Jason Heyward was a pretty frustrating guy to roster in DFS last season. Of 43 qualifiers who logged 125 or more games last season at a price tag of $3,700 or more on DraftKings, Jason Heyward was one of only nine players to post a negative Plus/Minus (-0.2). As you might expect, that also resulted in a below average Consistency Rating of 39%.
For Jason, though, a new year brings new opportunity. While in 2015 he was moved up and down the order in a mediocre (for DFS purposes) St. Louis offense that ranked 24th in overall runs scored; we hope in 2016 that he will settle into a favorable spot in the order as part of one of the league’s high-powered offenses. While hope can sometimes be a dangerous thing in DFS, Heyward will no doubt be one of the more intriguing plays early in the MLB season. Let’s take a look at what we know about Jason Heyward entering 2016.
First, if the Cubs perform like many of us hope they will this season, it will be by far the most favorable spot in which Heyward has ever found himself. Here are the overall ranks of each team Heyward has played for in runs scored by season:
- 2015: 24th
- 2014: 29th
- 2013: 13th
- 2012: 17th
- 2011: 22nd
- 2010: 13th
This year, FanGraphs is projecting the Cubs to score 4.61 runs per game, which would make them a top-three offense. Hopping over to FanDuel now (because the database goes back further there), we can see that Heyward’s individual production has more or less followed the overall production of his team’s offense. The two seasons since 2011 when he has been part of a top-20 offense (2012 & 2013) were also his two highest scoring by fantasy points per game.
As a function of being on poor offenses over the past two seasons, Jason Heyward has not appeared in many games where Vegas is projecting his team to score 4.6 runs or higher. Using 4.6 in the “Vegas Runs” filter (FanGraphs projected runs/game for Chicago), we see that Heyward has crushed expectations in this small sample over the past two seasons:
Last season in St. Louis, Heyward posted a career-high .293 batting average. That was over 20 points higher than his previous best of .271 and his BABIP of .329 was also abnormally high. In 2016, his DFS value will likely come from counting stats. Let’s look at how Jason’s power might translate in Wrigley.
Having spent his entire career in the NL, he has logged 18 games at Wrigley since 2011, but the results have been completely unremarkable:
Jason is one of those hitters whose power is very predictable. Over the past two seasons, the overwhelming majority of his homeruns gave been to right field, as we can see using FanGraphs’ Spray Chart:
His raw power won’t really benefit from playing half of his games at Wrigley Field this season. Looking at ESPN’s Ballpark Overlay Tool, we can see that Wrigley is similar to Busch in right, while he probably won’t be taking too much advantage of the shorter wall in left. Still, it’s nice to know that we don’t have to downgrade his homerun potential.
Finally, we need to know where Jason Heyward is going to bat in the order this season. The majority of his preseason work so far has come in the three-spot, with a couple of appearances hitting second. Obviously, it’s not written in stone, but for the sake of argument, let’s say Heyward does in fact open the season hitting third for Chicago. As with most teams around the league, the two and three spots were valuable from a Plus/Minus perspective last season:
We all know what Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant can do, so let’s take them out of the equation. Last season, Austin Jackson, Chris Coghlan, Chris Denorfia, Jorge Soler, Kyle Schwarber, and Starlin Castro combined to make 133 starts hitting second or third. In those games, the average Plus/Minus jumps up to +1.17:
In fact, the 8.74 fantasy points per game (including all players now) the Cubs produced out of the second and third spots in the batting order ranked fourth overall last season behind Toronto, Arizona, and Cincinnati. And remember, this is an offense we are expecting to be much better this season. Needless to say, if Heyward can secure one of these spots in the order, it will be a huge boost.
Based on the numbers, we can expect Heyward to do fairly well in 2016. Of course, the problem is that lots of people are seemingly expecting him to do well. For instance, Steamer has him projected for 18 HRs, 18 SBs, 71 RBIs, and a .284 average. That would be roughly what Carlos Santana, Logan Forsythe, and Mookie Betts produced last season. With stacking more popular than ever in MLB DFS, expect Heyward to be a popular play in April. In addition to the already high-variance nature of the sport, his projections and past inconsistency may instead make him a decent fade in early April guaranteed prize pools.
