It’s been a while since running a series of New Everyday Starters posts and man, do we have a slew of them right now. Between injury replacements and minor league call-ups, it might be easier than ever to find a replacement for your injured starter. Let’s discuss five of those new regulars and determine if they have a place on your roster.
The trade deadline is this Friday and could be an absolute banger. It is shaping up to be a seller’s market with a very clear set of buyers and sellers and the latter having some legitimate players to move that could alter the playoff picture substantially. There is understandable excitement related to the players who will be moved, but I want to focus on the holes their departures will open as that can often create some interesting buying opportunities for us in the fantasy realm, often at a discounted price, too. Here are six hitters who could deliver some fantasy upside if a spot opens for them.
Brendan Rodgers/Garrett Hampson | OF/2B, COL – Potential Trade: Trevor Story
Story has to get traded, right? RIGHT?! I would say the Rockies can’t possibly botch it, but we know that’s not true. They’ve shown time and again that they are capable of botching anything. His departure would likely change the fate of two guys (assuming they don’t get a shortstop back in return) as the 2B platoon of Rodgers and Hampson could both become full-timers.
Both are markedly better against lefties, but the extra volume alone can sometimes be enough to drive value, especially for Rockies given their home park. Speaking of, they have a dead even 28-28 home-road split post deadline. Well, technically that’s not 100% true, but I’m thinking more about weekly leagues and standard Sunday pickups so starting next Monday it’s 28-28.
It seems like the Rays always have a logjam of hitters and rotations at most positions, and that has now gotten even more logjammy with their acquisition of DH Nelson Cruz. Cruz hasn’t played in the field since 2018, which means for as long as he is starting, the DH slot is going to be filled. That’s bad news for many of their hitters who will likely see a playing time cut, albeit not a significant one since it will likely be a different player on the bench each day. The logjam is likely to worsen again once Manuel Margot returns from the IL. Alas, this isn’t an article on the rest of the Rays hitters, it’s about Cruz’s move from Minnesota to Tampa. From a strictly ballpark change perspective, how might this switch in home venue affect his performance? Let’s consult the park factors.
The top prospects just keep on coming! On Friday when baseball returned after the all-star break, the Red Sox recalled their third best prospect and 55th overall ranked prospect, Jarren Duran. Then on Sunday, the Angels recalled their top prospect and ninth overall ranked prospect, Brandon Marsh. Let’s dive into each of their statistical records and investigate their chances of fantasy success this year.
Yesterday, I asked you to vote on which group of pitchers you expect to post a better ERA over the rest of the season. One group was composed of the 10 biggest SIERA overperformers, while the other included the underperformers. For the first time, I’m going to take the same polling idea and use it for hitters. So let’s follow the same concept and compare two groups of hitters based on xwOBA overperformance and underperformance. We know that xwOBA isn’t perfect. Neither is SIERA. In fact, no estimated/expected/forecasted equation is going to be perfect because there will always be a player or multiples that figure out how to do something we have a difficult time quantifying or there’s simply bound to be players each year that fall into either end of the extremes for no reason at all except for randomness. So let’s keep that in mind when reviewing these two groups.
7/13/21
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Last week, I quickly introduced my updated hitter xK% equation thanks to commenter suggestions. Let’s now put the new equation into action and update my potential hitter K% regressor list. The original list used the earlier version of this equation and can be found here. As you might have expected, many of the same names made this new list. The xK% equation is updated, but the result isn’t dramatically different than it had been. So I won’t be discussing the names I did last week, just the new ones.
Last week, I quickly introduced my updated hitter xK% equation thanks to commenter suggestions. Let’s now put the new equation into action and update my potential hitter K% improver list. The original list used the earlier version of this equation and can be found here. As you might have expected, many of the same names made this new list. The xK% equation is updated, but the result isn’t dramatically different than it had been. So I won’t be discussing the names I did last week, just the new ones.
Yesterday, I used my newly unmasked hitter xK% equation to identify and discuss the hitters who have most underperformed the metric. Today, let’s now look into the biggest overperformers, or hitters who may be deserving of a higher strikeout rate right now.
Last week, I unveiled the latest version of my hitter xK% metric. I was reminded of the need to do so based on some of the comments to my xwOBA articles. The gist of the comments were that Statcast’s xwOBA isn’t a fully expected mark if it takes strikeout and walk rates at face value. Even those rates should technically be adjusted to their own expected marks and then be used in xwOBA, rather than using the actuals. Adjusting strikeout and walk rates in xwOBA wouldn’t be nearly as actionable as adjusting the results of batted balls, but they could affect both counting stats like batting average and home runs (more or fewer expected balls in play), plus runs scored and stolen bases (more or fewer times on base), etc. So it’s still useful to be aware of.