 2022 for all MLB those rates were 22% and 8.2%. So, overall: average walk rate, and high, but not ridiculous, strikeout rate. But in 143 PAs for AAA Omaha, Waters nearly maintained his K% (29%), while upping his BB% to an elite 14%. Not surprisingly, the plate discipline improvements didn’t fully stick upon his promotion to MLB (11% BB% and 37% K% in 109 PAs). Is there some hope for an improved K% in 2023?
Projection systems are often (always, actually) useful, but in Waters’ case their utility may be limited — do I want to believe Steamer (8.5% BB% and 28.7% K%) or The Bat (7.1% BB% and 31.6% K%)? All else being equal, that 3% K% difference between the two projections, over 600 PAs, adds up to about 1 HR, at least a few Runs+RBI, and 10 points of BA (and, more importantly, an increased likelihood of maintaining playing time). Is there (maybe) a reason to lean more toward Steamer’s 28% K%. Possibly, based both on Waters’ prior performance, as well as some of his underlying plate appearance metrics.
Waters split 2018 between A-ball and A+, with a 5.8 BB% and a 21.1 K%. Notably, his K% rose from 20% in A-ball to 25% at A+. The Braves pushed Waters to AA to start 2019, and he repeated his K% issues upon his promotion to AAA at age 20 later that year (a 6.8% BB% and a 28.6% K% overall, but his K% rose from 27% in AA (454 PAs) to 36% at AAA (119 PAs)).
Waters’ 2020 was spent at Atlanta’s alternate site, and there is an August 2020 MLB.com article detailing Waters’ awareness of his strikeout issues, in which he stated: “I’m working on learning how to hit with a two-strike approach, just to cut down on some of the K’s.” Did he succeed? Maybe. His 2012 10% BB% and 31% K% does not exactly scream “success!!”, especially given a year at the alternate site to work on things, but it certainly is an improvement from 9% and 36% in his first go at AAA in 2019.
Then 2022 rolled around, and the prospect world had soured on Waters: a consensus top 50 prospect in 2020 and 2021, prior to 2022 Fangraphs had lowered his projected future value to 40+ and labeled him a likely 5th outfielder. To begin AAA in 2022, he lowered his K% to 27% (but with a pedestrian 7.6% BB%) coupled with lower power and BABIP; his resultant 210 PAs of a .697 OPS and .147 ISO likely had further tanked his perceived value. Then… he was traded to the Royals, and he vastly improved his plate skills (as noted above) and his batted ball results.
I think there should be optimism for Waters maintaining, or even improving, his performance in 2023, partially based on narrative, and partially based on Waters underlying plate discipline stats. First, the narrative: Waters has shown improvement (at least of a sort) each time he has repeated a level. His needing to repeat levels may cap his upside at something below a star player, but it shows that he has been able to put in the needed work to get better and make adjustments. Even in his sub-par 2022 stint with AAA Gwinnett, he did at least get his K% back to his career norm (at the expense of power and BB%; but let’s go with the narrative). And then upon the trade to KC, he flourished at AAA Omaha (and carried much of that success to his first stint in MLB). It may not be a full endorsement for Waters 2023 output, but if his history repeats itself, he will keep adjusting and will improve with more PAs at the MLB level. Also feeding this narrative is that Waters is a switch hitter. It is more anecdotal than proven (I think), but it seems that switch hitters do often take longer to fully develop; it shouldn’t be too surprising that Waters needed a bit more time, and a change of scenery to another organization, for things to click for him last year.
Circling back to Waters’ troubling K% in 2022. He is unlikely to strikeout at a 36% rate again. As mentioned, projections have him in the range of 28%-31%. The most basic analysis: Waters’ 2022 K% seems a small sample fluke and regressing the rate toward league norms and toward Waters’ MiLB rates makes sense. But there is hope for further improvement once one dives a little deeper into Waters’ underlying plate discipline as well.
Waters’ 71.3% contact rate is below average (he ranked 390th out of 498 players with 110 PAs or more), but it won’t be contact rate in and of itself that holds him back (Julio Rodriguez and Jazz Chisholm both had slightly lower contact rates). Overall, his plate discipline metrics were also close to Tyler O’Neil, Dansby Swanson, … long story short: his overall plate discipline skills are solid enough, despite his above average swing-and-miss. And upon digging into some of Waters’ performance in certain counts it became apparent that Waters’ elevated K% probably had as much to do with some mid-count over aggressiveness, and late count passivity, which will likely even out with greater sample size and some in-season approach adjustments.
A quick look at his batted ball results also offers reasons for optimism. Analyzing his batted ball rates is based on only 57 batted ball events, so I feel safe in throwing out his 84-mph average exit velocity and instead rely on his 12% barrel rate and his 111-mph max EV to indicate that his quality of contact should stay above average. 11 of Waters’ 57 batted ball events exceeded 99 mph EV (with the lowest launch angle being 6 degrees); when Waters connects, his contact is dangerous. His 26% HR/FB rate isn’t likely to fully hold (but he also had a 28% rate at AAA Omaha), and his 48% groundball rate is higher than ideal. His 10% average launch angle is a bit low, but in the small sample, swapping a couple groundballs for flyballs would have that at 15%.
Waters has playing time competition in KC, so if he flounders, he will lose at bats, and possibly end up back at AAA. He also did not steal a base in 32 MLB games, but in MiLB he averaged 25 SB per 600 PAs. Waters has 20 HR and 20 SB potential, and with a recent NFBC ADP of 441 (30th round of a 15-team draft and hold) he is certainly worth the pick at any point in the reserve rounds of a 15-team draft.
Jay Stellmach's Fantasy Baseball Musings 