The Most Overhyped MLB Players of 2017
Eliminating expectations is the only foolproof way for MLB fans to avoid disappointment.
Every year presents a new crop of hyped talent branded as breakout selections. While guys like Cody Bellinger, Alex Bregman, Aaron Nola and Robbie Ray honored their preseason buzz, others reminded viewers that not everyone follows a paved, linear path to stardom.
The following players entered 2017 with lofty expectations after breaking out or teasing future success in 2016. Hype is a young man's game, so everyone highlighted happens to be 26 or younger.
Let's also avoid anyone whose season was wiped away by an injury. Noah Syndergaard missed most of a campaign that opened with Cy Young Award aspirations, but he validated that buzz while healthy with 30 strikeouts and no walks in his first four starts.
As illustrated by another New York Mets pitcher, this does not apply to anyone who played (poorly) hurt for large chunk of the season.
Also, don't mistake someone's inclusion as a call to panic. While they underwhelmed, they all have the ability to overcome an early setback.
Rougned Odor, 2B, Texas Rangers
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After breaking out with 33 home runs and 14 stolen bases in 2016, Rougned Odor delivered 30 homers and 15 steals during a 2017 encore.
He was also baseball's worst everyday hitter.
Despite his fence-clearing power, Odor's 61 weighted runs created plus (wRC+)—a measure of offensive value where anything below 100 is considered below-average—represented the lowest rate of all 144 qualified hitters.
Although 30 of his 651 plate appearances ended in the best outcome, too many others resulted in outs. The Texas Rangers second baseman batted .204 with a .252 on-base percentage, also the worst mark of any qualified position player.
As ESPN.com's Sam Miller noted in an article published Sept. 19, Odor had a .166/.214/.212 slash line when taking out his homers. He went deep one more time but then failed to reach base in eight of the final 11 games.
Offering just 70 singles and 21 doubles, his slugging percentage decayed from .502 to .397. Adam Frazier, who rounded the bases six times in 454 plate appearances, registered a .399 slugging percentage.
Odor was one of five players to participate in all 162 games, but his durability hurt Texas by way of minus-1.0 WAR. Without the home runs and 2016 success, the Rangers probably would have benched or demoted him.
The 23-year-old can still right the ship by merely batting .265, his career average before 2017, but he will never morph into an All-Star unless he takes more walks and makes consistent contact.
Jharel Cotton, SP, Oakland Athletics
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Beware the small sample size, for it can make a fool of anyone.
Acquired from the Los Angeles Dodgers in a 2016 midseason trade for Rich Hill and Josh Reddick, Jharel Cotton made a rousing first impression. He posted a 2.15 ERA in five starts for the Oakland Athletics, issuing just four walks over 29.1 innings.
"If anything, Cotton has appeared on so many preseason sleeper lists that he might no longer qualify as one," The Ringer's Zach Kram wrote in late March. "The hype is real, but founded."
To be fair, all hopes weren't solely attached to his big league inauguration. The 5'11", 195-pound hurler posted a 2.82 ERA in six Triple-A starts for Oakland before his September call-up. He also wields what FanGraphs' Eric Longenhagen called a "plus-plus changeup," a pitch given the best grade (70 on the 20-80 scale) of any preseason top-100 prospect.
Unfortunately for Cotton, none of his other pitches worked. Per Brooks Baseball, his four-seam fastball, cutter and sinker all yielded opposing slugging percentages above .500. Batters hit .304 against his curveball.
The 25-year-old righty ended 2017 with a 5.58 ERA and 1.44 WHIP. Along with allowing 28 home runs in 24 starts, he followed 2016's pinpoint accuracy by issuing 53 walks in 129 innings.
Oakland should afford him a chance for redemption next season, but he's no longer an exciting name who will grace spring breakout lists.
Dansby Swanson, SS, Atlanta Braves
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Among 35 experts polled by ESPN.com before the season, 26 picked Dansby Swanson to win National League Rookie of the Year. After the shortstop hit .302/.361/.442 in 129 at-bats the previous year—narrowly skidding below MLB's 130 at-bat limit for rookie eligibility—it's more surprising nine pundits pegged someone else.
Most preseason assessments of the 2015 No. 1 overall pick referenced his high floor. Few onlookers expected him to rise along the ranks of Carlos Correa, Corey Seager and Francisco Lindor, but Swanson looked poised to comfortably camp out in the position's second tier as a steady, well-rounded player.
His floor instead proved lower than anticipated in 2017, when he batted .232/.312/.324 with six home runs in 551 plate appearances. A .092 isolated power, the difference between his slugging percentage and batting average, represented MLB's fourth-worst clip among qualified hitters behind slap-hitting speedsters Jose Peraza, Dee Gordon and Billy Hamilton.
The Atlanta Braves demoted him after he accrued six hits in 17 July games. While he failed to go deep in 48 games following his return to the majors, at least he batted a more passable .268 (44-for-164) with 24 walks in 189 plate appearances.
The lesson here: Even the safest newcomer is far from a sure thing. Swanson, who turns 24 in February, should still have a long and productive career as Ozzie Albies' double-play partner. Lacking power, however, could lower his floor and ceiling.
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Tyler Glasnow, SP, Pittsburgh Pirates
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From the ESPN.com poll where most participants picked Swanson to win NL Rookie of the Year, Tyler Glasnow placed second with four votes.
The Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher entered 2017 as Baseball America's No. 23 prospect. While he issued 13 walks in 23.1 major league innings the previous year, he also registered a 1.87 ERA and 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) in Triple-A.
Following his brief taste of the big leagues, Glasnow floundered in 2017. The 6'8" righty relinquished 81 hits, 44 walks and 61 runs (53 earned) over 62 brutal innings. For the first time in his professional career, he struggled to miss bats at an elite rate with 56 strikeouts and an 8.2 swinging-strike percentage.
While he once again dominated Triple-A with a 1.93 ERA and 13.5 K/9, he posted 15 walks and six strikeouts as a September call-up.
As Glasnow told Stephen J. Nesbitt of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after the trying rookie season, he had never experienced such adversity on the mound.
"This is really the first time I’ve failed," Glasnow said. "For me, the biggest positive I can take away from this season is I feel like I’ve dealt with [failure] pretty well. That’s everyone’s biggest fear in baseball: To do badly. I definitely did not do well. In day-to-day life, it didn’t change me much, and it was nice to prove to myself that I guess baseball doesn’t really define me."
It's too early to slap a "bust" label on the 24-year-old, but a 2.02 WHIP goes beyond the typical early jitters for someone initially envisioned to become an overpowering front-line starter.
Addison Russell, SS, Chicago Cubs
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Addison Russell did not make major strides in 2016, when he batted .238/.321/.417 with 94 wRC+. Regularly batting behind Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo artificially inflated his 95 RBI, but quieter progress fueled promise for 2017.
Although it led to minimal gains, he upped his walk percentage from 8.0 to 9.2 and slashed his strikeout rate from 28.5 to 22.6. He was also a second-year shortstop playing elite defense for the eventual World Series champion Chicago Cubs.
While Russell recorded 3.9 WAR in 2016, he had not yet reached his superstar upside. Before the 2015 season, Baseball America ranked him its No. 3 prospect ahead of Correa (No. 4), Seager (No. 5) and Lindor (No. 9). At his best, he was expected to—and still could—form an elite trio alongside Bryant and Rizzo.
Those hopes hit a roadblock this season, during which he batted .239/.304/.418 with 12 homers and 1.4 WAR in 385 plate appearances. His walk rate slid down to 7.5 percent.
Russell continued an early-career trend of soaring in the second half, but he has now given the Cubs below-average offense in three seasons.
His stalled development is far from an organizational crisis; he's still a 23-year-old shortstop who could win multiple Gold Glove Awards over the next decade. Yet he stalled in 2017 while positional peers who also debuted two years ago ascended to superstardom.
Steven Matz, SP, New York Mets
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Steven Matz once represented an embarrassment of riches as the Mets' fourth young ace. Now his 2018 role is uncertain.
From 2015 to 2016, the southpaw made Mets fans and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin proud with a 3.16 ERA in 28 starts. While shoulder injuries limited his impact, he pitched like an ace when not exiled to the disabled list.
That made 2017's troubles all the more stunning. In 13 horrific starts, he ceded 46 runs and 83 hits with a 6.5 K/9, a significant decline from his 8.7 K/9 entering the year. According to Brooks Baseball, opponents tattooed his sinker—which he threw 59.1 percent of the time—to a .536 slugging percentage.
After watching his ERA balloon to 6.08, it should not have surprised anyone—especially given the Mets' history of injury mismanagement—to learn that Matz was pitching through pain before opting to undergo season-ending elbow surgery.
"I don’t want to speculate and use it as an excuse because I was doing everything I could to go out there and pitch,” Matz said after learning of the irritated ulnar nerve in his pitching elbow, per Newsday's Marc Carig. "To say that this was affecting me on the mound, I don’t want to speculate because I really don’t know."
According to Carig, Matz received injections throughout the season to address an elbow that "at times swelled to the size of a grapefruit." So it seems pretty fair to use it as an excuse.
It's also reasonable to wonder if the Mets will ever see an effective Matz again. Preluding his recent health woes, he received Tommy John surgery in 2010, less than a year after being drafted.
Once seen as a future star, Matz may need to settle into a productive back-end starter role to simply salvage some stock.
Trevor Story, SS, Colorado Rockies
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Trevor Story did not arrive to considerable fanfare. That immediately changed when he commenced his career with seven home runs in his first six major league games.
A thumb injury ended his brilliant 2016 campaign two months early. Had he stayed healthy, the Colorado Rockies shortstop might have broken the NL record for home runs from a rookie, a milestone Cody Bellinger set with 39 long balls in 2017. Story went deep 27 times in just 97 games.
Robbed of completing his first season, he entered 2017 with hype higher than Coors Field's altitude. While the 24-year-old was not bad by any stretch of the imagination, his home run tally dipped to 24 in 145 games and 555 plate appearances.
Story's slugging percentage plummeted from .567 to .457, and his strikeout percentage soared from 31.3 to 34.4 percent. While he still torched left-handed pitchers, he submitted a desolate .216/.281/.386 slash line against righties.
There's still room for encouragement. He batted .254/.314/.520 after the All-Star break, and his defensive metrics improved with 11 defensive runs saved. It's possible Story peaked right out of the gate, but he should also rebound from a slow 2017 to discover a middle ground.
Daniel Norris, SP, Detroit Tigers
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While others had already reached great heights, Daniel Norris resided in the "post-hype" category. Fantasy baseball aficionados will recognize the term as someone who has lost the prospect shine after an underwhelming start, thus meriting sleeper appeal.
In some cases, an obvious candidate outgrows that label by drawing too much interest. CBS Sports' Jonah Keri identified the Detroit Tigers lefty as one of six breakout candidates before the 2017 season. His other pitcher pick, James Paxton (an opinion shared by many pundits), showed that everyone sometimes knows what they're talking about.
Norris and Paxton shared residency in another preseason article when FanGraphs' Jeff Sullivan explored their increase in strike rates.
After amassing a 3.04 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 56.1 second-half innings, Norris had the look of a young player piecing everything together. Sullivan pointed to a harder and more effective slider fueling his late success.
Before brandishing a 3.75 ERA and 6.8 K/9 in a somewhat underwhelming debut, he ranked ahead of Jon Gray (No. 24), Aaron Sanchez (No. 27), Luis Severino (No. 35), Jose Berrios (No. 36) and Nola (No. 39) as Baseball America's No. 18 prospect. His 2015 looks like a star-making debut compared to 2017's regression.
A year after striking out over a batter per frame, Norris accumulated 86 punchouts and 44 walks in 101.2 innings. He tallied a 5.31 ERA, 1.61 WHIP and 41.7 hard-hit percentage, which tied Ian Kennedy for the worst rate of any starter with at least 100 innings pitched.
While rehabbing from a groin injury in July, he admitted to throwing through pain and did not return until September. Norris, after working from the bullpen, recorded three strikeouts in two starts.
With the luster gone completely, perhaps he's a true post-hype sleeper heading into 2018.
Note: All advanced statistics courtesy of FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.
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