DFSR Midseason MLB Awards - Biggest Surprise

Welcome to the Major League All-Star Break, where your only baseball fix over the next few days will be a rather meaningless exhibition game and a batting practice contest. So we thought we'd take the time to weigh in on our mid-season awards (both superlative and not so much).

Today we bring you the Biggest "Surprise" of the season. The word surprise has a wide range of interpretation. Some guys went surprise based on preseason expectations. Others went more toward guys who seem to be making a next-level leap.

Also be sure to check out our MVP and Cy Young picks for the first half.

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James Davis - DFSR CoFounder and CEO, drops knowledge on the DFSR MLB Podcast
Jose Ramirez - CLE
.302 / .401 / .628 -  6.5 WAR
29 HR / 70 RBI / 20 SB

Okay, so this award sort of cheats and grabs the second half of last year as well, but who could have seen THIS version of Jose Ramirez coming? The Indians' slugger has always been a prospect based on his excellent approach - even in his tough 2015 campaign he managed to walk in 9% of his plate appearances against striking out in just 11% of them as a 21-year-old. In 2016 it was assumed that he'd taken on his final form, adding a little bit of power and finishing with a similar excellent K:BB ratio while also adding a .150 ISO and 11 home runs through 618 plate appearances. He "broke out" last season, reaching 29 home runs and finishing with a .957 OPS. Surely, that had to be a season in the top percentile of what a player of his makeup could reach, right? Nah. This year Ramirez has cleared the 1k OPS mark while hitting 1 fewer home run than he did all of last year, almost touching Betts with a .322 ISO, and playing solid defense to boot. It's incredible to see Ramirez's production take on such parabolic growth. The real question now, is, can he get even better somehow? He's still just 25. Even if he maintains his current level of production, though, the Indians have a potential Hall of Famer on their hands.

Doug Norrie - DFSR CoFounder, Editor-in-Chief, and Statistical Director
Jesus Aguilar - MIL
.298 / .373 / .621 -  3.0 WAR
24 HR / 49 Runs / 70 RBIs

In his first full season in the majors, Aguilar put up a respectable .836 OPS and 112 wRC+. He'd displayed power in the minors for sure, and the 16 home runs in 133 games seemed like a good place to start with modest room for growth. In 2018 he's blowing it out of the water, on pace for 40+ home runs while making strides in just about every relevant area. He's tied for second in the majors with a .644 slugging percentage while also showing more patience at the place (10% walk rate, 25% K% - both of which are big improvements on last season). And possibly most importantly, he's brought up his righty splits, making for a platoon neutral bomber. He's been elite from both sides of the plate this season. Aguilar ranks right up there with the best hitters in the game this season and nothing about his profile suggests there's a tremendous amount of luck leading to an outlier performance. For now, it looks sustainable.

Chris Durell - DFSR MLB Content Manager and Lead Contributor
Alex Bregman - HOU
.288 / .389 / .539 -  4.5 WAR
20 HR / 67 Runs / 64 RBIs

Drafted as the second overall pick in the 2015 June Amateur Draft, I guess you could say it's not a surprise that Bregman moved through the minor league system at a lightning fast pace and ended up on the Astros full-time last season. One surprise at the halfway point of the 2018 season(2nd full season) is the improvement he has made in almost every single category. He is currently walking 4.1% more and 3.2% less which has resulted in an elite .389 on-base percentage(.352 in 2017) and in 59 fewer games compared to his 2017 full-season numbers, he has one more home run and just five fewer RBI to this point. Probably the biggest surprise, however, is that he leads the Astros in WAR(4.5), home runs(20), RBI(64), runs scored(67), walk rate(12.9%), and slugging %(.539). If you told me before the season started that would be the case at the All-Star Break with hitters like Jose Altuve, George Springer, and Carlos Correa on the defending champions, I would have told you to stop drinking and GTFO!

Jerry Vanderwoude - DFSR MLB Writer
Shin-Soo Choo - TEX
.293 / .405 / .506 -  3.1 WAR
18 HR / 54 Runs / 43 RBIs
I don’t know that Shin-Soo Choo has been so much as a surprise this season, as a welcome resurgence. Choo has always been a star player, excellent at the plate with a career .364 wOBA, .832 OPS, and 12.2 BB%. After a few years of declining numbers, (the wOBA dropped .031 points from 2015 to 2016 and remained in the same neighborhood last year) we are witness to an exciting return to the Choo of old this season. First, we have to call attention to the 50 game on-base streak, alive and well as of Saturday night when I write this piece. Also, statistically Choo has just been phenomenal this season and has been a daily fantasy staple day in and day out in return. The wOBA is at it’s highest point since Choo’s 2013 stay with the Reds. The walk rate is 2% above his career average. The ISO is over .200 for only the second time in his career. The OPS pushing .900 is at it’s highest point in a decade, and oh, by the way, it’s mid-July, and Choo needs just five home runs to tie his career high mark of 22.

I’ve always been a fan of Shin-Soo Choo, and though he isn’t one of the household names of Major League Baseball, it’s quite welcoming to see him now 13 seasons in, having arguably his best season as a Ranger, if not his best overall. He has proven to be quite the exciting player and hopefully what we’ve seen early on in 2018 continues on for years to come.

Ryan Sheppard - DFSR MLB Contributor
Ozzie Albies - ATL
.281 / .318 / .516 -  3.4 WAR
20 HR / 74 Runs / 55 RBIs

Ozzie Albies was certainly a valuable contributor to the Atlanta Braves last season as a rookie but his sophomore season has been one that I don’t believe many expected so quickly. He surprisingly sits 12th in the Majors with a 3.6 WAR which is actually tied with teammate Freddie Freeman. Albies has an abysmal walk-rate of just 4.5 percent but his strikeout rate of 15.7 percent is above average — especially for a second-year player. Albies has shown an ability to hit for both power and average while showing his speed along the way. His 20 HR and 9 SB put him tied for 13th in HR+SB and he is sporting a respectable .288 AVG. And although his .361 wOBA and .242 ISO don’t put him in the elite-of-the-elite group, he still remains among the top 30 in ISO and top 40 in wOBA.

This has certainly been a very successful sophomore season for the Braves second baseman. There were signs in his rookie year that he was growing as a player but the jump this season seems to be a bit bigger than many would have expected. As long as he continues to grow as a player over the second half there is no reason to expect him to slow down much. He could certainly work to improve his patience at the plate and his walk-rate but given that he doesn’t strike out too much there shouldn’t be as much of a concern there despite the brutal number.

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