Underlying metrics for struggling players

This post is just to highlight who is genuinely performing bad and who is just having the worst possible luck, things may really not be as bad as they seem so far.

Pitching:

There are 6 main culprits off to a really bad start on the pitching side, I'll sort them by ERA

ERA	Player	BABIP	FIP	xFIP
9.68	Brown	.475	5.53	4.32
8.38	Hader	.476	2.79	2.29
8.31	Pressly	.464	3.32	2.92
7.08	France	.329	4.88	5.37
5.11	Bielak	.333	6.04	4.87
4.91	Abreu	.321	6.75	4.94

So looking at it this way, Brown and Bielak (Bielak more on the low side of average) are pitching at a roughly league average quality and just getting bad results (Average ERA last year was 4.33)

Hader & Pressly both having xFIPs under 3 with ERAs over 8 is abolutely unsustainable. They're just getting really freaking unlucky

Abreu hasn't looked great this year, and his Metrics more or less support that he's getting proper results right now, but he has improved in his last couple of appearances, so I'm less worried about him right now.

Brown, Hader, and Pressly all having a BABIP over .450 is also unsustainable.

Unfortunately of these 6 Mainly France, and Somewhat Bielak really don't great or have a great track record to make me feel like they'll necessarily turn it around. They should both be a little better, but not enough to be a major upgrade. They may find themselves on the bubble of the roster whenever (if ever) we start getting healthy again.

But, altogether our pitching woes really don't look as bad as what we've seen, and I bet will begin to recover by the end of the month (seriously 3 players can't continue to sport BABIPs that high on the same team, it's completely absurd)

Batting:

We actually have 8 players under last season average OPS (.734) on the team right now, but I'm going to give Dubon (.733) a pass and focus on the other 5 regulars under performing

OPS	Player	ISO	BABIP	BB%	K%
.223	Abreu	.017	.093	4.6%	26.2%
.582	Bregman	.067	.242	11.6%	11.6%
.593	Singleton	.057	.320	10.3%	25.6%
.664	McCormick	.049	.381	12.7%	28.2%
.687	Meyers	.195	.233	6.8%	20.5%

Now, I will preface with, both Meyers & McCormick have an OPS+ of 100 & 98, meaning they aren't really bad this season pretty much just average, but they're still under performing last seasons league average, so they're more mild offenders than the other 4

I am not going to discuss Jose Abreu, it's been talked to death on this sub and nothing I add is going to be new information or change your mind or opinion on him.

Bregman and Meyers are the 2 guys that stand out as most likely to improve based on both of them having relatively low BABIPs. Bregman's eye is still working well which gives me some hope that he's just having a traditional Bregman season of not hitting until May.

Meyers actually surprises me, he's putting up a perfectly average statline right now while cutting down on K's & Sporting a bad BABIP. He may genuinely be able to put together an All Star season if he can start finding empty spaces when he hits the ball.

Singleton and McCormick over performing BABIP scars me a bit. I really like McCormick, but Meyers really does seem to be the better CF right now (wonder if Chas can learn how to play first) however, McCormick is hitting for next to no power right now, so hopefully as his BABIP trends back to normal he's able to hit for his career averages in power which would level him off and help keep his OPS up.

All things considered, the offense has been pretty good this year (although struggled to score runs). If / when Bregman can start hitting again that'll really help, especially if we can get Meyers to produce we'd have at least 6 solid bats in the lineup every night.

To close, the point of this entire post was to show you that the team is really much better on paper than they've been performing. The talent is still their, the window is still open. We just need a little luck, and a lot of motivation to get players to actually play up to what they're capable of. Maybe that means moving the struggling relievers to lower leverage to help them build up confidence, flipping Press and Montero may help Pressly see his stuff is still good. Maybe letting Hader have a few games where he isn't "The Guy" might help him acclimate

And my final note, we really need a 1B who can play Baseball, that is our only true gaping hole right now. Whether it's Caratini, Dubon, Loperfido, Cabbage, or someone else entirely. Every other position both offensively and pitching looks like they are capable of performing at an MLB level except 1B