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It would be an overstatement to say that it's too early to change your mind about any player in the Fantasy Baseball season. I went from not really caring much about Brendan Donovan to being pretty interested in him for Fantasy because he's reworked his swing a bit, flashed some power, and is hitting at the top of the very good Cardinals lineup. Similarly, the changes Mitch Keller has made to his pitch mix have made him a lot more interesting in my eyes -- and Scott White's, too -- already.

It's pretty easy for low-end players to change how you think about them. When all it costs is a few bucks in FAB or an early-season waiver claim, players don't have to give you much reason to change your mind about them. It's easy. The stakes are low and the payoffs, if you bet right, are potentially very large.

But when it comes to the guys you paid a lot for in your drafts, it takes a lot more to sway me. Even someone like Jeffrey Springs, who has been the talk of the Fantasy Baseball world for his work through two starts, hasn't moved much in my rankings yet -- though, as we talked about on the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast over the weekend, I'm kind of alone in that. When it comes to more established players, the stakes for changing your mind are higher; trading for Springs right now means you're potentially trading for him at the peak of his value, and he was already being drafted in the first 10 rounds toward the end of draft season. You'd better be right about him being even better than we expected for the rest of the season.

Which is to say, whenever I get questions about whether I'm worried about some high-profile player's slow start, my response tends to be the same: It's way too early for me to be worried. But I don't want to just give a blanket response to every question. That's lazy. So, I wanted to give you actual, concrete reasons not to be concerned about your slow starters. So I went to preseason ADP, ranked every top-100 pick by how they've performed so far, and took out the 11 worst performers so far to find reasons to be optimistic about each. 

Here's what's going on under the hood: 

Willson Contreras (Current rank among hitters: 305)

There's actually quite a lot to be optimistic about with Contreras so far once you dig under the hood. He has just one extra-base hit – a double off the wall that came feet from being a homer – but he's hitting the ball about as hard as he ever has, sporting a 91.6 mph average exit velocity. Contreras' average launch angle is up to 14.9, by far the highest of his career, and the issue is he's not hitting the ball hard in the air, as his average EV on line drives and flyballs is down from 97.1 mph to 91.0 right now. His swing is just a little off, but I have no reason to think he won't solve that soon. 

Gunnar Henderson (Current rank among hitters: 256)

Given his limited track record, I can't say with quite as much certainty that Henderson is going to sort things out, but he's still showing those impressive tools in the early going. His average exit velocity is up to 92.7 mph, just up from last year's 92.4 mph mark. He's striking out entirely too often (40%, yikes), and his hard-hit rate is just 33.3% despite the high average, so there's a lot of inconsistency in his swing right now. Given his age and lack of experience at the highest level, Henderson's margin for error is slimmer than a lot of other guys in this range – the Orioles may decide to send him down to sort things out if he keeps striking out two out of every five trips to the plate – but the fact that the high-level tools are still showing up is a good thing.

Jose Abreu (Current rank among hitters: 242)

Abreu is actually one of the more difficult players to find reasons for optimism with. When he disappointed last season, he was at least still hitting the ball really hard – his average exit velocity was 92.2 mph, and his expected wOBA of .373 was the second-highest of his career. Through his first 54 plate appearances, Abreu is hitting .280, but that's all he's doing, as he has just one extra-base hit. His average EV is down to 86.4 mph and he's striking out in 27.8% of his trips to the plate, with worrying whiff and chase rates. If the bottom was falling out for Abreu, this is probably what it would look like, as he's been absolutely atrocious against non-fastballs so far. The point of this exercise is to look for something positive to say about these players, but I don't really have anything to point to for Abreu. That's not to say I'm giving up on him, by any means, but it's been a really rough start. 

Michael Harris (Current rank among hitters: 229)

At least part of the problem for Harris is that he's been on the IL, but even before he got hurt, he basically had four groundball hits and one double to the warning track to his name, so he wasn't doing much already. The issue in the early going was a predictable one: He was hitting the ball on the ground almost exclusively, with a 66.7% groundball rate. That was never going to be sustainable, but he also had a 55.8% groundball rate last season, part of why I had him as a bust pick coming into the season. If you're looking for reasons to be optimistic, as we are, you'll point to his lowered whiff rate (28.1% to 24.5%) along with his 61.1% hard-hit rate and 92.5 MPH average EV. The physical tools here are elite, hitters hadn't seemed to expose anything new; now he just needs to get healthy and start elevating it a bit more. 

Tyler O'Neill (Current rank among hitters: 217)

The biggest issue for O'Neill (besides injuries) outside of his special 2021 season was that, because of how much he strikes out, anything short of elite quality-of-contact metrics is going to make him a pretty pedestrian player, and that's what we're seeing right now. He's in the 74th percentile in average EV and 86th percentile in hard-hit rate, which are pretty excellent marks, though hardly Stanton-ian or Judge-esque. His strikeout rate, however, is up to 29.7%, while his launch angle is down from 13.6 degrees (17.8 in 2021) to 5.5, which has led to a lot of hard-hit singles and little else in the early going. He's had a few days off here and there (once for a perceived lack of hustle), and the problem here is, given how crowded the Cardinals outfield will be when Lars Nootbaar gets back from the IL, playing time could become an issue if he doesn't turn things around quickly. I had O'Neill as a bust coming into the season, and that was my primary concern. But, of course, I don't want to give up on a guy capable of stuff like this, either: 

J.T. Realmuto (Current rank among hitters: 211) 

Anytime you're working with a player in his 30s – especially a catcher – the first thing I'm going to look for are signs of waning athleticism, and in Realmuto's case, I don't think that's what we're dealing with here. His batted-ball metrics aren't great, but his max exit velo is 110.6 mph, right in line with last season's max; his sprint speed is also still in the 89th percentile, right in line with last year's Which makes me think what we're seeing here is nothing more than a good old-fashioned slump. Remember, Realmuto had a .689 OPS in April last season and was hitting .238/.314/.357 as late as July 2 and still ended up with one of the best seasons of his career. My concern level is basically zero, here. 

Alex Bregman (Current rank among hitters: 200)

Bregman still has the combination of middling quality-of-contact metrics and elite plate discipline that he's always had, and that combination has worked for him. Sure, we're a few years removed from the last time he was an elite Fantasy option at this point, but he's been a lot better than this (.184/.322/.265). He's striking out a bit more often than we're used to (17.5% vs. 11.7%), though not with a particularly alarming increase in chase rate or whiff rate in the early going. The biggest issue is that Bregman just isn't pulling the ball as much as he usually does. That's how he's managed to maximize what might otherwise seem like a pretty middling skillset, with a few dozen assists from the short porch in Houston every season helping him pretty consistently outperform his quality-of-contact stats. This season, his pull rate is down to 31.6%, the lowest rate of his career – he was at 45.1% last season. A 98 mph batted ball hit 355 feet to left field might be a homer with the help of the Crawford boxes, but it's probably gonna be an out if you hit it to right field in most parks. That's the biggest issue for Bregman right now, but one I'm pretty confident he'll solve. And, for what it's worth, literally as I was typing this, Bregman crushed a 395-foot homer to left in Pittsburgh, though I'm pretty sure that would've gone out in any park. 

Vinnie Pasquantino (Current rank among hitters: 179)

Pasquantino has actually been pretty awesome so far, sporting a .289/.400/.500 line heading into action Tuesday. He just hasn't been very good for Fantasy, especially in Rotisserie leagues, where his 15.2% walk rate doesn't really help. Pacquantino is hitting the ball hard (92.3 mph EV), consistently (50.0% hard-hit rate), and it's led to a bunch of extra-base hits, just not many homers. I see almost nothing to be concerned about here, though after he hit just 10 homers in 72 games last season, I guess it's fair to wonder how much true over-the-fence pop he has. However, given the quality-of-contact metrics and the fact that Pasquanitino tends to pull the ball, I think he'll figure it out before long. I don't even know if there's a buy-low opportunity here, but if there is, you should take it. 

Teoscar Hernandez (Current rank among hitters: 174)

Hernandez is a pretty easy case here, because most of his numbers look like they always do, except for, you know, the results. His strikeout rate is within a point of last year's, and his expected wOBA is actually higher than it was in 2021. He did get a pretty sizeable park downgrade going from Toronto to Seattle, so it's not unreasonable to think he might underperform his expected stats a bit. But not by 100 points. He'll be fine. Buy. 

Ozzie Albies (Current rank among hitters: 172) 

There's been a lot of talk about whether the juiced ball is back, and while I think it's probably a bit too early to know for sure – for what it's worth, league-wide HR/FB rate is up to 12.7, compared to just 10.0% last April) – it's an important question when trying to figure out if we should be buying low on Albies. Albies has a swing perfectly geared for getting the most out of his pretty limited raw power, which was how he hit 30 homers in 2021 despite pretty middling quality of contact. He hits the ball in the air a lot to the pull side, trading batting average for homers, and it was a good trade when the ball was flying out. It didn't work out for him last season, and it hasn't been working out so far this season, either. That being said, there's probably been some bad luck here – his expected wOBA of .308, while not great, dwarfs his actual .264 mark. He'll be better than this moving forward, but will he be the Fantasy superstar he was at his best? I had my questions coming into the season, and naturally, I still do. 

Manny Machado (Current rank among hitters: 171)

I'll be honest: There's probably nothing in the numbers that could make me worried about Machado. We're talking about one of the game's unquestioned best players, a superstar with a decade of elite production under his belt. Maybe at 30, he's hit a wall and won't be that any more, but I'm gonna need a lot more than 54 plate appearances to make that call, regardless of the underlying numbers. And, to be clear, the underlying numbers are bad – .180 expected average, .240 expected slugging percentage, below average in basically every possible batted ball metric. It's all true … and I just don't care. Maybe that will leave me susceptible to missing an opportunity to sell Machado on name value if this decline is real, but that's a flag I'm willing to plant. Manny Machado will be fine.