Eugenio Suarez is an interesting player. If you look back at his history in the minors and the first couple years in the majors you will see that he has always produced. He has been above average at every minor league stop and in his short career in the majors he has proven to be about average offensively. Well now he’s 25 years old and getting some experience under his belt and the time for his prime years has come. In 2015 his walk rate was 4.3%, improving to 8.1% in 2016 and now 9.3% so far in 2017. The strikeout rate has been a bit high but so far this year has taken a 7 point drop from his career average to 16.7%.

What makes Suarez interesting is his power. Hitting 21 home runs in his first full season last year, that’s not half bad. Well looking closer at 2016 he actually hit 15 of them in the first half. However he also improved his batting average significantly in the second half to .272, from .228. He improved his K% and BB% in the second half. The odd thing about it was he actually was hitting the ball harder in the second half as well, despite the home run numbers falling off. His hard hit rate was 31.5% in the first half and bumped up to 38.7% in the second half, while his LD%/GB%/FB% all remained roughly the same. Looking at those numbers in a vacuum you’d easily assume he hit more home runs in the second half. Well given how his batted ball profile remained roughly identical to the first half the only conclusion you can really come to is that it was just normal variation. Perhaps he was a little lucky in the first half and less so in the second half.

Well numbers aside all these improvements were real and basically if he shows he carried these improvements into 2017 then we would basically have an ideal looking profile on our hands. I already told you his K% and BB% have looked even better than 2016; which are supported be good swinging strike rates and contract rates. And judging by his 35.9% hard hit percentage I’d say at least most of that improvement has carried over.

Now the season is young so obviously you can only take numbers so seriously this early, but for a lot of fantasy leagues if you wait til you are 100% sure a player is for real, they are long gone off the waiver wire. So I’ve already jumped on Suarez on all my leagues and recommend you should too. Hitting 5th just about every day in the Reds lineup should provide a decent amount of RBI opportunities. Give him a full year of the improvements I could see 25 bombs and 90 RBIs. With an improved average in the .270-.280 range he’s basically the same value as the Rendon/Longoria/Beltre range of third basemen. Especially when you consider he could pitch in 10 steals as well.