2021 Fantasy Baseball Boom or Bust: Randy Arozarena
Randy Arozarena did not play a game for the Tampa Bay Rays last season until Aug. 30, and his debut in the starting lineup came the next day. In 23 regular season games, he posted a .281/.382/.641 slash-line (1.022 OPS) with seven home runs, 11 RBI and four stolen bases.
Then came the postseason. Arozarena simply went to new level knocking the cover off the ball, setting a postseason record with 10 home runs while hitting .377 with 14 RBI and 64 total bases in those 20 games.
Arozarena was not a top prospect in the St. Louis Cardinals’ system before being traded to the Rays. His first taste of the big leagues came in 2019, and he had a .300/.391/.500 slash mark over 23 plate appearances (19 games).
Counting playoffs, Arozarena has 67 major league games and 190 plate appearances on his resume. He’s easy to tab as a fantasy breakout candidate for 2021, but can he meet the hype?
During his regular season career thus far, Arozarena has notable splits against right-handed and left-handed pitching (h/t to Rotowire for the first two numbers).
vs LHP: 279 wRC+, 11.1% strikeout rate, .391/.481/.957 slash-line (1.438 OPS), 183 OPS+
vs. RHP: 125 wRC+, 31.9% strikeout rate, .246/.347/.475 slash-line (.823 OPS) 69 OPS+
Arozarena profiles as a high-end power/speed combo, with 93 percentile sprint speed (according to Statcast) and a career ISO (isolated power) of .321 (regular season only). It’s a litany of small samples for him, with no more than 89 games at any one level in a season thus far, but the offensive skill set is enticing.
Via FanGraphs, Arozarena’s batted balls are mostly flyballs or ground balls. This is, again, regular season data.
2019 (Cardinals): 56.3% ground ball rate, 31.3% fly ball rate, 12.5% line drive rate
2020 (Rays): 46.5% ground ball rate, 34.9% fly ball rate, 18.6% line drive rate
Going back to Arozorena’s Statcast data, he hammers fastballs and struggles with non-fastballs. So he will have adjust to what pitchers will do to him, and he definitely has some swing-and-miss and willingness to chase pitches in his plate discipline numbers.
Arozarena’s struggles against right-handers are enough to regularly take him out of the lineup on the days a righty starts. The Rays will not hesitate to make him a platoon player if he can’t correct it.
Via Fantasy Pros’ ADP, Arozarena is coming in as OF17 and pick No. 59 overall. The postseason hype is baked in there, but in what looks like an outlier he went 81st overall (Round 7, pick 9) in my recent Yahoo! 12-team mixed league draft. By overall ADP he’s surrounded by two pitchers (Josh Hader, Corbin Burnes).
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Drafting Arozarena where you’ll need to in a fantasy draft requires faith. Faith he’ll deliver a 20-20 season, with requisite RBI and runs scored totals, as well as a batting average that won’t hurt you over the playing time it’ll take to do it (.260-.270 would be nice).
My projection for Arozarena will be optimistic. But the downside is clear, and rooted partly in an ADP I wouldn’t touch him at he’s atop my current list of fantasy busts for 2021.
Randy Arozarena 2021 Projection: .258/.350/.455 slash-line, 25 home runs, 80 RBI, 85 runs scored, 18 stolen bases
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