Fantasy baseball: What to do with Brian Dozier
By Gavin Tramps
The Minnesota Twins second baseman Brian Dozier is not producing at the same level of his historic 2016. What should you do with him?
Over the last three seasons, only four players have scored more than 300 runs. Mike Trout and Josh Donaldson lead the way with 342 and 337 respectively, with Brian Dozier in third with 317. This season, more than 100 players have scored more runs than Dozier.
The 30-year-old is causing fantasy baseball headaches. He was just dropped in my shallowest league, a 10-team, single-season league of overly-active owners, and in another league I have received a trade offer of Dozier for my Eric Thames. Elsewhere, there have also been discussions about Dozier being a buy-low candidate.
After a terrible start to 2016 when he hit .202 with .624 OPS over the first two months, Dozier went on a memorable tear when the calendar turned to June, slashing .294/.358/.631 over the rest of the season with 37 home runs, 82 RBI and 83 runs.
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An offseason move to the Dodgers looked inevitable but the Twins wanted more than just highly-rated pitching prospect Jose de Leon, and the Dodgers moved on to secure the services of Logan Forsythe from the Rays.
No one thought that Dozier would maintain the production from the last two-thirds of 2016 for a full season of 2017. It is also unlikely that anyone truly expected another 42 home run year campaign but there were plenty of believers in draft rooms which pushed Dozier’s ADP to 32.
The second baseman started this season in a similar way to last year, with a .679 OPS in April but he has improved in May, hitting .269 with a .905 OPS.
Currently, Dozier is the ninth-ranked second baseman on the ESPN Player Rater, which is a perfectly acceptable return for an early round pick with the reputation of starting the season slowly.
However, the Twins’ second baseman is only the 14th second baseman in CBS points leagues and drops down to 16th on Yahoo. In shallow leagues, perhaps it is not surprising that Dozier is being dropped for lesser-profile players like Starlin Castro who are producing at elite levels.
It is easy to expect Dozier to turn his season around, and indeed his production in May points to him finishing the season among the best at the position but the underlying stats suggest that this is not a foregone conclusion. The second baseman has made significant changes to his approach.
Dozier has disciplined himself to swing at far fewer pitches outside of the strike zone (22.4% from 29.1%). Unfortunately, when he is swinging at them, he is making contact at a career-low rate of 64.0%.
This new selective approach at the plate is increasing his walk rate up to a robust 11.5%, significantly better than the previous two seasons, which helps in points and OBP leagues. As if to reinforce the speculation of more patience at the plate, Dozier struck out looking on 14 occasions in 2016 and he has already been punched out looking eight times this season.
It is open for discussion whether these changes are due to working with the Twins’ new pitching coach James Rowson, instructions handed down from leadership team of Derek Falvey and Thad Levine, or simply adjustments that Dozier himself has implemented.
If Dozier is to recapture the power production of last season, he will need to address the dramatic drop in isolated power down to .177 from .278 last season. Part of this has been caused by the significant increase in GB/FB rate of 1.02 up from 0.76 over the last two seasons. The 39.5% ground ball rate is his highest since his first year in the majors in 2012.
Dozier has always relied on pull-heavy power. He led the league over the last two seasons with 60.2% in 2015 and 56.2% in 2016 but this has dropped down to just 46.2% this season.
Do not cling to the hope that Dozier has been unlucky with hits not falling in this year and expect a rebalancing in the rest of the season, as his .285 BABIP is a career-high. BABIP (Batting average on balls in play) is the recognized metric for determining whether the hitter is enjoying a stretch of good luck or has been unfortunate with the ball not falling for hits.
Although Dozier is waiting for the right pitch to hit, he appears to be failing to capitalize when he gets it. Last season he destroyed fastballs with .685 SLG off four-seamers and .765 SLG off two-seamers. This year he is slugging just .490 and .440 respectively.
And then what about the stolen bases? This season no one has been caught stealing more than Dozier. Five times in 12 attempts. With the Twins dominating the AL Central, helped by a breakout season from Miguel Sano (37 RBI and 165 wRC+), it is likely that Dozier will not be given the green light to run as frequently.
The changes in Dozier’s approach are unlikely to allow him to produce at the same level as last season but it is possible that he becomes a more rounded hitter. Unless he reverts back to his former “pull-everything, whether in the strike zone or not”, he could become just a mediocre top-10 second baseman. If everything falls into place, he could take the step up to the Robinson Cano/Daniel Murphy tier of powerful yet disciplined second basemen.
Next: Impact prospects for deep leagues
What you do with Dozier is very dependent upon the size of your league and the format. I’m buying him in deep leagues but I’m happy to lose him in shallower leagues. He is unlikely to continue to hurt in leagues penalize for caught-stealing. Surely the Twins will not allow him to reach double-digits in the CS category.
And as for Dozier for my Thames? I will have to pass. I’ve enjoyed this first two months of Thames’ production and I’m not jumping ship with the first downturn in production.