Welcome to The Opener, where you’ll receive a fresh, up-to-date story every morning of the regular season every week to start your day with one of the MLB writers on SI.com.
At one time they were All-Stars, shining like gold. Now they can use some fuel themselves.
MLB released its vote for the 2022 All-Star Gaming on Wednesday, which means the voting season is officially underway. Although there will be plenty of All-Stars going to Los Angeles for the first time, other more established players will be aiming to return to the Summer Classic. For some, the push to return to All-Star Gaming goes better than others.
Many of them have seen a significant drop in their stock, and while it’s almost certain they won’t get another All-Star gesture this year, there’s still a long way to go to turn things around. Let’s take a look at the five All Stars of 2021 that have lost some of their luster and let’s take a look at their chances of rebounding from now on.
Sometimes the world will throw you out. For these five players, there is still time to take to the back streets and shine again.
It is a safe bet that Castellanos will return as a player. His defense is another story.
Wendell Cruz / USA TODAY Sports
Nick Castellanos, Phillies
The value of Castellanos Phillies slightly hampered Bryce Harper’s elbow injury, which has twice left the MVP out of action for most of the season. This has forced Castellanos to play on the right pitch every day, and the results have been disastrous. He is in second place in both playoffs above average and FanGraphs ’defensive rating. Philadelphia didn’t anticipate that the 30-year-old would need to play a lot of defense in the winter when the team signed a five-year, $ 200 million contract, but that has been the reality for the first two months of the season.
The work of porous gloves would have been more sustainable if Castellanos had produced the plate, but that too has not happened. It hasn’t invented much power, with its .159 isolated power (ISO) being the lowest since 2014, and last month it made 81 plate appearances among the household. He is swinging in fields outside the field more often than ever.
However, his shot and walk rates are in line with his career rules, suggesting that his average batting average (.277) and expected slugging percentage (.513) have been the victim of the bad luck of the batting ball. It is likely that better days will come for Castellanos for the plate (however, the defense remains a different story).
WERTHEIM: Nick Castellanos’s Absolute Probability of Walking Deep in the Left Field
OF / 2B Whit Merrifield, Royals
Merrifield has been one of the most consistent baseball players in his career. Since 2017, he has never lost more than 17 games in a season and has not lost a game since the start of the 19th season. He has posted an OPS + above the league average for the past four years this season and has led the American League on three stolen bases in that span.
Go Continue
So far, however, he has not looked much like his old self. His ISO has dropped to .093, which would be the lowest of his career, and his line drive rate (20.8%) is also the worst career. His contact numbers, however, are mostly in line with what he has produced in recent years. Merrifield’s hit rate of 30.8% would be the best since 2018, and Statcast data indicates that it has been among the most unfortunate players in the league: the difference between the expected wOBA (.326) and the actual wOBA (.254) is fifth. Players with at least 200 plate appearances. Merrifield’s recent results — he is batting.270 / .321 / .405 in his last 18 games — suggest that a turnaround is not far off.
C Salvador Perez, King
While Merrifield’s outlook looks a little more positive, the same cannot be said for his Kings teammate. Perez spent some time on the injured list in May with a thumb injury, but has not found an aggressive step this season. He has always hit a lot and played very little, although this season he is coming out with a high career rate of 28.3%, his 3.2% ride rate being the second lowest among MLB qualified players.
As of Wednesday, Perez has a .202 / .241 / .404 bar line and 80 wRC +, the lowest mark in his career.
AP Photography / Reed Hoffmann
To top it all off, the home champion does almost the same damage when he comes in contact with the ball. He plays the ball more often in the air, but the 44.0% hit rate is the lowest in four years. This also means that a ball that doesn’t travel as much as it has in recent years has created a lot of easy fly-ball outings. Perez had a two-shot game with Kansas City winning 8-4 on Wednesday – his third effort in five games – although there are few other signs that a significant change is on the way.
SP Trevor Rogers, Marlins
Last year’s National League runner-up Rookie of the Year was released with an ERA of 2.64 ERA in 133 innings with 157 strikeouts. But 2022 has not been a pleasant one for Rogers so far, and he seems to be in trouble with his fast ball. Hitter’s opponents averaged .222 bats last season with just five home runs against Rogers’ warm-up, but are playing on the 22nd, averaging seven home runs and averaging .333 bats in 108 plate appearances.
His average speed, spin speed and movement on the field are almost the same as last year, so it’s hard to determine what went wrong. But the batters have posted an .847 OPS against Rogers from the top 10 to this point, and have a poor 1.86 strikeout rate over 45 innings. Rogers has not had as many swings as he did a year ago on off-field pitches, so his swing rate has dropped from 14.0% to 9.7%. They may be the natural growth pains of a 24-year-old pitcher, but adjustments need to be made to the first-round pick to rediscover its full potential and consolidate what is supposedly extraordinary. Marlinak rotation for years to come.
Sign up for the Five-Tool Newsletter to receive all of our MLB coverage in your inbox every Friday during the 2022 season.
Jesse Winker, Marine
In a trade with Landing Winker Reds it seemed like a blow Sailors, but so far the 28-year-old has not lived in Seattle. Since its 2017 debut season last year, Winker has had a career line of .288 / .385 / .504 with a 132 wRC +, ranking 12th among all outside players in that stretch. So far, however, he has managed a poor .209 / .315 / .296 streak in 56 games, with a .087 ISO behind the lightning strikes of Adam Frazier, another ’21 All-Star player who is underperforming this season. his first year with the sailors — and Miguel Rojas.
Despite two months of poor results, Statcast still sees Winker as a powder keg ready to blow up. He has the longest gap between his xwOBA (.362) and wOBA (.281) players with at least 200 plate appearances, and continues to make contact and draw rides at the elite level. It hasn’t been put up or practiced differently in recent years (at least from a pitch-type perspective), so it’s feasible to be able to attribute the slow start to this point to poor luck.
I don’t know if Winker is that kind of superstition. But to be honest, maybe throwing a four-leaf clover or a coin into a fountain just needs to change his fortunes for the better.
More MLB coverage:
• Hot Seat Index: Which MLB manager could be released next?
• Joe Maddon’s Age of Instability in Fire Deepens Angels
• The Phillies had another chance to fire Joe Girardi
• Absolute probability of Nick Castellanos ’Drives Into Deep Left Field
• Jeremy Peña is a professional MLB Rookie
.