Matt Carpenter put up a .233 ISO in a 2015 power breakout, and matched it with a .235 ISO in 2016 despite being hampered by an injury. I buy the new power, and so does ATC, which is the first projection system I've seen that's giving him an ISO in the .200's (Steamer: .177, ATC: .222). That turns into a nice boost across the board in HR, R, RBI, and AVG, and moves Carpenter up about 50 spots, solidly a top-50 or top-60 player.

If you had ten guesses for a guy who was top-25 in Hard% and led baseball in FB% by over 10 percentage points in 2016, you would not pull this one. It's Ryan Schimpf, of course! If he's not hitting dingers, striking out, or popping up, it's probably because he's sitting against lefties, and if he didn't play for the terrible San Diego Padres, he probably wouldn't be getting a shot as a 28-year-old prospect. But, lucky for us, the Padres ARE terrible, and he turned that opportunity into 20 HR in half a season last year. Relative to expectations, I think all the projection systems generally like Schimpf's chances in '17, but ATC is just a bit higher, and I'm inclined to believe it as Schimpf has consistently shown up as a champion of my statcast-based xFantasy stats.

ATC likes Danny Duffy, Aaron Sanchez, and Sean Manaea significantly more than Steamer. Again, much like I pointed out in my commentary for ZiPS, ATC seems to weight recent performance much more heavily than Steamer, and these are all guys with recent positive spikes in big-league performance. For what it's worth, I also like all three better than their Steamer projections.



Duffy pulled a Carlos Carrasco move last year, pumping up his velo and K% in the bullpen before returning to the rotation new-and-improved. That said, the velo fell off as the season wore on, and after his insane Aug. 1st start (8IP, 16K, 1BB, 1H, 0ER) he struggled through an erratic final two months (71 IP with 4.31 ERA, 4.77 FIP). He's no sure thing to be an ace in '17, but he should be better than his Steamer line which is overly influenced by poor performances in 2015. Manaea pulled the opposite move, closing very strong from July 10th onward (84 IP with 2.44 ERA, 3.58 FIP), powered by big improvements in his walk rate and home run rate. His flyball-heavy approach plays well in Oakland, and I like his chances to keep improving in '17 while putting up something closer to a full starter's workload (~185 IP).

Aaron Sanchez is an interesting problem for projection systems... and for me as well. His ability to induce groundballs seems to help him beat his run-predictors, but his overall line in '16, outside of ERA, just isn't that good. He certainly turned himself into a serviceable starter by reducing his walk-rate down from "terrible" to "okay". Let's play a quick player A, player B though...