Based on last year’s performance and this year’s early-season improvements, it wasn’t hard to project Addison Russell as a 5+ WAR shortstop. After all, he was coming off of a .316 wOBA and 3.9 fWAR. And the one knock on his game, contact, began to dissipate after he nearly finished 2016 with a league average contact rate. That trend continued through this April and he even began to show signs of significantly better plate discipline by swinging at 25 percent fewer pitches outside the zone.
But since shoulder pain surfaced in late April or early May, the promising shortstop’s game dramatically suffered, and now he’s on pace to barely produce a single win more than a replacement player by season’s end.