Fantasy Baseball: 10 Hitters Who Could Bounce Back in 2019
Brian Dozier, 2B, Washington Nationals
ADP: 133
Depth Charts: 560 PA, 68 R, 22 HR, 72 RBI, 10 SB, .242 AVG
THE BAT: 567 PA, 76 R, 26 HR, 79 RBI, 10 SB, .244 AVG
Unlike most of our prior entries, Brian Dozier didn't have any trouble playing a full complement of games in 2018, but he produced a disappointing .215/.305/.391 slash line and 90 wRC+. His 21 home runs were a far cry from his tallies of 34 and 42 the prior two seasons, and his 12 stolen bases were his fewest since 2015.
Turning 32 in May, Dozier isn't exactly getting any younger, either.
But as dire as all that sounds, Dozier admitted he played through a bone bruise in his knee that he suffered in April, which led to some "bad habits" at the plate.
This could explain a notable drop in Dozier's average exit velocity on line drives and fly balls, which went from 94.4 MPH in 2017 to 91.6 MPH last year. Dozier has always been a fly-ball hitter (43.3% career fly-ball rate), so that drop in velocity turned more of those fly balls into outs, leading to declines in both HR/FB rate (11.2%) and BABIP (.240). There was probably also some bad luck in that BABIP figure -- he owns a .271 career mark -- but in all, it looks like a lack of power fueled his poor results.
We'll probably never know the extent of that injury and how much it truly affected his performance, but at least it gives us some optimism that 2018 was an outlier, and a healthy Dozier could see an uptick in that exit velocity and turn more of those fly balls into home runs again. This would presumably help him get his batting average out of the gutter, too, as his plate discipline remained intact with his 20.4% strikeout rate and 11.1% walk rate almost exactly in line with 2017.
And despite a decline in sprint speed for the second straight season (48th percentile), which could again be due to the knee injury, Dozier still converted on 12-of-15 stolen attempts (80%). Given his age, we can't rule out another dip in speed, but he's never recorded an elite sprint speed to begin with and has put up double-digit stolen bases in six straight seasons. The Nationals are also a team that runs often, ranking fifth in stolen bases last year.
All that being said, there's some obvious risk in buying into the healthy Dozier narrative, as he could simply a player in an age-related decline. Roster Resource also places Dozier in the six-hole for the Nats, which won't help his counting stats compared to his days of leading off.
But all that is already baked into the price for a guy barely going inside the top 150 -- and sometimes later than that -- who was being drafted in the top 50 last year.
Like the aforementioned Josh Donaldson and Wil Myers, the two projection systems give Dozier only around 130 games, but you could argue he has the best shot of the three at surpassing that as he hasn't played fewer than 150 games in each of the last five years.
