When you think about the offensive talents of the Toronto Blue Jays, you often think about the likes of Vladimir Guererro Jr, Bo Bichette, or George Springer, maybe you even think of Teoscar Hernández, and most recently you might think of Alejandro Kirk, but we often forget about the talents of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. This isn’t to say that there isn't a good reason for this, the five names listed prior are all all-star caliber players, and in the case of Guerrero a generational hitting talent, but Gurriel is worthy of our attention as well. In Gurriel’s five seasons since defecting from Cuba and coming to the Blue Jays, Gurriel has established himself as a solid source of batting average with the ability to steal a few bases and hit 20 home runs. The real question about Gurriel is going to be, have we seen his best, or is there still more to come? Let's take a look at what Gurriel has done in his young career and if there is realistically room in his profile for more production.

 

 

Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Fantasy Baseball Player Spotlight

 

The most obvious thing that stands in front of Gurriel today from having a greater impact on your fantasy roster is that he, depending on your perspective, is unlucky enough to have all of the players listed above on his team. It is rare that you have a player who is an average year hit for a batting average between 0.270 and 0.300 and twenty home runs, and he hits in the sixth spot in the lineup. While this comes with certain advantages, we also can’t look past how much it limits him due to a lower number of at-bats in a season, to the tune of approximately 67 at bats per season less than the leadoff hitter would see(https://fantasy.fangraphs.com/buying-generic-plate-appearances-by-lineup-spot/). That doesn’t seem like much but based on Gurriel’s home run per plate appearance last season, that is a difference of about three home runs per season, and plenty of players in roto leagues have lost by that small of a margin and that doesn’t even account for the difference in hits, runs or runs batted in, which all require some opportunity cost.

The other thing that is an issue with Gurriel is that he doesn’t barrel the ball enough for him to hit a lot of home runs. He has a career barrel percentage of eight percent, and his current percentage is sitting at 4.6. If you compare that to his teammate Vladimir Guerrero Jr, who had a barrel percentage last year of 15 percent when he hit 48 home runs, you can see how this creates a bit of a power shortage. Otherwise, Gurriel’s advanced numbers all look good. He is in the 78th percentile for average exit velocity, so he hits the ball hard, and he has a good launch angle at 11.6 percent in his career which also lends well to him hitting for power.

Now that we have looked at the reasons why he might not see a lot more improvement let’s look at why we could. First, we talked at length about his barrel percentage, but he does have a career-high of 11.7 percent, mind you this was in just a 57-game sample, but if he can get back to barrelling the ball at that rate, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that he could hit 30 home runs in a full season’s worth of at-bats. The other thing that is in his favor is that he is just 28 years old, yes he is 10 years younger than his brother Yuli. While in many cases you might think of this as a negative as he is just entering his “prime” years, it also means that he has only had four seasons of professional training under his belt as well, whereas a player who was just drafted will likely have four years before they ever see the major leagues, so you can expect that he is still learning quite a bit on the job, which could lead to his best years being a few years behind where we might typically peg the average to be. 

Moving forward, there is still to lead us to believe that we shouldn’t continue to see a high batting average from Gurriel, and if we can make some adjustments to help him hit the ball with the barrel more often we could see some 30 home run, 0.300 batting average type seasons from him in his prime, which would likely also have the residual effect of forcing him up the batting order, and if what we are seeing today is all we ever see from him then he is still a quite useful player as he has one of the better floors in fantasy baseball. Keep an eye on him, and if someone in your league is disappointed with his lack of power so far this year, he could be worth making a trade for as he is soon going to have some time to make adjustments to his swing with the All-Star break just around the corner, and with him hitting in the bottom third of the Blue Jays order, he won’t have the same pressure on him, which can also aide him in making swing adjustments. Best of luck in the second half, and enjoy the break!

 

 

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