MLB Team X-factors for 2017, Part I: AL East
We all know the term “x-factor” by now. It’s the over-used, go-term term for sports analysts to describe the player who is not necessarily the best but is also important enough to swing a game or a season. It may be over-used, but it is over-used for good reason. It’s a term that all MLB fans will understand as soon as you use it.
Of course, each MLB fan has a slightly different interpretation of “x-factor,” and this author is no different. Personally, I think of an x-factor – especially when in a season-long context – as a player in an important position with an extreme variance of possibilities for his 2017 season.
Maybe it’s a young player who we just don’t know if he will make the leap this season. Maybe it is a savvy veteran hanging on for one more season of relevance. Maybe it’s a mid-career player who simply struggles to stay healthy, or a player in a more forward role this season.
Here at Call to the Pen, we are going to give you x-factors for all 30 MLB teams before the season starts. Since you’ll want more than just a cursory glance at the player, we’re going to split up the article by division, starting with the American League East. (Sorry, the east coast bias is strong with this one.) Check back later this week for the American League Central.
Baltimore Orioles – Zach Britton
Over the last five seasons, the Baltimore Orioles have consistently out-performed their preseason projections. For some folks, that success has been due to manager Buck Showalter, for others, it’s has been thanks to the bullpen. Both have likely played a role, so let’s tackle the most important man in the Orioles bullpen (sorry, Brad Brach) – Zach Britton.
Britton was historically great in 2016, ending the season with the lowest ERA (0.54) in league history (min. 50 IP). Britton has been amazing for several seasons now, relying on his heavy sinker usage to induce mind-numbing ground ball rates (80.0% in 2016). Putting aside his lack of usage in the Orioles’ play-in game last September, there’s a bit of worry surrounding Britton to start 2017, as he has been dealing with a left oblique injury, but he should make his spring debut sooner than later.
The O’s won’t need Britton to repeat his 0.54-ERA-level season in 2017, but if he misses extended time to injury, that would be a big blow to the team’s high hopes for the season. The club certainly has a legitimate closer fill-in in Brach, but having to (potentially) move Brach out of the set-up role would maybe be the bigger domino to fall. Showalter is certainly a wizard, and the bullpen is excellent when healthy but for the O’s to exceed expectations again in 2017 (FanGraphs’ projection: 81 wins), Britton will need to be on point again this year.
Boston Red Sox – Hanley Ramirez
Right now you’d be hardpressed to find any MLB fans who don’t have the Boston Red Sox in their top tier of contenders in the American League for 2017. Of course the same was said before the 2012 and 2014 seasons. The Sox have been a bit all over the map since 2012, with two division titles and three finishes in the AL East cellar.
If there is a path to disappointment in 2017, a drop-off in offense could well be the reason. Most Sox followers have bigger questions about the rotation, but with the loss of David Ortiz, the Sox lineup could lose a lot of its pop if Hanley Ramirez is unable to repeat his 2016 campaign. Ramirez is nursing a shoulder injury right now and we all know his history with injuries sapping his production.
If Betts goes from 31 home runs down to the 25 range he seems more likely to settle into and Mitch Moreland does his typical Moreland thing, the Sox offense could definitely drop from its absurd 2016 level (team wRC+: 113) to simply above average. That could be the difference between 95 wins and 90 and a division title versus a wild card spot. The health of Ramirez may well be the most important factor in just how good the Sox offense will be in 2017.
New York Yankees – Aaron Judge
Aaron Judge is here because he is the perfect nexus of the Yankees young talent and big power hitters. The Yankees have tons of young offensive talent right now, some at the major-league level (Judge, Gary Sanchez, Clint Frazier) and some waiting just offscreen (Gleyber Torres, Jorge Mateo, Blake Rutherford). Much of this offensive talent is also power-based, as Sanchez so deftly showed us in his 53-game demolition of the 2016 season.
Of all of these young hitters, Judge is the one with the greatest imaginable variance in 2017 as well as his potential career. Judge has Ruthian power but Joey Gallo-ian holes in his swing. Judge hit a 456-foot home run in his first-ever major-league at bat and followed that up with another home run in his second-ever MLB game.
Of course, he followed those two long balls up with a 44.2% strikeout rate in his 27 big-league games in 2016. His contact rate was even more disturbing if that’s possible, as he sported a contact rate (60.2%) 18 percentage points lower than the league average (78.2%). The Yankees have faith in Judge’s ability to patch up those holes in his swing and are giving him the first look as the starting right fielder as of now.
If the Yankees want to finish over .500 for the 24th (!) straight season in 2017, they’ll have to hope they are making the right decision on Judge and that enough of their young talent hits to make up for a rather pedestrian pitching rotation.
Tampa Bay Rays – Corey Dickerson
The Rays are a team chock full of x-factors. This designation could honestly go to two-thirds of the lineup and more than half the rotation. That being said, Dickerson might just be the “x-factoriest” of the x-factors. Dickerson came to Tampa Bay before the 2016 season when the Rays flipped Jake McGee to the Colorado Rockies for Dickerson.
As a player moving from Coors Field, Dickerson naturally faced questions before the 2016 season. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t Dickerson’s power that dipped in 2016, but rather his batting average. Dickerson hit a respectable 24 home runs for the Rays last season, tying a career high. However, after a .312 BA in his previous full season, Dickerson hit just .245 in 2016. Now before we assume the dropoff was entirely due to the move from Coors to Tropicana, let’s take a look at the numbers, thanks to FanGraphs.
| Line Drive Rate | Ground Ball Rate | Fly Ball Rate | |
| 2014 (Coors full season) | 26.7 | 36.8 | 36.5 |
| 2016 | 17.5 | 37.6 | 45.0 |
Dickerson basically turned nine percent of his line drives into fly balls from 2014 to 2016. To me, that looks like a player who was overcompensating for an assumed dropoff in power. Dickerson posted a much higher line drive rate in the second half of 2016 (19.0% up from 15.8%) which may well be a sign of his adjustment to his new environment as the season went along. If Dickerson can maintain that decent 19.0% line drive rate that he posted in the second half (when he posted a .260 BA), the Rays offense will be all that much better for it.
Toronto Blue Jays – Devon Travis
I’m pretty sure if you write an “MLB X-Factors” article and don’t choose Devon Travis for the Blue Jays you create a tear in the space-time continuum. Travis has shown flashes in each of the past two seasons, slashing .304/.361/.498 in 61 games in 2015 before slashing .300/.332/.454 in 101 games last season. Travis heads into 2017 as one of the ultimate “if only he can stay healthy” players in the league.
In 2015, it was a shoulder injury and then a reaggravation of that same shoulder that caused Travis to miss so much time. Last year, it was a knee injury that sent Travis to the disabled list, and Travis then reaggravated that same knee in the playoffs. Travis is already struggling with “lateral movement,” as reported by Mike Wilner of Sportsnet, and even the most ardent of Jays fans have to admit that they are in “prove it to me” mode when it comes to Travis and staying healthy.
When Travis is healthy, however, he brings their lineup to another level. He slots in at the top of their lineup and provides both on-base ability and power, a rare threat from the top of the order and even rarer from a top of the lineup second baseman.
Travis is never likely to play 162 games, but if he can skew closer to 120 games than 60, he can provide real value to Toronto. Over the course of 163 career games to date, he has been worth 4.8 fWAR, meaning he could be worth as much as three and a half wins if he could stay on the field just a bit more in 2017. In a division that is expected to be an absolute dogfight, those three or four wins could be enormous.