A month ago, I ridiculed Justin Verlander. He had just come off a start during which he allowed seven earned runs and couldn’t escape the fourth inning. Through his first six 2015 starts, he posted a 6.62 ERA with only 5.82 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9).

Like clockwork, he showed up to his next start in Boston and twirled a gem, throwing eight strong innings but failing to factor into the decision, as the game went into extra innings.

Then he went to Tampa Bay (well, St. Petersburg, but who’s keeping track) and cranked out another eight innings with a whopping 10 strikeouts. The last time he strung together two straight eight-inning starts was almost exactly three years ago — July 15 and 20, 2012. Last time he struck out 10-plus batters? His final start of 2013.

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Kyle Schwarber gets double-duty this week. Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer discussed Kyle Schwarber’s 2016 potential. He mentions he read a post in which the author allegedly considered Schwarber in the second round of a 2016 mock draft.

I found the whole thing intriguing, primarily because we’re working with a small sample — slightly more than 150 plate appearances. I tried to draw meaningful conclusions on a comparably small sample size for Carlos Gonzalez, and now I’m pretty sure hired assassins are tracking me. Alas, what follows is not a disagreement with Pod (because his analysis is excellent) but an unauthorized biography extension of his post.

In June, I compared Joc Pederson to George Springer, two blossoming young stars to each of whom I alluded as “evolving juggernauts.” In fact, I think Schwarber is not particularly dissimilar from Pederson. With another two months of baseball in the rear-view mirror, that comparison is especially illuminating, given we’ve seen just how tumultuous Pederson’s rookie campaign has been.

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Three weeks ago I offered three (or four) starting pitchers for your consideration. In it I highlighted three starters who did not exceed various thresholds of ownership in Yahoo! fantasy leagues. Ken Erdedy liked it, and while I can’t tell if his name is real, it seems his sentiment was.

I anticipated returning with three hitters in a similar vein. However, I couldn’t help but highlight a particular hitter owned in an absurdly low percentage of leagues. (Alas, I got distracted, as I am wont to do.)

I’ll retain the format of my original post for kicks, but I have decided to point the spotlight entirely on him.

Sub-20% Ownership: Second Base

Delino DeShields Jr. (17%)

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In the past 30 days, Michael Taylor — the current National, not the former Athletic — has hit four home runs and stolen six bases to go with seven runs and 16 RBI. Mike Podhorzer tabbed Taylor as a sleeper in March. In the post, he notes his own projections largely validated Steamer’s and ZiPS’ projections for Taylor, although his anticipated better than 10-homer power across 600 plate appearances.

Now at 10 homers and 14 steals through 345 plate appearances, Taylor seeks to make all his projections look silly. His counting stats currently pace out to 17 home runs, 24 stolen bases, 54 runs and 80 RBI for a full season.

At 24 years old, Taylor appears poised to contribute legitimately to fantasy teams not only now (considering the possibility Denard Span does not return this season) but also for years to come. Indeed, his tools inspired a bold prediction on his behalf, of which he fell short but for which he kindly did not embarrass the author.

Amid my lauding of his past 30 days, however, I deliberately omitted an important detail: Taylor is batting .214 with a sub-.250 on-base percentage (OBP) thanks to strikeout and walk rates of 33.0 and 2.9 percent. Despite his toolsiness, both present and past — in 2014, he hit 23 homers and stole 37 bases, mostly at AA — it’s evident why Taylor doesn’t have garner prospect coverage the way George Springer and Joc Pederson once did.

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Maybe it’s just me, but it seems Michael Wacha’s solid season has largely gone unnoticed among a sea of excellent pitching performances this year. His value is largely buoyed by the win column (12) because of a relatively modest 7.61 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9), but his 3.09 ERA and 1.09 WHIP are nothing to sneeze at — they rank 21st and 18th, respectively, among all qualified starters.

Wacha has largely taken teammate Adam Wainwright’s path to success this year: walk very few batters, induce a lot of ground balls and limit hard contact. Wainright has historically been more effective in limiting baserunners — only recently did his strikeout rate fall below 8.0 K/9 — but Waino has also been around a while. He really didn’t hit his stride until his age-27 season.

Technicalities aside, Wacha and Wainwright don’t have a lot in common. Waino throws sinkers, cutters and curves; Wacha lives primarily off a four-seamer while peppering in the occasional cutter, curve and change-up. However, Wacha improved one of his secondary pitches this year, and it helped him join an elite, albeit somewhat contrived, group of pitchers.

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Edit (12:59 pm EDT): Left out a bunch of dudes (Cespedes, Pederson, Moss) and wrongly included a bunch of dudes (Gomez, Revere). I basically I forgot all about the trade deadline, so if notice another name omitted, leave it in the comments. Thanks (and sorry)!

NL OF Tiers: July
NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

Prior to writing for FanGraphs, I never took time to systematically reevaluate players. That’s not to say I never evaluate players after draft day — of course I do. But I typically only concern myself with the players I own and compare them to those on waivers. Occasionally, if my team is wildly imbalanced, I’ll evaluate other owners’ players for potential trades.

Because it’s tedious to thoroughly re-rank all the players at one position, let alone in all of Major League Baseball. I can’t complain, though, becauseI’ve learned something new with every re-rank, the most prominent lesson being baseball players exist to humiliate you. I’m being hyperbolic, and perhaps Carlos Gonzalez is, too, but his recent results speak volumes: CarGo more than doubled his home run total between my July re-rank of National League outfielders and now.

I also learned I need to learn to stand my ground. After mindlessly over-ranking Carlos Gomez in June, I slotted him at the top of the fourth tier (roughly 20th overall) in July. I got slammed for it and I backpedaled on my stance a bit when responding to comments, but, like clockwork, Gomez has continued to underwhelm, hitting .230/.373/.410 with two home runs and nary a stolen base. Sure, the 17.3-percent walk rate (BB%) the last 30 days is nice, and it brings him back up to normal Carlos Gomez levels, but his batted ball profile continues to resemble the generally uninteresting pre-breakout Carlos Gomez.

Anyway, iers will conform to my ranking of feature-length films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, with emphases on directed and feature-length. To not see a Miyazaki (or Studio Ghibli) film is to ignore a cherished corner of cinematic history. Like my hotly contested Coen Brothers tiers, these will be very difficult for me to rank.

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He did once. Can he again?

Ian Kennedy has been one of the least valuable starting pitchers of 2015, a fact probably unsurprising to San Diego residents and his fantasy owners. Of all pitchers who have thrown at least 60 innings and generated negative wins above replacement (WAR), his ratio of strikeouts to walks (3.18 K/BB) and xFIP (3.83) rise to the top of an admittedly short list.

Still, his rate of strikeouts per nine innings (8.31 K/9) ranks 36th among all starters, and his walks-per-nine (2.62 BB/9) is nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s easy to see why fantasy owners hold out hope: his adequacy in preventing baserunners points to reasons why his 4.58 ERA is, perhaps, too high.

Unfortunately, Kennedy is a fly ball machine who has (almost) never enjoyed the friendly confines of a pitcher’s park. Per ESPN’s Park Factors, Kennedy’s home parks have mostly benefited hitters:

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It’s time for another monthly analysis of Carlos Gonzalez’s tumultuous 2015 season. When we first tuned in, Carlos Gonzalez was bad. Like, really bad. Despite peripherals that suggested some bad luck, the rest detailed a hitter struggling mightily.

When we last tuned in a month later, Eno Sarris determined CarGo had been unlucky up to that point, but only slightly. Things had started to turn around, but it was hard to be optimistic.

We tune in now, another month later, to find Gonzalez falling short of his previous levels of production but still performing admirably considering the circumstances. To paint a fuller picture, observe CarGo’s statistics at the time we published each of the aforementioned posts:

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I like a lot of pitchers who have unperformed this year. With strikeout and walk rates (K%, BB%) of 20.5 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively, Drew Hutchison delivers everything I want from a mid-rotation fantasy starter. With a 5.19 ERA and a 1.47 WHIP, however, he delivers a flaming bag of feces to my doorstep.

The same can be said for Taijuan Walker who, after a terribly rough start to the season, dazzled for seven straight starts before recently tossing three stinkers. With plate discipline ratios better than Hutchison’s and just 22 years old, Walker demonstrates the skill set and ceiling that have earned him consensus top-20 honors on prospect lists from 2012 through 2014. Yet his 5.06 ERA and 1.29 WHIP have left fantasy owners not only disappointed but also reeling.

Hutchison and Walker share a common trait: their ERAs dwarf their fielding independent pitching (FIP) statistics. FIP was designed to demonstrate a pitcher’s true performance in light of the events he can control — that is, events independent of balls put into play at the mercy of the defense supporting him (among other things).

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If you sort Yahoo!’s player page descending by ownership, Justin Verlander shows up on the second page. That means, at 70-percent ownership, he ranks in the top 50. Julio Teheran shows up there, too, at 73 percent. What the two have in common: more than 1,000 other players have been more valuable than them.

Verlander deserves an ounce of clemency: his 31 innings haven’t allowed him ample time to generate value. His 6.62 ERA, sixth-worst among all pitchers who have thrown at least 30 innings, really damages his stock.

Then again, so would his 5.01 xFIP, good for ninth-worst. Or his 6.06 FIP, good for fifth-worst. He has simply done nothing to inspire confidence in anyone, yet because of name recognition alone he’s owned in far more Yahoo! leagues than the pitchers I’ll present now.

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