Phillies Tommy Joseph: Fantasy Baseball’s Biggest Faller
By Gavin Tramps
With just one week in the books, Phillies first baseman Tommy Joseph has suffered the biggest fall in ownership in ESPN leagues, but is this an overreaction?
Tommy Joseph burst onto the fantasy scene last season with 21 home runs in 107 games. The right-hander slugged .505 as part of a .815 OPS in his debut season for the fourth-placed Phillies.
The power was unexpected, but perhaps it should not have been. Joseph hit 21 home runs in High-A as a 19-year-old in 2011. Then, injuries restricted him to 45, 27 and 58 games from 2013-2015 respectively.
Having been written off as a prospect before the 2016 season by all of the major prospect evaluators, Joseph finally got his Major League opportunity in May. Despite hitting eight home runs in his first 40 games, he slashed just .215/.227/.430.
As a waiver wire pickup, he was sensational over the rest of the season with another 13 home runs, a .289 average and .925 OPS. And this was for the lowest-scoring team in MLB.
Joseph’s success was partly fueled by pull-happy power (41.9% pull to 20.8% opposite field) and an unsustainably high home run to fly ball rate of 18.9%. An average hitter should expect a 9.5% HR/FB.
Although Joseph is 25-years-old, the time he lost through injury means that he is still developing as a hitter. The right-hander only had 328 at-bats in Triple-A before the jump to the majors. Whether he will ever improve his approach at the plate is debatable, but it should not be underestimated that his 21 home runs in 315 at-bats last year was almost a 40 home run pace for a full season.
He will not steal any bases and was a career .255 AVG hitter in the minors, so he won’t help your batting average. The Phillies had the second-lowest OBP last season, so the additions of Howie Kendrick and Michael Saunders should help get more men on base, which will boost Joseph’s RBI total.
The former second-rounder from the 2009 draft hit five doubles and three home runs as part of a .313 AVG in Spring Training but has gone just 2-for-17 in the regular season this year.
Joseph remains the Phillies’ primary first baseman but will face competition from left-handed rookie Brock Stassi and veteran Daniel Nava. The 34-year-old Nava saw a jump in ownership after his two-homer day on April 6 but it is unlikely that he will pose much of a threat to Joseph’s playing time. The two home runs were only the 26th and 27th of Nava’s career.
Next: Consensus Top-25 Prospects
Jumping ship based on 17 at-bats (seven of which ended in strikeouts) seems very premature. He posted a .925 OPS in his final 42 starts of last season and .883 OPS in Spring Training. Surely that deserves some leeway, right?