Fantasy Baseball: 10 Hitters Who Could Bounce Back in 2019

Miguel Cabrera, 1B, Detroit Tigers

ADP: 167
Depth Charts: 651 PA, 84 R, 25 HR, 90 RBI, 2 SB, .283 AVG
THE BAT: 634 PA, 78 R, 22 HR, 80 RBI, 2 SB, .283 AVG

If you compare Miguel Cabrera's projections to that of our first entry, Joey Votto, they're remarkably similar despite going nearly 100 picks apart.

Of course, their situations aren't identical. For all of Cabrera's accolades across his remarkable career, the truth is injuries have limited him to 130 or fewer games in three of the last four seasons, with his body allowing just 38 games in 2018 before succumbing to a season-ending biceps surgery in June.

With Miggy turning 36 years old in April, projecting a full season of plate appearances might be aggressive, but he's going in an ADP range where the floor stat lines start to get awfully shaky (just look at our next guy), so why not take a chance on that best-case scenario?

In Cabrera's limited time last year, he posted a 46.3% hard-hit rate, which would have placed him in the top-10 among qualified hitters over a full season. This was also reflected in his high average exit velocity (94.4 MPH), which trailed only Aaron Judge among players with at least 50 batted-ball events. Even in the small sample size, it sure seems like he can still mash, especially when you consider Cabrera's lengthy track record of doing just that.

Cabrera also put up a high batting average, per usual (.299), and 2017 remains his only season with an average below .290 since his rookie year in 2003. In other words, he's hit .290 or better in 14 of the last 15 seasons.

In 2018, he also maintained a 17.2% strikeout rate and 14.0% walk rate, both improvements over his underwhelming 2017 campaign and more in line with how he performed in 2016 and 2015. That's a check mark to his plate discipline, as well.

However, the area where Cabrera could be lighter on now is his home run power.

Despite all that hard contact, Cabrera's barrel rate dropped to just 4.6% last season after posting a double-digit clip in each of the last three seasons, and he also generated the highest ground-ball rate of his career (54.6%), leading to a career-low 20.4% fly-ball rate. He's now posted just a .149 ISO in back-to-back seasons.

Considering Miggy is still hitting the ball hard, this could all be small-sample noise, but the safe move is to expect something around 20 home runs rather than anything close to the 38 long balls he put up in 2016.

Cabrera's recent track record and age are worrisome -- hopefully the Tigers let Cabrera play DH more often to keep him healthy -- but the potential to get a Votto-esque player with decent power and a high batting average should be enticing at this stage in the draft.