Every Team's Most Interesting Player: Kansas City Royals, Hunter Dozier
This is the 12th in a series of articles about the most interesting player for fantasy owners on each team heading into the 2020 season. We are going alphabetically, so today we’re going to talk about Hunter Dozier of the Kansas City Royals.
Dozier, 28, was a late-stage breakout in 2019. A former Top 10 overall pick, he’d flashed at times, but more often than not struggled at the minor league level. Even when his power – which is prodigious – revealed itself, it often came attached to awful strikeout rates and low batting averages. Still, KC saw enough to give him a shot in The Show last season, and Dozier was impressive. In 139 games, Dozier slashed .279/.348/.522 with 26 home runs and 84 RBI. His 25.3% strikeout percentage was lower than he’d shown in the minors since 2014 in High-A, and his selectivity improved a tad, increasing his walk rate about three points from the previous season to 9.4%.
Dozier’s power is well-known, and it showed up routinely last year.
He made hard contact 45.3% of the time, and finished the year with an average exit velocity of 91.1 mph. However, while Dozier is very exciting as a potential home run source, his .279 average was propped up by a .339 BABIP. He hit just .229 in 2018 (102 games), and hit .226 and .254, respectively, in 2017 and 2018 at Triple-A. His 74.3% contact rate isn’t spectacular, and he has a dreadful 50.1% contact rate on balls outside the zone. Dozier was essentially a pure mistake hitter last year – 90.4% zone-contact -- even if he was a dangerous one.
Even with his poor plate discipline and history of terrible batting averages, Dozier should receive a ton of playing time even when he slumps. He’s slotted in as the Royals’ everyday RF, but he could easily play first (Ryan O’Hearn) or third base (Maikel Franco). This is a largely barren roster outside of their top four hitters, including Dozier, so if he stays healthy he’s likely going to eclipse 30 home runs for the first time in his pro career.
When drafting Dozier, you should be expecting 30 bombs, and hoping he has the upside for even more with a useful batting average. Don’t count on the latter, but anything fewer than 30 homers this year would be disappointing. I’m more optimistic than the projection systems on Fangraphs, or the fantasy community it seems; Dozier is currently going No. 166 overall, 18th among first basemen, 20th among third basemen, and 44th among outfielders. These drafters are not seeing the tremendous power upside for Dozier over a full season with just a continuation of 2019’s BABIP fortune.