The Curious Case Of Dan Uggla

The worst thing one can do in fantasy is to make long term decisions based up short term performance. In fantasy, patience is a virtue; if you truly believe in a player (especially pitchers), you need to give them a full season to produce the expected line. Baseball is such a luck-oriented sport that [short-term] statistics are the byproduct of situation and chance. Saves come in clusters, RBIs in bunches and HRs in binges.

But sometimes, you need to know when to cut your losses. If a guy is hitting .200, you need to know if its because he's a .200 hitter on pace to hit .200 or if he's a productive .270 guy being locked down by bad luck. Enter Dan Uggla.

I am a big fan of Dan Uggla. He's the Adam Dunn of second base. Despite the high K rate, he's got the necessary tools (power and patience, the two P's) and lineup (batting behind Hanley Ramirez) for success. And yet, despite all this, his production has been very "limited." While 4 HR, 16 RBI is nothing to scoff over in just under a month of play -- that's on pace for 24 HR and 96 RBI -- it is simply not up to the expectations of what I consider to be a perennial 30 HR guy batting fifth in one of the most offensive lineups in the NL. The .217 BA in particularly leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

The question with Dan Uggla is trade or hold. Is Dan Uggla -- a guy who has increased his whiff rate by 6% every season since his debut -- going to continue to hit .217 and limit his offensive output or is Dan Uggla -- who has increased his walk rate and ISO each season since his debut -- going to bounce back and eventually go on an offensive tear?

Make no mistake about it, with a 30+% K rate, Uggla's batting average is going to be downright Uggly (haha, get it? it's a pun!) -- Adam Dunn ugly. My preseason projected BA line for Uggla was a repeat of last season: somewhere around .260 based on his peripherals. So far, he's regressed well below his 2007 batting level (.245 BA). What gives?

In 2008, Uggla struck out 32.2% of the time, walked 12.7% of the time, hit 15.7% of his balls for line drives and posted a career high .323 BABIP (his xBABIP is/was .303). This season, Uggla has cut down the strikeout rate by 2%, increased his walk rate half a percent and is driving the ball with more authority (20.8 LD%, up 5% from last season). All of Uggla's skills, across the board, have improved and yet he's only hitting .217 thanks to a .250 BABIP. Is there any reason to blame besides luck? Not that I can see.

The only noticeable difference between this season and last for Uggla has been a 3.5% increase in his daily diet of sliders and 7% uptick in his GB rate. Despite this slight change in pitch offerings, Uggla is swinging less at bad pitches (his O-Swing is down 3.2% from last season) and making more contact at the plate (10% increase in O-Contact, 2.5% increase in Z-Contact), which bodes well for an expected increase in average, while an xBABIP on GB's is .290.

Despite his moderately slow pace and increased GB%, Uggla should eventually see some luck go his way this season (xBABIP on LD's is something like .710) and a correction in the numbers should be eminent. If Uggla can maintain these reasonable gains in his approach at the plate, there's absolutely no reason he can't improve upon last season's numbers over the course of the remaining games.

Put simply, if there's any player ready to break out that you shouldn't worry about, it's Dan Uggla.