If you had told me during spring training that Ketel Marte would enjoy a fantasy breakout during his age 25 season, I would have guessed it would include something like 15 dingers and 30 steals. Fast forward two and a half months, and Marte is indeed enjoying that fantasy breakout, but the shape of that breakout is rather shocking. As I type this, Marte ranks tied for seventh in baseball in homers with 20. TWENTY! He’s now on pace for about 44 homers. Heading into the season, he had only hit 22 throughout his entire career, and that came over 1,402 at-bats! His HR/FB rate stood at a measly 6.7%. Measly no longer describes Marte’s power.

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6/13/19

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PLAYER RATER CHECK-INS

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On Tuesday, I published the results of my research calculating correlations for various pitching metrics as pitchers transition from the minors to the Majors. Today, we’ll look at the hitters. Just like for pitchers making the jump from the minors to the Majors, hitter correlations are very similar to what Matt Klaassen calculated for MLB batters year-over-year. That may be a surprise, but it does mostly suggest that there’s not as much development from the minors to the Majors as we might expect. A baseball player is who he is, for the most part, on average. Now let’s get to the details.

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Last season at BaseballHQ ($$), I found the expected results for hitters returning from Tommy John surgery (TJS). The research was completed with traditional stats and no StatCast information was utilized. The reason was that only one regular, Christian Vazquez, had Tommy John surgery since there was publicly available StatCast data. That changed when five hitters had the surgery last year. With the return of Didi Gregorius, all have made it to the majors. Sadly the early returns are unspectacular with Corey Seager and Shohei Ohtani struggling.

In his first three seasons, Seager posted a .876 OPS but past two seasons it has only been a .793 OPS. I included last season because he struggled while trying to play through the injury. For Ohtani, he posted a .925 OPS last year and just a .742 OPS this season. These values line up with the original TJS article.

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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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Angels

• Albert Pujols has started only six of the last 10 games.
• Brian Goodwin is hitting (.211/.244/.263) over the past two weeks after a hot start.
• Since May 21st when Andrelton Simmons went on the IL and Luis Rengifo was forced into a fulltime role, Rengifo is hitting .302/.387/.415 with no speedin 15 of 16 games.

Astros

• With George Springer on the IL, Derek Fisher is leading off and hitting .262/.326/.429.
• Yuli Gurriel is still batting fourth even though he’s hitting .240/.257/.323 over the last month.
• Jack Mayfield is hitting .074/.107/.222 while playing in seven of the last 10 games at a middle infield position.
• I’m guessing Tyler White (.220/.313/.293) will head to the bench one anyone returns from the IL with Fisher or Tony Kemp taking his place.

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An all-Orioles edition of the deep league waiver wire?! YOU BETCHA! While stinky teams are no fun to root for, there are certainly benefits to following them as a fantasy owner. That’s because a stinky team is likely composed of a slew of stinky players, and those stinky players are likely to get replaced by other, hopefully better, players. That time has come, as two new arrivals have made their way to Baltimore with an expectation of every day at-bats in the near-term.

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One of my least favorite things in fantasy baseball is lame buy low recommendations. You know the ones. It’s when everything is damn near picture perfect under the hood, there’s no real reason to be worried about the player, but their batting average is lagging because of a tiny BABIP so cosmetically they look like they’re struggling.

Sure, Marcell Ozuna is hitting .230, but he has 14 HR, 4 SB, a 92.4 mph exit velo, and 16% Barrel rate meaning he’s completely fine. No one is selling him on the cheap. He’s not a buy low just because his .226 BABIP is dragging down his average. These buy lows are truly stinky. We are primarily betting on track record over anything else as most of their numbers through two months are brutal. Let’s take a look:

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Home runs are up across the land and since 2002, the league average HR/FB rate has hit a new high, rising above 14% for the first time and above the previous high set just two years ago. Related, the league AB/HR has fallen to a new low, also beating out 2017. Batters are now homering once every 25.9 at-bats. It hasn’t all been the same top guys just hitting more. There have also been a slew of new home run kings so far this season. Let’s identify them and discuss.

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When you drafted Eddie Rosario a couple of months ago, you probably took him after the first 75 players were already picked. He may have even been the third outfielder you selected. Yet based on what Rosario has done over the nearly two months since opening day, you might rightfully believe you snuck a player with first-round value onto your roster, long after the elite hitters came off the board.

Rosario has played in all but two of the Twins’ 47 games to date, and his total of 13 home runs has him on a pace to finish in the 40-to-45 range. He is also on a trajectory to finish with more than 120 runs and 120 RBIs. Even putting those numbers into the context of this season’s power explosion, it’s clear that Rosario is having a dramatic breakout campaign, as those marks would obliterate his previous career highs (27 home runs, 87 runs, 78 RBIs).
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