People are overly optimistic on Kepler. I think even the "traditional" projectors are overestimating his production. He had one of the worst batted ball profiles in baseball last year. He hits a lot of ground balls, and his line drives and flyballs were particularly weak. Andrew Perpetua's xStats (which use Statcast data) gave him an expected triple slash of .229/.300/.332 last year. His 2017 projection for Kepler is .238/.301/.362. 

I'll take the over on a .663 OPS for Max.

 

I think he'll struggle through periods of the season but I'm pretty bullish on the kid. I don't know if I'd predict a .770 OPS for him but he's certainly capable of it... if I had a gun to my head, I'd probably put him in the .720-.740 range. A few months of dominant hitting (.800+ OPS) mixed in with some abysmal .600 OPS months as pitchers adjust and take the advantage.

 

I suspect Max will suffer early in the season as opposing managers stack LHP against him, especially if he stays near the top of the lineup.

There's a group of about eight of us that hang out daily near the cages in spring training. I can say no one worked harder than Max in the cages, with Sano next. One day he spent two hours straight there hitting off the tee mostly, with I believe was Torii. Every ball he hits off the tee is smoked. No one was consistantly hitting the ball as hard as Max did. He's a bright young man and full of desire. Granted what he's trying to do, with the off season help from Barry Bonds is unconventional way of hitting the ball, he obviously believes it will work for him. Hopefully he has some early success and sticks with it. He's hit some hard balls in the first few games, and I think he'll continue to progress to have a good year, and a great career.