Yandy Diaz

It took Diaz until his age 31 season, but he finally got to the 20-homer plateau and threw in a league batting title as well in his career year. The homers were a bit front loaded as 12 of his 22 homers came in the first two months of the season before he hit just two over the entire of June and July before closing with 8 more down the stretch as he chased the batting title. He hit .300 or better in every month of the season as the most atypical leadoff hitter in the American League given his size. He leads off because (points to him) he gets on base. His worst monthly OBP split was .390 in June which is how someone built like a fire hydrant was able to score 95 runs. Diaz hit the 600 plate appearance mark for the first time but did have issues throughout the season in his lower back and legs. He is now only first base eligible but was also the sixth most valuable player at the position in 2023. Diaz will not repeat, but his stock has risen.

Would you believe Diaz fell just two runs shy of leading the Rays in runs scored last season? He finished one behind Arozarena despite nearly 100 fewer plate appearances because Kevin Cash rewarded Yandy's on-base skills by hitting him very high in the lineup when he was able to play. Diaz was one of just five players (min 500 PA) with more walks than strikeouts on the season and finished 90th percentile or better in 9 of the 12 offensive measures on StatCast. He sprays the ball to all fields and the plate and is just as likely to hit the ball the other way as he is to loft a mistake in over the fence. The groundball tendencies are never going away, but he hits the ball so hard that it sometimes works in his favor so that the ball skips through or the bouncing ball buys his lumbering body enough time to get down the line safely. His ability to hit for a high average is extremely dependent on his BABIP; if it slips below .300, his average falls precipitously. He is two years removed from free agency with the Rays, which likely means he is trade bait at some point in 2023 given their track record of moving assets on a similar timeline. Overall, he remains an above-average offensive talent but a change in scenery could move him from the top of the lineup to the bottom third of a deeper offensive lineup.

Diaz has been a perpetual conundrum for analysts. How can someone with such massive biceps and a thick chest not drive the ball more consistently? Diaz continued to perplex everyone with a .253/.386/.291 slash line into early June and did not hit his first homer until June 6 at Texas. Diaz then went on to hit .258/.330/.449 the rest of the way with 13 homers while scoring 41 times and driving in 46. He has very disciplined at-bats (95th percentile chase rate), accepts his walks (90th percentile) and can hit the ball hard to all fields. He finally started to show more launch angle as the summer went on, but not enough to state there is more power on the horizon. His contact abilities are useful in a lineup that has plenty of swing-and-miss in it, but he does not exactly have the power profile you want from a fantasy cornerman. He does retain dual eligibility again this season (1B, 3B), which is a nice bonus.

To paraphrase the 2004 film Mean Girls, "stop trying to make Yandy Diaz and launch angle happen. It's not going to happen." We are nearly 800 plate appearances into Diaz's career, and he has a career 2 degree average launch angle. His 2020 season was interrupted by a hamstring strain which cost him all September, but he had a -8 degree launch angle on 97 batted balls. A typical Diaz batted ball is something on or close to the ground to the opposite field, yet defenses were reticent to put three infielders to the right of second base. He put the ball where they would not go, and hit .307 and then drew walks to reach a .428 OBP on the year. Diaz can be productive even without the power, but beware of the strain the absence of power puts on your other roster spots in fantasy, and also that he's without a true everyday role on a Rays team with a lot of moving parts.

Diaz finally unlocked some power with Tampa Bay after homering just once in 299 plate appearances over two seasons in Cleveland. Though his launch angle only moved from 4.4 to 5.7 degrees, that was enough for Diaz to raise his flyball rate more than five points above his career mark, allowing him to easily outdo his prior slugging numbers. Diaz didn't see his plate skills diminish due to the new approach, as he maintained strong strikeout (17.6%) and walk (10.2%) rates and ranked in the 82nd percentile of all players in hard-hit percentage. While he met expectations from a skills standpoint, durability was a concern for Diaz, who spent time on the shelf with hand, hamstring and foot injuries. If healthy, Diaz should open 2020 in a regular role at the hot corner, though the Rays' wealth of options could push him into short-side platoon duty if he falls into a prolonged slump at any point.

The knock on Diaz coming into 2018 was the total absence of in-game power. He did little to quash that narrative, totaling a mere four homers in 546 plate appearances between Triple-A and the majors, but at least he started to make some adjustments. Diaz shaved nearly six percentage points from his groundball rate at the big-league level (from 59% to 53.5%) while adding more than four percentage points to his flyball rate. His average launch angle was still among the lowest in baseball, but 4.4 degrees is a big improvement over 0, and with that, he was able to tap into some gap power. Over-the-fence power may never come even with further refinement, but Diaz has strong plate skills (15.8 K%, 9.2 BB% last season) and with regular playing time, he could be a nice source of batting average. The question is whether that playing time will come. Following an offseason trade to the Rays, it seems likely.

The 26-year-old is a physical specimen with impressive muscle mass on a 6-foot-2 frame. If he ever joins the launch-angle revolution, watch out. He drove the ball into the ground 59 percent of the time with the big-league club last season and had the lowest Average Launch Angle among 387 hitters with at least 100 at-bats. Diaz hit the ball fairly hard (32.8 percent hard contact rate), but without the other piece of the puzzle, the power numbers were non-existent (.064 ISO). He displayed a good approach at the plate, walking 21 times in 179 plate appearances (11.7 percent), as well as decent contact ability (19.6 percent strikeout rate). Those skills along with Jason Kipnis' struggles staying healthy last year give Diaz plenty of appeal in AL-only formats, but he will need to show that he can hit for some power against big-league pitching before he can be justified as a mixed-league starter.

A cannon-armed third baseman signed out of Cuba in 2013, Diaz has raked his way through each level of the Indians' minor league system over the past three seasons. After posting a 144 wRC+ and walking more than he struck out (1.50 BB/K) at Double-A Akron, Diaz was promoted to Triple-A Columbus during the 2016 season. Though his walk rate slipped a bit, his bat stayed hot. In 416 plate appearances, the 25-year-old slashed .325/.399/.461 and posted a robust 11.3 walk rate to go along with his 16.8 percent strikeout rate. Having shown that he's a threat at the plate, Diaz has also been identified as one of the top defensive third basemen in the minor leagues. It shouldn't be too long before he makes his MLB debut with the Indians and he is a player worth keeping an eye in deeper leagues and dynasty formats.