This is the seventh annual installment of my "Guys I Got Wrong" column (for past versions, see the links below). I'll look at players who have become much better big leaguers than I ever forecasted them to be and try to explain where I made mistakes in evaluating them.
As with previous editions, I've included some players I didn't discuss much as prospects or young major leaguers -- errors of omission that are errors nonetheless. This allows me to talk about some guys who never received much praise or publicity anywhere, not just from me.
For this column, I focus on players who have shown a new tool, a new skill level or a new caliber of production for more than a season, so players who've been in the majors for only a few months or produced beyond expectations for a partial season will have to wait a little longer. Chris Taylor is a good example of why -- his 2017 breakout season hasn't lasted, and he's down 27 points in OBP and almost 50 points in slugging while leading the NL in strikeouts this season, making him a solid regular but not the player he appeared to be last year.
With those restrictions laid out, here are five players I was wrong about in the past, all of whom have exceeded my predictions or expectations for them over the past few years.
Past "Guys I Got Wrong" columns: In 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012
Harrison Bader, CF
St. Louis Cardinals
2018 WAR: 3.8
I saw Bader at the University of Florida, where he had a solid career as a hitter but didn't show much beyond that -- he was an average runner at best, kind of stiff-bodied and limited to left field -- and his bat didn't seem like it was enough to make him a regular, not after a junior year when he hit .297, fifth-best among Gator regulars, with 54 strikeouts, second only to Buddy Reed on the team. The Cardinals' own amateur scouts had him as a 50 to 55 (average to slightly above-average) runner prior to the draft.
Since then, he has improved his running by about two full grades. He's a clear 70 runner now, and that coupled with strong instincts in the field has taken him from someone you hope can handle left field to someone who can play above-average defense in center. He's still a bit limited on offense -- he strikes out too often, and he doesn't hit right-handed pitching well at all -- but now as a plus defender in center with value on the bases, he looks like an everyday player who will make a few All-Star teams, which is a great outcome for a third-round pick who wasn't on my pre-draft top 100 rankings.
German Marquez, SP
Colorado Rockies
2018 WAR: 4.1
Marquez, whom Colorado acquired from Tampa Bay in the Jake McGee/Corey Dickerson trade, has always been a two-pitch guy who had trouble with left-handed batters, and that, combined with the natural challenges of pitching in Coors Field, made me skeptical that he'd ever be more than a back-end starter, if that, because of the unavoidable platoon issues.
Marquez is up to 3.9 fWAR and 4.7 bWAR this year, which puts him sixth and seventh in the National League respectively, even though his changeup remains his worst pitch and one he doesn't use very often. He's compensated for this in two ways: by using his plus slider more against lefties, and by absolutely dominating right-handed batters, which has minimized some of the damage lefties can do against him. Marquez has held right-handers to a .197/.263/.357 line this year -- that's unadjusted by park, so it's even more impressive than it looks -- and he has been even better against them since the All-Star break, with a superhuman .150/.204/.272 line against right-handers in the second half. There's some randomness/luck involved in Marquez's season. I don't think he's going to limit lefties to a .267 BABIP on the road going forward, for example. But this is also a higher ceiling than I ever predicted for Marquez, and comes on top of a 2017 season that had him in mid-rotation starter territory anyway.
Matt Chapman, 3B
Oakland Athletics
2018 WAR: 8.1
Chapman was a known quantity in college -- but known for what he couldn't do as well as what he could. He was an elite defender at third with an 80 arm, reportedly touching 100 mph off the mound (although I think that's apocryphal), and had plus-plus raw power. But Chapman never really produced at the plate for Cal State Fullerton, hitting .300 just once in three seasons (.312 in his draft year) and hitting 13 homers in 702 plate appearances. He never struck out much, but the quality of the contact he made was low.
So when Chapman reached Double-A and really struggled to do anything but hit for power, it seemed like his ceiling was capped. He struck out in 29.2 percent of his plate appearances for Midland in 2016, then topped 30 percent in each of his two stints in Triple-A before his call-up to the majors in 2017, when he struck out 28.2 percent of the time. He showed more power as he moved up, and his defense, always elite, has graded out as the best among major league third basemen by both defensive runs saved and UZR, the former by a comically large margin. (For 2018, DRS has him saving 22 more runs than Nolan Arenado, to pick one example of a fielder widely considered among the best at the same position.)
Chapman's strikeout rate, meanwhile, just keeps falling. His rate this season of 24.0 percent is the lowest he's posted anywhere above A-ball, and he's making better quality contact this year than he has at any previous stop in his career. His rate of swinging at pitches outside the strike zone, 24.7 percent, is well below the MLB average (a little over 30 percent), and puts him among the lowest 25 chase rates in the majors.
I spoke with A's hitting coach Darren Bush, who emphasized that Chapman has worked to put himself "in better position to approach the strike zone," mentally preparing better to try to identify pitch types, and also to ensure that his bat path to the zone is more direct so that the quality of contact he makes will be better. It has shown across the board this year; Baseball-Reference has him third in the American League in WAR, even ahead of Jose Ramirez, while Fangraphs has him sixth, as the two differ on his defensive value. Chapman was the 25th overall pick in the 2014 draft, and thus far only Aaron Nola has been more valuable from the same class.
Whit Merrifield, 2B
Kansas City Royals
2018 WAR: 4.7
Merrifield was a ninth-round pick in 2010, the 269th overall pick, and had an unremarkable minor league career through 2016, his age-27 season, which saw him get a call-up to the majors, where he performed well enough to stick around as a utility player in the 25th spot on the roster. His past two stints in Triple-A Omaha produced OBPs of .317 and .321, and he hit 13 homers total in nearly 900 PA.
After 2016, he bulked up, adding 20 pounds of muscle mostly to his upper body, and altered his swing to improve his extension and increase his angle through contact, which has produced real power the last two years, with 31 homers since the start of 2017. He's also leading the AL in steals for the second year in a row and his success rate in these two seasons is 85 percent, well above the break-even point. Position players who reach the majors this late and produce enough to be regulars are extremely rare -- and Merrifield had reached Double-A at age 23, only stalling in the high minors -- but Merrifield's 8.6 bWAR the past two years have launched him into the top 20 from his draft class. He should have a couple of years as a regular ahead of him before age-related decline starts to pull him back.
Rougned Odor, 2B
Texas Rangers
2018 WAR: 3.0
I've rated Odor highly several times in the past, ranking him as a top 100 prospect at least once and putting him on my top 25 players under 25 list. But after 2017, it appeared that he'd hit a developmental wall, with more than 2,000 major league plate appearances to that point and a career walk rate of just 3.8 percent that didn't seem to be improving. He was too young for anyone to give up on him, but an absolutely critical skill was absent from his game.
His 2018 season has been a real breakout thanks to newfound patience: He has walked in 7.9 percent of his PA this year, by far a career best, because he's swinging less often overall and a little less often at pitches out of the strike zone. He's still not seeing more pitches per plate appearance, but even a modest increase in his selectivity has yielded a career-high .330 OBP and reason to believe that he'll continue to grow as a hitter.