Biggest Risers After Removing Wins from Player Rater Value

In its base form, Wins are part of our game even as their frequency drops and annoyance with them continues to surge. I don’t mind them despite their variant nature. They do create a lot of outliers when judging fantasy value, though, and because they aren’t bankable as a skill, that can be misleading. This is why it can be dangerous to use Player Raters as value meters. Someone with a bucket of Wins can skyrocket up the Rater and look better than his actual skills. Conversely, a hard-luck loser with great skills gets overlooked if they have too few wins. Today we’re going to remove Wins from the equation and see if we can learn anything from who jumps into the Top 50.

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Entering the Top 50

It is worth noting that volume is also a big deal on the Player Rater, so sometimes a lack of innings is the only thing holding someone back from getting their due. Here are five guys who aren’t in the Top 50 with Wins included but then find their way in once we pare down to Ks, ERA, and WHIP.

Casey Mize +28 spots from 58 to 30

Wow, the biggest mover is a Tiger… what a homer! A little twist of fate here for Mize as he was on the other end of this last year as his 14 Ws netted him the 49th spot on last year’s SP Player Rater despite a solid-but-unspectacular 3.87 ERA/1.27 WHIP combo. This year has been the best of his career, raising his K-BB 3 pts to a career high of 19%. That has helped him to a 2.95/1.07 combo, but a brutal bullpen and hapless lineup have left him with a 2-5 record. While the skills have improved and I love the added swing-and-miss, he isn’t fundamentally different than last year. That can be seen in just a 31-point improvement in his SIERA to 3.65 as a 6% HR/FB rate likely bridges a lot of the gap between his ERA and SIERA.

The Tigers are playing better ball in June and of course he missed half the month with injury and then lost both of his starts since returning (admittedly more his doing in these two) so he took zero advantage of the improved play. Mize isn’t necessarily earning ratios quite this strong even with the 19% K-BB and 13% SwStr so the prospect of regression paired with no real reason to believe the bullpen is going be much more supportive than they’ve been through the first half could result in some firm regression. I might explore a sell with Mize in trade leagues. You’re not selling a lemon by any stretch, but he could be a hard-luck mix of last year’s ratios with this year’s lack of Wins.

Keider Montero +18 from 64 to 46

Jumped Montero up here to go with his teammate Mize instead of going directly in order of largest jumps. Montero has the 5th largest move of the guys we’re looking at today. He’s a good bit different from Mize as he really only brings a useful WHIP to the fantasy table with an outright bat K rate (17%), decent 3.68 ERA, and to shock of no one, just a 3-5 record. He is riding an unsustainable BABIP and HR/FB combo yet still has a mid-3.00s ERA. As his .228 BABIP (2nd, min. 80 IP) and 7% HR/FB (tied with a buncha guy when you round it, but 8th when you go out one decimal) regress toward his .272/13% career marks, there could be some really rough starts in the future. Maybe he’ll start getting a ton of sloppy 5 IP/4 ER Wins as the Tigers offense explodes to rise up and take the Central! OK, now I’ve gone full homer.

Brandon Woodruff +28 from 65 to 37

Volume is part of the reason our next two fall short of the Top 50, especially Woody. That he’s even this close to the Top 50 with just 36 IP speaks to how well he’s pitched while healthy: 3.00 ERA/0.89 WHIP/20% K-BB. He’s continues to find success in the face of declining velocity and strikeout rates. After a 3 mph drop last year, he’s shaved another 1 off this year down to 92 mph while his K% is down 7 pts to 25 and yet he keeps churning out gems, including six innings of 1-hit ball with 10 Ks his last time out. This all comes down to health. I believe he can success with lowered velo and while the ratios likely won’t stay this good, there’s plenty of wiggle room to regress and remain a fantasy force. The injuries have piled up for the 33-year old, though, so that is a much larger hurdle to his success than anything else.

Payton Tolle +22 from 54 to 32

Tolle started the season in Triple-A and spending the first three weeks there as the Sox gave Brayan Bello a shot. He was up on April 23rd and hasn’t looked back with a sparkling 3.08 ERA/1.09 WHIP combo as well as 62 strikeouts in 64.3 innings. Like Mize and Montero, Tolle is stuck on a team vastly underperforming season expectations so maybe his 3-5 record isn’t a shock. And yet his teammate Sonny Gray will be on the other side of this list with a bananas 9-1 record! (He also has great ratios so it’s not like he’s a fraud, but it’s a bit shocking that he has 27% of their Wins on the year. While I’m open to trading Mize and being a lot more careful with my start recos on Montero, I have no issues with Tolle and would happily acquire him at market rate.

Ryan Weathers +18 from 67 to 49

Weathers isn’t even saddled with a bad team like a few others on this list. In fact, it’s quite the opposite with New York at an American League-best 48-31. It’s more the Jekyll and Hyde nature of Weathers that has stung him. He has nine starts of 2 or fewer earned runs, but just a 3-1 record in those games. Gotta cash those in when you’ve got five Duds (5+ ER) on the ledger (unsurprisingly 0-4 in those). He’s like the AL version of Luzardo, who actually leads baseball with 7 Duds, but he counters it with 9 starts of 5+ IP/<=2 ER. He and Luzardo both have a 20% K-BB, slotting 13th and 14th in MLB, so I will continue to trust both more often not. However, I will say that Luzardo is a healthy bit more trustworthy than Weathers because of their HR rates: 0.9 for Luzardo; 1.7 for Weathers.