Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and MLB's Most Overhyped Stars for 2023 Season
There are good vibes all around now that the 2023 Major League Baseball season is underway. As such, maybe it's in bad taste to deliberately get all pessimistic about some of the league's brightest stars.
As for why we did anyway, let's just say it was for educational purposes.
We've come up with a list of eight stars who are undeniably shrouded in hype at the outset of the '23 season—to wit, all eight feature prominently on MLB Network's top 100—but who come with big question marks that must be taken seriously.
This said, it was only fair to take a "both sides" approach to this discussion. For each player, we touched on why the hype is warranted before moving on to why we think it's not.
Moving in alphabetical order, we'll start with four hitters and end with four pitchers.
1B José Abreu, Houston Astros
Why the Hype Is Warranted
As in, apart from the fact that José Abreu is an MVP winner who's also been an All-Star and Silver Slugger three times?
Well, there's how Abreu was still going strong even in his age-35 season last year. He hit over .300 for the fourth time in nine years, with the second-most hard-hit balls (i.e., at least 95 mph off the bat) of any hitter.
Why the Hype Isn't Warranted
Though the hits kept coming for Abreu last season, the extra-base hits did not. He set career lows with 15 home runs and an overall extra-base hit rate of 8.1 percent.
In context of how his penchant for hard contact was still there, this is obviously counter-intuitive. But how Abreu was hitting the ball simply wasn't conducive to slugging. A career-high 41.0 percent of his hard contact was on the ground. He also hit only 22.2 percent of his fly balls and line drives to hit pull side, where power is easiest to come by.
This is not to suggest that Abreu can't be a good hitter for the Astros. But without power, he's probably not going to be the great one he's been in years past.
SS Xander Bogaerts, San Diego Padres
Why the Hype Is Warranted
There are indeed good reasons that the San Diego Padres were willing to guarantee Xander Bogaerts $280 million over the next 11 years.
All he did in 10 seasons with the Boston Red Sox was hit .292 with a 117 OPS+, denoting him as 17 percent better than average. He did no worse than a 128 OPS+ in any of the last five seasons, making him one of just five hitters to do so.
Why the Hype Is Not Warranted
It's alarming that the 30-year-old Bogaerts outperformed his expecting batting average by 48 percentage points last season, but a bigger concern is how his power will adjust to life after Fenway Park.
Boston's home stadium is, after all, notoriously friendly to right-handed hitters with pull power. Bogaerts matches that description, so it's not surprising that his road slugging percentage outpaced his home slugging percentage exactly once between 2014 and 2022:
It's encouraging that Bogaerts has already collected his first and his second career home runs in San Diego, but it nonetheless bears noting that Petco Park is the opposite of Fenway Park regarding friendliness to right-handed hitters. If that proves to be a drain on Bogaerts' slugging, he'll devolve into a singles hitter who's merely playable at shortstop.
1B Paul Goldschmidt, St. Louis Cardinals
Why the Hype Is Warranted
It's no longer out of bounds to think that Paul Goldschmidt has a shot at the Hall of Fame. He's been an elite player for a decade and he's coming into 2023 off a banner year that resulted in him winning the National League MVP.
Goldschmidt, 35, was pursuing the Triple Crown until late in 2022. Though that didn't pan out, he still ended up leading the Senior Circuit in slugging, OPS and OPS+.
Why the Hype Is Not Warranted
Simply put, what Goldschmidt did last season is not sustainable.
This perhaps goes without saying any time a guy has a career year, but it's especially true in this case. The easiest thing to point to is Goldschmidt's batting average on balls in play, which ended up at a league-high .368. A solid achievement, but almost certainly not repeatable.
Even more telling is the league-high 52-point gap between Goldschmidt's expected and actual weighted on-base averages. That hints at a heaping helping of good luck in the abstract, with knocks like this, this and this exemplifying it in reality. If a bill for all that comes due in 2023, he's another guy who'll veer closer to good than great.
1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Toronto Blue Jays
Why the Hype Is Warranted
The 2021 season saw Vladimir Guerrero Jr. become the youngest player to hit as many as 48 home runs, and he even tacked on a .311 average and .401 on-base percentage. He was one of baseball's best hitters by basically any metric.
Though Guerrero wasn't as good in 2022, he still salvaged a 131 OPS+ and 32 home runs. That's about as good as "down" years get.
Why the Hype Isn't Warranted
See if you can spot the outlier in Guerrero's ranks among fellow hitters in wins above replacement for the four seasons he's spent with the Toronto Blue Jays:
The answer is obviously 2021. And while anyone who argues that Guerrero's youth and talent allow for reasonable expectations that he can be that guy again, we're not so sure on account of how he has yet to fully bury some bad habits.
Namely, questionable swing decisions and ground balls. He regressed on both fronts from 2021 to 2022, with his chase rate going from the 69th to the 39th percentile and his ground-ball rate jumping from 44.8 to 52.1 percent. If these issues continue to linger, he'll have two significant roadblocks standing between him and sustained offensive superstardom.
RHP Jacob deGrom, Texas Rangers
Why the Hype Is Warranted
From Jake Arrieta to Mookie Betts to any random seamhead on Twitter, it's not hard to find believers in the notion that Jacob deGrom is one of the greatest pitchers of all-time.
The 34-year-old's two Cy Young Awards definitely help his cause. So, too, do his numbers. For example, his career 153 ERA+ ranks third all-time among AL/NL pitchers who've tossed at least 1,300 innings.
Why the Hype Isn't Warranted
For starters, you'll have to take our word for it that deGrom was slated to be on this list even before he bombed in his debut with the Texas Rangers.
Certainly the biggest cause for concern with deGrom is that he missed the latter half of 2021 with a bad elbow and then the first four months of 2022 with a bad shoulder. But there's also how he couldn't quite sustain his trademark velocity on his four-seam fastball late last year:
Hitters were ultimately able to take advantage, as deGrom went from having a 1.66 ERA through his first seven starts to a 6.00 ERA over his last four. This all feels almost like an omen in retrospect, as deGrom's velocity was still relatively down as the Philadelphia Phillies were getting to him for six extra-base hits and five runs on Opening Day.
RHP Alek Manoah, Toronto Blue Jays
Why the Hype Is Warranted
Before Alek Manoah did it in 2022, the last two American League hurlers to post at least 6 rWAR in a season at age 24 or younger were Chris Sale in 2013 and Félix Hernández in 2010.
Pretty good company, as they say, and Manoah surely has the goods to continue carving out a career as an ace. To identify just a couple, a strong ability to throw strikes and a quality pitch mix headlined by one of the league's more effective fastballs.
Why the Hype Is Warranted
Once again, you'll have to take our word for it that Manoah was already lined up for this list before he served up nine hits and five runs in Toronto's opener.
Like with Goldschmidt, Manoah dramatically outperformed his peripheral metrics last season. There was a 107-point gap between his actual and expected ERAs, which makes sense if for no other reason than he was only in the 50th percentile for strikeout rate.
It also can't be overlooked that Manoah ranked fourth in the majors with 1,529 pitches thrown with his infield shifted behind him. That's a luxury he won't have going forward, and it's a threat to exacerbate his relative struggles against left-handed batters. They had a .680 OPS against him in 2022, compared to .460 for righty batters.
LHP Julio Urías, Los Angeles Dodgers
Why the Hype Is Warranted
After dominating his way through the 2020 postseason, Julio Urías spent 2021 and 2022 cementing himself as arguably the best left-hander in MLB.
The last two seasons have seen Urías win 37 games while racking up a 2.57 ERA. Factoring in that he also threw 360.2 innings, it's shocking that he somehow doesn't lead all southpaws in rWAR across the last two seasons.
Why the Hype Is Not Warranted
Even as he led the National League with a 2.16 ERA, the 26-year-old Urías was showing cracks last season. His average fastball came in 1 mph slower than it had in 2021, with his strikeout and home run rates both taking turns for the worse.
So even if it's just one start, it ought to set off alarm bells that Urías' fastball was down still another tick to 92.6 mph in his 2023 debut. And then there are his defense-related questions.
In 2022, he had the luxury of pitching in front of a Los Angeles Dodgers defense that put on a league-high 11,976 infield shifts in the process of leading MLB in defensive efficiency. Sans the former, it may take a step down in the latter in 2023. If so, Urías won't be the only pitcher who feels the sting of it.
RHP Justin Verlander, New York Mets
Why the Hype Is Warranted
Well, this is only a three-time Cy Young Award winner and future first-ballot Hall of Famer we're talking about.
What's more, Justin Verlander is coming off arguably the finest season of his career. His 1.75 ERA and 220 ERA+ were both career-best marks, and likewise for the .498 OPS to which he held opposing hitters.
Why the Hype Isn't Warranted
Though the strain in Verlander's upper arm purportedly isn't serious, you could still see something like that coming a mile away. A 40-year-old Tommy John survivor with over 3,000 innings on his arm isn't the kind of profile one associates with durability.
As to performance-related questions, Verlander is in the same boat as Manoah in that he dramatically outperformed his expected ERA last season. It's otherwise fair to question if a pitcher can sustain an 80th-percentile strikeout rate with just a 37th-percentile whiff rate.
Further, the Houston Astros shifted their infield behind Verlander on 1,468 of his pitches in 2022. The New York Mets won't have that option in 2023, which may only make the veteran righty that much more cognizant that he's swapped out a good defense for a subpar one.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.