After much deliberation, the author has decided that this Deep League Waiver Wire piece will not include any puns involving Tommy Pham’s last name.

Last week, an errant Mike Montgomery fastball sent Matt Holliday to the DL opening up left field in St. Louis. Assuming no surgery is required (and we can expect an answer on that this week), Holliday is likely to miss up to 5 weeks with a broken thumb. The day before, the Buschmen placed Matt Adams on the DL with left-shoulder inflammation leaving a void at first base. Over the weekend, the Cards were linked to Carlos Gomez, a logical replacement for Holliday should John Mozeliak land him. But until then, it looks like St. Louis is kickin’ it with an amorphous blob of defensive versatility and one perfectly suitable in-house alternate, Tommy Pham (2% Yahoo, 1.6% ESPN, 5% CBS).

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If I had a dollar for every time I used this lede, I’d have, what, like, four dollars? I can’t help myself. Blind résumés are my jam because so much of how we value players is tied up in our biases and preconceived notions. Alas, Starling Marte and, of all people, Hernan Perez make for excellent comparisons when prorating their 2016 stat lines. Per usual, I won’t tell you who’s who:

Did you figure it out? The home run column gives it away, given Perez (Player B) has hit more home runs than Marte (Player A) in about half as many plate appearances. Outside of that, we’re looking at mirror-image power, stolen base rates, and plate discipline, the latter of which is most fascinating to me. We’ll dig into the weeds in a bit here — Perez has some faults we ought to acknowledge — but for all intents and purposes, Marte and Perez are nearly-identical, very-elite options through the end of September. (Last week I mentioned this — that Perez could be a top-flight outfielder from here on out — and, frankly, I’m surprised I got virtually no push-back from readers.)

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Last week, I wrote about two players straddling the borderline between deep and standard league relevance. But my beat is the Deep League Waiver Wire. So this week we take a look at one Mr. Keon Broxton and how he can address your need for speed and perhaps even mix in a little power while he’s at it.

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Without looking, take a guess at who leads the majors in stolen bases per plate appearance. Most of you probably chose Billy Hamilton, and while you aren’t far from being right, you are still wrong. While Hamilton’s pace of swiping a bag in 11.1% of his PA is mighty impressive, someone else is at an even more ridiculous pace of 11.6%. (Author’s note: As pointed out in the comments section by user “Regression is Mean,” Hamilton stole four bases yesterday to bump his rate up to 12.1%.)

Believe it or not, this mystery player is not even owned in 10% of Yahoo or ESPN leagues, as he currently sits at 8% and 9.5% ownership on those sites, respectively. (CBS owners are catching on, as he’s 20% owned on that site.) Who the heck is this player, and why isn’t he on your roster?

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Previous rankings:
July
June
May
March/April (Preseason)

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Last month, I asked what you all wanted from rankings. A few responded with answers I expected: rankings should reflect rest-of-season performance, informed by past performance. It seems almost silly I even asked in the first place. The reason it came up is because I think fantasy owners occasionally underestimate how impactful a month or two of extreme regression can be. It makes it especially difficult to rank someone like Marcell Ozuna circa June 1: he had a monster BABIP (batting average on balls in play) through May, and while he flashed still-legitimate power, we could reasonably expect the batting average to fall.

Like clockwork, it has. Ozuna’s BABIP by month: .281, .459, .284, .280. May was the obvious outlier in which all of Ozuna’s good fortune on balls in play was concentrated. The isolated power has, too, somewhat predictably, dipped since then. Ozuna wasn’t even a top-60 outfielder in July. Such is the nature of small samples. And yes, two months of baseball is still a fairly small sample. Joey Votto was batting only .249 through June 30. Then July happened, and now he’s batting .293 with about 20 more runs and RBI apiece (as well as a dropped foul ball).

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When Max Kepler hit three home runs on Monday, we could have just lauded him with a “Gut gemacht” and “Bravo!” and a slap on the ass. But we fantasy few need to know if he’s going to keep out-producing his power projections like he has been. So we jump into the deeper stats to try and tell how sustainable this power is.

We could easily take Andrew Perpetua’s xStats approach and bucket all balls in play, look at what results certain exit velocities and launch angles have had in those buckets, and apply those buckets to Kepler’s results. Then we’d know that Kepler has an expected slugging percentage of .369 based on his launch angles and exit velocities. We could say “entschuldigung,” apologize, and be on our way.

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It once again is time for the monthly update for my AL Outfield Tiers! As always, these are my rest of the season ranks for the position and you can check out my previous versions below as well as Alex Chamberlain’s NL versions. Read the rest of this entry »

No, your computer screen hasn’t frozen from several weeks ago, nor is FanGraphs on repeat. Instead, I’m double dipping, reiterating two recommendations I have made over the past month.

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I only have one recommendation for you today, folks. I’d love to write a second but sometimes it’s best not to force the issue. Not that there aren’t worthy players out there to consider. But sometimes, what’s out there just isn’t all that compelling and just because you can make an argument in favor of something doesn’t always mean you should. I’m talking to you, Jim Cramer. So without further ado, let’s talk a little Mac Williamson (1% Yahoo, 1.1%ESPN, 3% CBS).

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In looking through the largest discrepancies between in game production and my various xStats, namely xOBA, I noticed that four of the largest differences come from the Yankees. Disturbingly, these are in the negative direction, meaning xStats are making a claim that these four Yankees are playing over their head and are due for a regression. Who are these Yankees? Didi Gregorius, Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Brett Gardner.

Three left handed hitters and a switch hitter playing in Yankee stadium, a ballpark geared for left handed production. On first blush, you might scoff and claim the stats aren’t accounting for the ballpark, these guys are probably benefiting from the short porch. Yes, they likely are benefiting to some degree from the short right field fence, but last season didn’t seem to have this problem with the xStats from these four batters.