We’re through 16 periods of the inaugural Tout Wars Champions league. It uses a H2H format in which teams earn a win for the week if they win more categories than their opponent. Sadly, my season hasn’t exactly gone as hoped. I originally used an extreme and risky draft strategy that saw me dump three categories, and it’s been challenging to succeed with it given that my top two picks have been complete busts (Garrett Crochet and Cal Raleigh), which has resulted in my current 11th place standing. Yuck!

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We’re only a week away from the trade deadline, which means a ton of movement is going to occur in the days leading up to and after that day. But that doesn’t mean teams haven’t already been busy recalling minor leaguers over the last couple of weeks and handing them starting jobs. So let’s discuss eight such recalls.

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Yesterday, I discussed 11 hitters who have disappointed their fantasy owners this year. Today, let’s get happier by flipping to the breakouts. These are the players that win you leagues and you’re always hoping to end up with when spending your last auction dollar.

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One of the most frustrating aspects of fantasy baseball is drafting a bust, especially when no one saw it coming. Baseball players are human and sometimes simply have disappointing seasons. It happens. It stinks when you’ve rostered such a player and they help sink your chances at finishing in the money. So let’s discuss 11 veteran hitters who have performed wildly below expectations so far. Will any of them rebound and produce a second half we expected from them to begin with?

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Yesterday, I continued my annual tradition of polling you on groups of players falling into two performance vs expected buckets, by comparing hitters’ wOBA against their xwOBA. Today, let’s finish things off by comparing starting pitchers’ ERA to SIERA, pitting the SIERA overperformers against the underperformers during the pre-all-star break period. This is the poll I began with back in 2013.

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The All-Star break is here! That means it’s time to get polling. As has become an annual tradition, I’m going to start by comparing batter wOBA to xwOBA and pitting the xwOBA overperformers against the underperformers during the pre-all-star break period.

We know that xwOBA isn’t perfect (for example, it fails to account for horizontal angle, which certainly impacts results). Neither are SIERA, xERA, and the rest of the ERA estimators. In fact, no estimated/expected/forecasted equation is going to be perfect, because there will always be players that do something we have a difficult time quantifying. Furthermore, there will always be players each year that fall into either end of the extremes for no other reason than complete randomness (luck). So let’s keep that in mind when reviewing these two groups.

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I last reviewed starting pitcher Stuff+ gainers and decliners about a month ago, so it’s time to take another gander at each group.

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In one or several of my previous posts, I realized that a couple of starting pitchers that hit the Injured List had also recently suffered a decline in Location+. I haven’t seen a study that investigated whether a recent decline in the metric actually results in a higher chance of the pitcher landing on the IL and I’m not sure how such a study would be designed to begin with. So I don’t want to inspire panic among the owners of the 16 names on this list, but I figure it’s worth sharing as something to monitor, as it does feel like a sharp drop should be cause for concern.

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Yesterday, I discussed seven recent hitter callups that have all been given starting job. Obviously, these names are going to be the priorities, particularly in deeper leagues where a recall fills a positional need. Today, let’s flip over to five more players who have recently been called up, but are currently serving in a bench role.

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Trying to follow all the transactions on a daily basis can be head-spinning. Usually, it’s just a middle reliever, or a hitter expected to fill a bench role, that gets recalled from the minors. But that’s not always the case. So it pays to keep up with promotions on the chance that you just found yourself a replacement for that glaring hole you have at second base, for example. Let’s review seven of these recent hitter call-ups that look to have regular jobs.

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