Jarred Kelenic needs to be rostered in absolutely every Fantasy Baseball league right now. That much is clear.
If you just woke up from a two-year nap, that statement may not be surprising to you, but buddy, you've missed a lot in the past three years. Kelenic was arguably the top prospect in baseball three years ago, coming off a season where he hit .291/.364/.540 with 23 homers as a 19-year-old, reaching Double-A before becoming the centerpiece of a deal for Edwin Diaz and Robinson Cano. He kept mashing at Triple-A to open up the 2021 season, hitting .320/.392/.624 and was one of the most hyped prospects in recent memory when he got the call in May of 2021.
And then he flopped. For the first time in his professional career, Kelenic was overmatched, and he finished his rookie season with an ugly .181/.265/.350 line, with a 28.1% strikeout rate. And when he struggled even more in 2022, hitting .141/.221/.313 with a 33.7% strikeout rate.
He was so bad that, entering spring training, he had to earn his spot on the Mariners roster, and even a big spring didn't necessarily earn the Fantasy Baseball community's trust; in the last week of drafts before Opening Day at NFC, Kelenic's ADP was still just 197.69.
Skepticism was warranted, in other words. And it still is, despite his current three-game homer binge, culminating in arguably the most impressive bomb of the season Wednesday in Wrigley Field:
Jarred Kelenic just hit one where very few have before. 😳 pic.twitter.com/dtd9h3KNot
— MLB (@MLB) April 12, 2023
Kelenic is now hitting .351/.415/.703 after Wednesday's game, with three homers and two steals, the first real hint of the potential we were promised back when he was lighting the minors on fire. He's still just 68% rostered in CBS Fantasy leagues, and it goes without saying that even this hint of that potential makes him a must-add player in all formats.
But that's not the only question worth asking right now. Shortly after highlights of Kelenic's bomb went viral, I got a question on Twitter:
Is uhhh Kelenic for real?
— . (@FantasyApex99) April 12, 2023
Now that's a more interesting question. Adding Kelenic in the 32% of CBS Fantasy leagues where he's still available is a pretty easy call; you probably drafted someone like Seth Brown or Andrew Benintendi or Wil Myers who you could pretty easily cut for Kelenic without losing a wink of sleep over it. The stakes are low for that question.
But, "Is Kelenic for real?" has much higher stakes. We're talking about a guy who, at one point was viewed as a pretty likely superstar, and now we're seeing him start to actualize that potential. Is he worth targeting in trades? Should you sell high now before the bottom falls out? Those are the questions that are much tougher to answer.
And, I'm afraid I don't have a definitive answer right now. I can't see into the future, after all. My gut tells me to view Kelenic as a sell-high candidate. Take advantage of the hype surrounding that viral homer and see if you can snag a borderline top-100 player for him instead, someone struggling like Carlos Correa or Sean Murphy or Christian Walker, who might have similar upside but is more of a sure thing.
Because Kelenic, for all the pop he's shown so far, is no sure thing. Three days ago, he was homer-less, sporting a mediocre .726 OPS and on pace for 200-plus strikeouts. We're still very much in the first act of Small-Sample Size Theater, and if Kelenic looks like a star right now, it's mostly because he's had a really nice three games.
That comes off as more dismissive than I intend to be, but skepticism is still very much warranted, here. Kelenic still has a 27% strikeout rate despite having just three plate appearances against left-handed pitchers so far. For a guy who has struck out 30% of the time and hit just .154/.224/.239 against lefties in his career, that's at least a little bit of a red flag.
Kelenic also hasn't solved his biggest issue yet: his inability to hit non-fastballs. His homer Wednesday was off a fastball, as were the two prior ones he hit, as were six of the seven he hit last season. He's still sporting a whiff-per-swing rate over 40% against both breaking and off-speed pitches in the early going.
Of course, just because he hasn't hit against lefties or non-fastballs so far this season doesn't mean he couldn't. The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, after all, and it's not like Kelenic had ever hit righties this well before this season either; his OPS against them sits at exactly .700 through 390 career plate appearances entering play Wednesday.
Kelenic is doing something through 11 games that we've never seen him do at the major-league level, and with an average exit velocity of 93.8 mph and a hard-hit rate of 60.9 before he had batted balls of 108.4 and 111.7 mph Wednesday, he hasn't been faking it so far.
Whether he can keep it up is an entirely different story. I have my doubts, and if someone in your league is extra excited about his start, I'd certainly be open to selling. But the upside here is clear, and now that we're seeing it in action, it's harder to maintain that same level of skepticism. Kelenic still has a lot to prove, but for the first time, he looks like he just might.
