Fantasy Baseball Waiver Wire Advice: Jeff McNeil Is For Real Pick Him Up ASAP

Jeff McNeil’s breakout is real. The three-position Met is having a red-hot start to the season, and at 36% ownership, most of the fantasy community hasn’t caught up to the fact that he’s a bona fide beast.

McNeil’s current slash line of .404/.475/.519 is not going to persist. I’m not trying to sell you on the idea that the Mets blindly stumbled into the second coming of Ted Williams over here. But I am telling you that when he does return to Earth, his floor is going to be around a .300 batting average. At 27, it’s normal to be skeptical of a tremendous breakout like this, but there are signs that his success is sustainable.

McNeil suddenly morphed into someone who couldn’t make an out last year, hitting .327 with power (14 home runs) in 51 games at Double-A before moving up to Triple-A, where he hit .368 with five home runs over a 31-game stretch. His hitting was so unbelievable that he forced the Mets to call him up to the big leagues. He didn’t cool down, slashing .329/.381/.471 over a 63-game span. Essentially, he was one of the game’s finest hitters in 2018.

He was a fairly anonymous prospect up until his insane 2018, and he lacks much draft pedigree, so therefore he’s still being brushed off. He’s also posted an insane .457 BABIP so far in 2019, coming off a suspiciously high .359 BABIP in 2018. These BABIP numbers are part of the reason I was lukewarm on him entering the season, but I’ve become a believer.

First, part of his consistently high BABIP is that he makes excellent contact. So far this season just 6.5% of his batted balls were “soft contact,” per Fangraphs. While his ground ball rate has risen (not great), the quality of contact is allowing many of those grounders to find holes and become hits. His line drive rate has risen by eight points too.

Second, he’s become a more disciplined hitter. His chase rate has dropped five percent from last season per BaseballSavant, so he’s combining improved discipline with exceptional contact. If you can unearth a .300+ hitter off the waiver wire, that’s an incredible find. While a stolen base threat who doesn’t hurt in other categories is the modern Holy Grail of fantasy baseball, having high-end batting average help is next on the list. In a game increasingly reliant on home runs, big swings, and walks, true contact hitters are rarer than ever. In McNeil, you have an honest-to-God reliable contact hitter who can man 2B, 3B or OF in your league (at least if your league is on Yahoo!).

McNeil is on a path to be a descendant of Daniel Murphy and Justin Turner, late-blooming players with versatility and latent potential for power numbers that are useful at best, and non-damaging at worst. McNeil has also flashed stolen base potential at times, swiping 15 bags at Single-A in 2015 and 16 over 119 games at High-A. He stole seven bases last season too, so a double-digit total is not out of the question. At this rate, McNeil should probably be an everyday starter for most mixed-league fantasy owners.