Szymborski’s 2021 Bust Candidates: Hitters

Last week, we looked at my favorite breakout candidates for the 2021 season. Today, we shift to the players I’m more bearish about, and I’m not talking about pilfering picnic baskets. Whether it’s players who I don’t believe will match their 2020 performance, meet their 2021 projections, or who have some aspect of their game that worries me, each of these eight hitters is one who I would place firmly in the “sell” column. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be awful or bad, but it does mean I don’t think the best is yet to come.

José Abreu, Chicago White Sox

Busts are a relative notion, and a player can make this list and still be a contributor. Abreu was terrific in 2020 and is one of the few players in baseball you could inarguably call a leader, but the fact remains that it was by far his best performance in years. Sure, he pasted the ball to the tune of the 10th-highest average exit velocity in the league, but he destroyed baseballs in 2018 and ’19 as well and was far less valuable in those full seasons. Abreu’s far more likely to be an average player than he is to contend for the MVP again, and when you have a guy whose WAR projection for an entire season comes in under his 60-game WAR from last year’s short season, who you have to admit he has some bust potential. That’s doubly true when he’s in his mid-30s; sluggers aging like Nelson Cruz are the exception, not the rule.

Jackie Bradley Jr., Milwaukee Brewers

The popular conception of JBJ is that he had something of a comeback season in 2020, and that’s true on the surface, as his wRC+ of 120 was 30 points above anything he’s done in recent years. The only problem with that part of the tale is that in this case, his .343 BABIP, 45 points above his career average, was the driver of his flashy line. Remove that and his season looked a lot like 2019, when one of the questions entering the offseason was whether the Red Sox would even tender him a contract for 2020. From the specific hit data, ZiPS thinks that he played like a player with a .306 BABIP rather than one in the .340s. He’s still a solid defensive player, but his speed numbers are starting to slip, which tends to be a leading indicator of defensive decline for an outfielder. The relatively small outfield in Milwaukee isn’t the best park to take advantage of JBJ’s talents; his defensive performance would have been more welcome in places like San Francisco or Kansas City. All that said, I should note that ZiPS disagrees with me on this one.

Justin Upton, Los Angeles Angels

It’s looking like the Angels are finally going take some at-bats away from Albert Pujols, approximately six years later than his performance warranted. That leaves Justin Upton as the team’s biggest long-term problem in the lineup. Two homers on Tuesday will no doubt fuel the “Upton is Back!” whispers, especially when combined with his solid run at the end of 2020, but he also hit .134 the last two seasons against anything that wasn’t thrown hard, and with mediocre plate discipline, he’s a hitter who pitchers can pitch around when he’s hot and exploit when he’s not. Upton had a lower barrel percentage in 2020 than players like Lewis Brinson. In the field, he has about the same range as an electric car hooked up to a potato battery.

Kyle Lewis, Seattle Mariners

Kyle Lewis had an excellent rookie season, but based on his statistics, there are still reasons to be concerned about his future. He’s a wild swinger, with his 64.9% contact rate in the bottom 10 over 2019 and ’20. Just to put that number in context, it’s a worse contact rate than the one pitchers put up as batters in 2019 (65.3%). He dropped to a .545 OPS over the second half of 2020, and as his willingness to swing at bad pitches went up, his contact rate fell further, along with his wOBA:

There have been plenty of solid players who made poor contact, but he’s a below-average player in terms of power, and while Luis Robert, Lewis’ main competition for AL Rookie of the Year, has his own contact issues, he’s at least shown signs of being an elite defensive talent.

Charlie Blackmon, Colorado Rockies

Everyone at Coors has a higher slugging percentage than you’d expect from their Statcast data and Blackmon’s no exception, with a .462 xSLG since 2015 compared to his actual .530 slugging percentage. Blackmon’s always had rather unimpressive velocity data for someone who has hit around 30 homers a year, but in 2020, those numbers fell into the basement, and he finished in or near the bottom quintile for every velocity stat you can think of. Before I’d even looked at his 2020 home/road stats, I theorized that even Coors couldn’t save him now, and sure enough, he barely had any split in 2020. Now that last bit is in a tiny sample, but I think at this point, Blackmon’s done as a legitimate major league starter and that 2020 was no blip.

Robbie Grossman, Detroit Tigers

Grossman usually gets on-base a good amount, which I don’t expect to change in 2021. However, I do think that the new-found power that propelled him to a .482 slugging percentage is a stone-cold fluke and will return to more typical levels; ZiPS saw his 2020 SLG as a 90 point over-performance, while Statcast was at 85 points. It doesn’t seem that many in baseball disagreed with this notion, as he only landed a two-year, $10 million contract, a perfectly reasonable deal in-line with the player he was before 2020. Still, when his decline is coming from his career-best WAR, put up in less than half a season, it’s hard not to put him in the bust category.

Josh Bell, Washington Nationals

When Josh Bell was acquired by the Nationals this offseason, I was shocked by how many in mainstream media heralded his arrival as a big bat being added to the Nats’ lineup. It’s hard to ignore the fact that Bell’s run as a feared slugger essentially consists of two amazing months in 2019 and little else. He only has a single one-win season in the majors, and no, he wasn’t on pace to eclipse that mark in the 2016 or ’20 season-fragments. He’s likely better than the .226/.305/.364 line from last year, something he’s attributed to the lack of video access and training time going into the season, but I think he’s an average offensive first baseman who can’t really field the position, not the team’s savior.

Joey Votto, Cincinnati Reds

Everybody seems to expect Votto to have one last comeback in him, but at this point, I’m not so sure. His extremely disciplined approach at the plate has kept him coming back after some pretty horrid slumps in the past, including one last season that saw him briefly benched before roaring back to a .258/.385/.557 triple-slash after returning. But the fact remains that he turns 38 before the season ends, and both his contact rate and the spread between his in-zone and out-of-zone swing percentage have declined since his 2015-’17 second peak. He’ll retire much-beloved in Cincinnati in a few years and has a legit Hall of Fame argument, but I think Votto will continue to fade in 2021 and beyond.