FanGraphs’ leaderboards are like iron ore mines. They abound with potentially valuable commodities, but sometimes it takes effort to unlock the potential and extract the value.

There’s only so much you can write about a certain subsection of players (National League outfielders) without beating a dead horse. Alas, I’ve tried to find peculiar reasons to write about particularly interesting hitters. And, ah, FanGraphs’ leaderboards, they’re helpful in this regard, especially when broken down by splits.

Baseball Info Solutions’ (BIS) opposite-field batted ball data are no exception, as exemplified by this table of opposite-field hard-hit rate (Hard%) leaders among NL outfielders:

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At 1 pm EDT, we will begin to chronicle September call-ups and their potential contributions in a running post organized by David Wiers. Stay tuned.

NL OF Tiers: August
NL OF Tiers: July
NL OF Tiers: June
NL OF Tiers: May
NL OF Tiers: Preseason

What’s most interesting about September, from a purely statistical standpoint, is small-sample volatility. Just like the unpredictability of April, anyone can go off — or fall flat — in the home stretch. If I’m contending, I’m trying to maximize playing time, although I will stream or start certain specialized players if I’m chasing a particular category.

I’m in a head-to-head standard roto league with two weeks of regular-season play left before two one-week rounds of playoffs. In the last four weeks, my team has roared back from a miserable 9th place to a legitimately-contending 6th, and I’m already off to a strong start this week. In other words: a lot can happen in a month, so certainly half of a lot can happen in two weeks. Hang in there.

I drafted one of my fantasy football teams this weekend. My tiers shall assume the names of my six most expensive players.

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Often times, the most heavily hyped prospects flop in their first taste of Major League action. As I discussed a couple of weeks ago, this has not happened to top Twins prospect Miguel Sano. But it has to their top rated prospect, Byron Buxton. Over 86 plate appearances, Buxton has posted a paltry .235 wOBA. It would be easy to look past the surface results and consider them just some standard struggles at the plate for a youngster, coupled with some likely poor fortune. But there have been some very troubling signs behind these numbers.

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Mike Trout hurt his wrist in late July. Since then, in the 101 plate appearances headed into his game last night, the Angels outfielder has hit .224/.347/.388 with two home runs and a caught stealing. He’s been 11% better than league average, but that’s like 50% below average on the Trout scale. Is he still hurt?

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Kyle Schwarber gets double-duty this week. Yesterday, Mike Podhorzer discussed Kyle Schwarber’s 2016 potential. He mentions he read a post in which the author allegedly considered Schwarber in the second round of a 2016 mock draft.

I found the whole thing intriguing, primarily because we’re working with a small sample — slightly more than 150 plate appearances. I tried to draw meaningful conclusions on a comparably small sample size for Carlos Gonzalez, and now I’m pretty sure hired assassins are tracking me. Alas, what follows is not a disagreement with Pod (because his analysis is excellent) but an unauthorized biography extension of his post.

In June, I compared Joc Pederson to George Springer, two blossoming young stars to each of whom I alluded as “evolving juggernauts.” In fact, I think Schwarber is not particularly dissimilar from Pederson. With another two months of baseball in the rear-view mirror, that comparison is especially illuminating, given we’ve seen just how tumultuous Pederson’s rookie campaign has been.

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On June 9th, Starling Marte blasted his 12th home run of the season, leaving him just two shy of setting a new a career-high with 105 games left in the season. Marte has just one home run since June 10th so he is still one shy of that new high with 46 games left in the season. He hasn’t been bad during that stretch, not by a longshot, but the power has evaporated. In those 52 games, Marte is hitting .320 and has scored 29 runs with 12 stolen bases which would pace to 91 and 38 over a full season, respectively. But with just that one homer and a .091 ISO, he is no doubt disappointing some of his fantasy teams.

Honestly, the power outage shouldn’t surprise any of us.

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We’re just about ready to close the book on another season, and as we’re well into the throes of the 2015 stretch run, we need every bit of fantasy ammunition, each spare part we can scrounge from the waiver wire dumpster.

As a reminder, the players recommended in this space are best suited for mono formats, and the ownership percentages are by way of CBS.
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Despite accruing a mere 195 plate appearances between his time with the Blue Jays and the A’s this season, Danny Valencia has made a bit of name for himself in both traditional fantasy baseball leagues and Daily Fantasy Sites. His .308/.345/.544 line with nine home runs would be welcome on any team, though some people may view his accomplishments partly due to the hitter friendly confines of the Rogers Centre. Read the rest of this entry »

Three weeks ago I offered three (or four) starting pitchers for your consideration. In it I highlighted three starters who did not exceed various thresholds of ownership in Yahoo! fantasy leagues. Ken Erdedy liked it, and while I can’t tell if his name is real, it seems his sentiment was.

I anticipated returning with three hitters in a similar vein. However, I couldn’t help but highlight a particular hitter owned in an absurdly low percentage of leagues. (Alas, I got distracted, as I am wont to do.)

I’ll retain the format of my original post for kicks, but I have decided to point the spotlight entirely on him.

Sub-20% Ownership: Second Base

Delino DeShields Jr. (17%)

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In the past 30 days, Michael Taylor — the current National, not the former Athletic — has hit four home runs and stolen six bases to go with seven runs and 16 RBI. Mike Podhorzer tabbed Taylor as a sleeper in March. In the post, he notes his own projections largely validated Steamer’s and ZiPS’ projections for Taylor, although his anticipated better than 10-homer power across 600 plate appearances.

Now at 10 homers and 14 steals through 345 plate appearances, Taylor seeks to make all his projections look silly. His counting stats currently pace out to 17 home runs, 24 stolen bases, 54 runs and 80 RBI for a full season.

At 24 years old, Taylor appears poised to contribute legitimately to fantasy teams not only now (considering the possibility Denard Span does not return this season) but also for years to come. Indeed, his tools inspired a bold prediction on his behalf, of which he fell short but for which he kindly did not embarrass the author.

Amid my lauding of his past 30 days, however, I deliberately omitted an important detail: Taylor is batting .214 with a sub-.250 on-base percentage (OBP) thanks to strikeout and walk rates of 33.0 and 2.9 percent. Despite his toolsiness, both present and past — in 2014, he hit 23 homers and stole 37 bases, mostly at AA — it’s evident why Taylor doesn’t have garner prospect coverage the way George Springer and Joc Pederson once did.

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