Tucker Barnhart has four seasons with the Reds in which he has played in at least 81 games, and there’s a bit of an outlier problem in Barnhart’s career arc narrative. Namely, he has produced less than one WAR in each of the 2015, 2016, and 2018 seasons but put up 3.4 WAR in 2017. Not coincidentally, Barnhart signed a long-term deal with the Reds after the 2017 season, although the modest dollar amounts of said contract suggest that the team was not fully convinced that 2017 represented Barnhart’s true baseline value.
There are two primary drivers to Barnhart’s drop-off from 2017 to 2018 and I don’t know what to do with either one.