After the shocking news broke of Felipe Vazquez’s arrest, Pirates saves will be earned by someone else in the bullpen over the final week and a half of the season. Fantasy owners don’t even have to play in deep leagues to speculate here, but luckily, all the candidates are lightly owned.
Yesterday, I discussed the idea of picking up current dominant relievers in your keeper league who could potentially close next year. Cheap closers are gold in mono leagues, especially if they could hold onto the role all season. Now we’ll flip to the guys who could join the starting rotation next season, but aren’t currently. These are all young pitchers who have posted at least a 25% strikeout rate. The idea here is if you’re in a keeper league, you could pick up these pitchers, some of which have little current season value, for cheap and potentially end up with a starting pitcher heading into the season with solid upside.
If you’re in a keeper league who could potentially keep players picked up through the end of the season, or just enjoy discovering the newest crop of relievers with eye-popping strikeout rates, let’s discuss some possible future closers. I’m basically filtering for non-closer relievers with elite strikeout rates and not-terrible walk rates, suggesting they could become dominant closers in the future, or at the very least, earn some positive value in deeper mixed or mono leagues from their strikeouts and strong ratios alone.
Since pitcher skills seemingly change more frequently than hitters, it’s more beneficial to analyze them over smaller sample sizes than it is for hitters. Normally, I wouldn’t care much for a hitters skills over just 30 days, but for pitchers, there’s a better chance it represents a change in true talent level. So let’s discuss some of the more interesting names appearing on the first page of the strikeout rate leaderboard over the last 30 days. Obviously, this isn’t going to be all that actionable for this season, but it could help shape projections and player values in 2020.
Injuries have pushed these two hitters into starting roles and without a whole lot of fanfare, are therefore likely to be available in your deeper league. With only two and a half weeks to go, buying playing time is the best strategy to fill holes.
There’s only three weeks left in the regular season! If you haven’t already done so, now is certainly the time to completely ignore player values and just pick up what you need and drop what you don’t, given your place in the various category standings. One of the easier places to make up ground is stolen bases. So let’s discuss a bunch of lesser owned (all these guys are owned in 60% or less of CBS leagues) hitters who have attempted at least six stolen bases over the last 30 days.
Ever since his exciting debut in 2014 that came over a small sample size, we’ve been awaiting a full season of strong offensive performance from Jorge Soler. Actually, we didn’t even require a strong performance, we just wanted a full season for once, gosh darn-it! Since that 2014 debut, Soler’s career high in plate appearances has been just 366, thanks to injury after injury. Finally, this year he has surpassed the 500 plate appearance plateau. Not only has he given us his first full season, but he has paired it with strong offensive performance for a true fantasy breakout.
Seemingly every season, a hitter comes out of nowhere to enjoy an insane couple of month stretch. In 2015, it was Franklin Gutierrez, of all hitters. In 2016, it was Gary Sanchez introducing himself as the next top catcher. In 2017, it was Matt Olson and Rhys Hoskins as the newest pure power hitters. And last year of course, it was Luke Voit and Ryan O’Hearn (and one might be inclined to include Max Muncy who did it over a larger sample size). This year with power settling in at record levels, we have several candidates. The best of these candidates is the guy easily leading all batters with at least 120 plate appearances in ISO (.422) and slightly leading in wOBA (.441). His name is Aristides Aquino and unless you’re a fantasy player or Reds fan, you probably never heard of him.
It’s an exciting time in the fantasy world when the calendar flips to September, as rosters expand, resulting in call-ups galore. New players get opportunities for playing time and it gives us fantasy owners a chance to plug some holes with a month to go in the season.
Today’s deep league waiver wire features a Triple-A breakout stud and a closer speculation.
