The truncated 2020 season isn’t ideal for drawing big conclusions about players whose performances changed significantly in either direction from previous years, since 60 games isn’t even half of the sample we’d get in a full season. Some players did change in ways they’ll carry forward into 2021, though, so it’s worth at least talking about some of the guys who did impress with what they did on the field in 2020.
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Jesse Winker, OF, Reds, age 27
Winker had been a top 100 prospect for me and someone I ranked as a potential high-impact rookie going into 2018 — just generally a guy I thought would get on base at a high rate between his exceptional plate discipline and contact-oriented swing, but maybe without much power. He did some of that in 2018, but a shoulder injury ended his season after 89 games, followed by some regression at the plate in 2019. His 2020 was a much more impressive breakout, with exit velocity, hard-hit rate and Barrel rate all in the top 12 percent of major-league hitters, all of those career highs. He still swung and missed more often than you’d like against lefties in just 41 plate appearances, but not enough to make him a platoon guy.
Jeimer Candelario, 3B, Tigers, age 27
Candelario came to Detroit in 2017, but the 2020 season was an across-the-board breakout for him, with a .369 OBP that ranked 12th in the American League. He’s always been a high-contact hitter, but the quality of his contact went up significantly in 2020, and his launch angle came down into a better range for line-drive power. His flyball rate dropped from 39 percent to 34 percent, and his line-drive rate went up from 23 percent to 26 percent. The .372 BABIP isn’t sustainable, but I think he’s capable of a .330-.340 BABIP on a regular basis.
Teoscar Hernández, OF, Blue Jays, age 28
I was a year early on this train, calling him a breakout candidate for 2019. (I don’t usually repeat breakout picks, because if I did, Rickie Weeks would probably still be on my list next year.) He made a bit more contact in 2020 than in previous years, dropping his strikeout rate to a still-high 30 percent, but the biggest difference was just far more high-quality contact – he was fifth in the majors in Barrels per plate appearance, sixth in Barrels per batted ball, seventh in average exit velocity. Hernández is probably going to be volatile going forward, given his high swing-and-miss rates — he whiffed just about as often as Joey Gallo last season — but when this much of your contact is high-quality, you’re going to be valuable.
Dinelson Lamet, RHP, Padres, age 28
Lamet was dominant for the Padres in 2020, his first full-ish season back from Tommy John surgery. The real surprise in Lamet’s 2020 was how good he was against left-handed hitters, since they had given him trouble prior to this past season and he doesn’t have a third pitch that would be typical for right-handers to use against lefties. He threw 19 changeups in 2019, but Statcast recorded none from him in 2020; he gets left-handed batters out with his slider, throwing it more than his fastball, and recording 80 percent of his whiffs against lefties with it. It’s unusual, and 12 starts is still a small sample, but if his slider is actually an out pitch against lefties, he could be a No. 1 starter.
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Dylan Bundy, RHP, Angels, age 28
I’d given up on Bundy working out as a starter because of his long history of injuries, which followed years of very heavy usage in high school and with the Orioles. He missed all of 2013 and most of 2014 and 2015 with elbow and shoulder problems. He came back well in 2016, but the Orioles worked him mercilessly in 2017, and he wasn’t the same after that year. He’s lost his fastball — I saw him hitting 97 in 2011, when he threw the most dominant start I have ever seen from a high school pitcher — averaging a career-low 90.2 in 2020, but succeeded by throwing the pitch less than ever, with 58 percent of his pitches of the offspeed variety. He threw more strikes and kept the ball in the park better than he ever had before (unsurprising, since batters teed off on his four-seamer in 2019 and 2018), which he’s credited to years of learning to better locate his various weapons. We may never see the version of Bundy the Orioles thought they were drafting in 2011, with multiple plus weapons, including a devastating cutter; but this is more than anyone could have expected from him a year or two ago. If he can stay healthy, it should be sustainable.
Tyler Matzek, LHP, Atlanta, age 30
Can we talk about the sheer improbability of Tyler Matzek’s 2020 season? The 11th overall pick in 2009 — and one of the most talented high school lefties I’ve ever seen in person — ran into trouble immediately in pro baseball, between serious trouble throwing strikes and some attempts to change his delivery, walking one in six batters in his first two years and never getting his walk rate below 10 percent before developing the yips in 2015. He walked 77 guys in 62 1/3 innings in 2015-16, left the team at one point due to anxiety, and was released after the 2016 season. He didn’t pitch anywhere in 2017, went to Indy ball in 2018 and 2019, and latched on with Atlanta in the summer of 2019, nearly three full years after his last pitch in affiliated baseball. He made Atlanta’s Opening Day roster in 2020 and was good, really good, throwing harder than he had in years and punching out more than a third of batters faced with a walk rate of just 8 percent. For anyone to come back from as far away from the majors as Matzek was to become a top-10 reliever in the National League is improbably wonderful.
(Top photo of Jesse Winker: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
