While I’d love to pepper my offense with Twins, Astros, Dodgers, and Brewers, the guys from the best offenses are hard to acquire, whether at the draft table or once an offense takes off in-season. The dregs of the league are still going to play 162 games, though, and not every poor team is down in the standings because of their offense so there are gems to be found.

I wanted to highlight someone from each of the poor teams (at least a couple games below .500) and see if they are someone you might want to roster the rest of the way. Oakland, New York (N), St. Louis, and San Diego weren’t included because I don’t see them in line with the rest of these poor teams.

Hanser Alberto, BAL | 2B/3B

Alberto is hitting .384/.408/.493 over his last 18 games with 1 HR and 3 SB. He has nine multi-hit games and he has batted leadoff in 12 of his 17 starts. Batting average will drive this profile with a few homers and steals, but I like that he’s atop the lineup.

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6/7/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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PROSPECT PITCHER ANALYSIS:

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Transcript is available!

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6/6/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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HITTER CHECK-INS

• David Dahl
• Jose Ramirez
• Tim Anderson
• Ozzie Albies

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I released my June rankings yesterday. Justin and I also discussed some of the biggest movers into the top 50 on the podcast. There are 40 pitchers who moved up or down at least 15 spots. I can’t cover all of them here today, that’d be like a 5000-word piece, but I do have some thoughts on the biggest fallers on the list. We start with a mea culpa, but I stand by the others!

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6/4/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS, INJURIES, RUMORS (2:00)

• Adley Rutschman goes 1.1 (2:00)
• Dallas Keuchel/Craig Kimbrel rumors (10:15)
• Pedro Strop activated (15:52)
• Andrew McCutchen injured, could require IL (19:07)
  • Adam Haseley called up
• Miguel Cabrera has chronic knee issue (22:25)
• Nelson Cruz back (25:35)
• Jeff McNeil back (28:20)

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Another month is in the books and pitching landscape remains a mess. We lost 10 pitchers off last month’s rankings from underperformance, injuries, and demotions (to the pen or minors) and frankly, I could’ve maybe cut it to 105, but a lot of us play in deep leagues so we have to know the dregs. There are some major moves within even the top 50, let alone the rest of the rankings so I’ll have either an article or solo pod diving into reasoning behind the largest changes and how I feel about them going forward.

I look at my in-season rankings in 4-6 week blocks so the potential innings limits facing some of the younger arms rated highly aren’t really that important right now. Given that so much is going to change in the next month let alone the next four, I don’t see the point in pretending that these updates are viable for the rest of the season.

Pay attention to the tier! If I didn’t rank someone as high as you thought I should, but they are still a must or usually start, then it’s probably not worth freaking out too much. Those tiers mean they are in the rotation pretty much all the time. I’m open to debating slotting, too, but worrying about a 4-spot difference between two guys in the same tier is probably a waste of time.

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5/31/19

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 20, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER20!

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NEW TOP 100 PITCHERS:

• Griffin Canning – 93
• Spencer Turnbull – 100

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Baseball Savant recently released these new Pitch Movement leaderboards and they’re very cool. I don’t always get in the weeds on movement numbers to find out who leads what, but this has definitely made that easier. They explain at the top how they come up with the metrics and then show how much better than average the pitcher is with a given pitch’s break or drop.

Caleb Smith’s Fastball Horizontal Movement

Smith’s breakout season has been aided by big improvements in his fastball, including a jump in horizontal break. Only Richard Rodriguez (86% better than average) and Chris Sale (80%) are further above average than Smith’s 71% mark. His 4.8 pitch value on the heater is 25th-best this year and up from -3.0 last year.

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