Power Outage

A lack of power is one of the easiest ways for a player to get under a fantasy owner's skin. There are certain guys who need to display power in order to help your fantasy team. One way to measure power is Isolated Power (ISO or IsoP). Isolated Power measures a hitter's ability to generate extra base hits. The formula is:

Isolated Power = Slugging Percentage - Batting Average

Now let's take a look at a few players who have disappointed in the power department so far this season.

Travis Hafner He has disappointed for two straight seasons now and many owners are wondering if he'll ever be more than a 25 HR player now. In 2006 he hit 42 HR and had an ISO of .350. This season he has 3 HR in 135 AB and an ISO of .126. One telling statistic is his HR/FB., which has fallen in each of the last two seasons (3o.7%, 15.9%, 8.8%). It looks like Hafner may end up as another player with Old Man Skills who aged poorly.

Victor Martinez Pronk's teammate has also been a disappointment this season, with 0 HR through his first 117 AB. V-Mart's ISO is .060 which is less than a third of his 2007 mark of .205. His GB% is up a bit this year (49.5%) but other than that there is no reason to doubt his power as he should eventually get around to hitting 20+ HR this season.

Kevin Kouzmanoff Kouz got owners excited heading into this season because of his big second half in 2007. He started the season in the clean-up spot and was hot out of the gate, but cooled down quickly thereafter. He has 3 HR in 169 AB. He has a .104 ISO while his mark last year was .186. Kouz calls Petco Park home therefore any power projections need to be tempered from the start. However, he needs to start hitting doubles and homers sooner rather than later or else his owners are going to look elsewhere for production.