A little over a month ago, I wrote up a handful of hitters that were underperforming their draft cost, were readily available to pick up in most 12-teamers, and why they were primed to break through. 

Looking at underlying numbers from this season and comparing them to last season for struggling players can help identify when a player may be on the cusp of coming on strong after a weak stretch. 

Kyle Stowers was one such player. Coming back from injury, Stowers scuffled through mid-June, with an OPS below .700 and a K% near 30%. But from June 12 on, when I published the piece, he has slashed .261/.341/.521 with seven homers and 23 RBI. He had been squaring up the ball in the weeks leading up to this breakthrough. But without the results. 

Of course, the same process told me to consider Alec Bohm, who is himself rocking on OPS below .700 since I shouted out his hot run at the end of May and into June. I’m no wizard.

But late in the year, hot stretches are incredibly valuable. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, but it bears repeating. Whether it be in head-to-head leagues, where a hot stretch in the late summer can lift you over opponents, or in season long roto leagues where you find yourself lagging in homers, the hot stretch is like a hot pastrami. Undeniably savory. Perfect. 

Now let’s look at some hitters, focusing on a selection of players rostered at different rates between CBS and Yahoo. Consider these hitters, particularly those in the top tier, options to replace struggling veterans like those that Mike Podhorzer wrote up a few days back. And if you are in a shallower league where these hitters are rostered, consider the art of the deal!

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With all of the preparation that goes into draft season, it’s easy to throw that all out of the window when you come into June and a guy is hitting .180 and has fallen far outside of the top-ranked players in the majors. 

This is especially true for managers in 10- and 12-team leagues. In these formats, the quality and depth of the waiver wire is never better than it is in April and into early May. 

Contrast that with the struggles and small sample size bloated ERAs and miniscule counting stats, and it is easy to see why so many of us contemplate dropping players we considered ourselves excited to draft just a few weeks before the season. 

In this article, I’ll look back at some of the hitters the industry liked heading into this season, noting their current roster rates and player rater values, and why you should consider buying back in while you still can. I’ll start with players who have already demonstrated some value of late and wrap up with blurbs on some names who could be next.

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Streaming pitchers is a much cleaner exercise than streaming hitters. And oftentimes, the expected production is relatively more guaranteed. But in an offensive environment where hitting seems to be increasingly hard to find on the wire, then playing hot hands, and even better, trying to predict hot hands, becomes worthwhile. 

That’s what I’ll try and do in this article. At the team level, I’ll point you to the teams who are playing the most games this week, the teams playing in the friendliest hitter’s parks. Then, I’ll look more into platoon splits, playing time, and how hot they are heading into the week to try and identify a crop of hitters you should consider streaming. To limit the player pool to hitters who are likely to be available, I’ll only use hitters who are around 50% rostered or less in either Yahoo or CBS leagues.

This is my first attempt at this exercise. I’ll try and provide plenty of information to help you make decisions that apply to your league and team context, from position eligibility to rostership rates. 

Please let me know in the comments if there’s other information that’d be helpful, format changes, or any other potential changes!

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Some like it hot. And the A’s are certainly some. Since their move to West Sacramento, A’s hitters have finally been treated to a friendly home park. But that park is much friendlier when the weather warms up.

In this case, timing is a proxy for expected weather. Put simply, since we expect it to be hotter in the summer, especially in Sacramento, we expect offense to increase as the hitting environment becomes more favorable.

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They make us feel like gods. Those pitchers who begin the season on the fringe of being rostered who you stream against a weak offense to begin the season, who then go on to give you five innings with a handful of strikeouts and a win. 

In this throw away culture where newer is always better, it’s easy to lose sight of the essentials. And that’s especially true when “newer” means throwing three different fastballs over 97 mph or uncorking splitters that are hurled so fast they necessitate a new name.

That presents an opportunity. To zig where the market is zagging today is to not cast aside the command artists as flukes, but instead to let results come before the flashiest of underlying numbers. If the K-BB% isn’t convincing and the Stuff+ is lacking, there is still a path to success, and to surplus value via waiver wire adds and trades.

You know this story already. 

Remember Rick Porcello? Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend is the last weekend before Opening Day on March 25 which means it’s the biggest weekend for fantasy baseball drafting of the year. If you’ve got an Ottoneu auction draft coming up, you’ve probably already done the work to identify your team’s needs and the biggest targets in the draft. But what happens at the end of the draft when you’ve spent almost all of your salary cap and you’re looking for high-upside players to fill out your roster? That $1 zone is one of my favorite phases of the auction — diving for gold amidst a sea of all the leftover players. To help identify some of those late auction targets, here are 10 players — two from each position group (C, CI, MI, OF, SP) — whose current average auction price is less than $2. And if you’ve already completed your draft this year, you can treat this article as a list of interesting early waiver wire adds before the season gets underway.

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American League

Angels

• Jack Kochanowicz made the Angels rotation, and the only place he’s rosterable right now is probably in AL-only leagues. There will be times he’ll be streamable, but for now, he’s a poor man’s Marcus Stroman. Both create a decent number of ground balls but can’t strike anyone out. At least Stroman had a 6.6 K/9 last season, while Kochanowicz’s was half that (3.4 K/9). Read the rest of this entry »

One day this flu will fully go away. One day. At least I’m no longer sleeping 20 of 24 hours every day and can actually do things, but my goodness this cough is something else. Anyway, let’s finish off our Gold Digging team by heading to the mound with five notable starting pitchers I’m drafting and monitoring this spring in hopes of seeing the signs that they are ready for a breakthrough. If you missed either part on hitters, you can check those out here:

• Part 1: C, 1B, 2B
• Part 2: SS, 3B, OF

DJ Herz | WAS – 316 ADP

Herz impressed in a 19-start debut, highlighted by a fantastic 28% K rate in 89 innings. He had some classic rookie issues with a 9% BB rate and 1.1 HR9, but the walk rate was actually the best we’ve seen from Herz at any stop in his career (15% BB in 321 MiLB IP). He has a legit 3-pitch mix, all of which can miss bats, and the young lefty was so adept at handling righties that he actually posted a better OPS against them (.651, 43 pts clear of his work vL). He will need to iron out some of his volatility to have a major breakout, but I’ll take the shot at this price point.

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Pardon my delay in getting Part 2 of this article out, but I became extremely sick on Tuesday night and it completely cooked the rest of my week. I’m still not at 100% but at least I’ve been able to get out of bed and do some things before crashing back out for another few hours. My body couldn’t get sick in November-December?! January-February is quite literally the worst time for me to be out of commission for days at a time! At any rate, let’s dive back into our hitters and finish up the lineup. Just to refresh if you forgot from Part 1 or didn’t read Part 1, we’re picking our favorite hitters after pick-300. Next week, we’ll do pitchers.

Shortstop

Jacob Wilson윌슨 | OAK – 347 ADP

The #6 overall pick from 2023 debuted right out of the All-Star break and even got a hit in first MLB plate appearance only to suffer a hamstring strain in the 4th inning of that game and ended up missing a month-plus on the IL. Upon returning, he didn’t really stand out with just a .615 OPS, 0 HR/SB in 102 PA. The one positive takeaway was his plate approach: 10% K, 8% BB. Over the course of a full season, I like him for way better than the .250 AVG we saw in his debut. The projections agree, ranging from .269 to .287, so that will be the draw of Wilson as neither the power nor the speed are particularly special.

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This is another one of my favorite offseason exercises. Last week, I went through the Steamer600 projections to uncover some potential gems who could break out if they get that kind of playing time. Today we’re on the hunt again, this time for gold (they’re minerals, Marie!) and we’re doing so by lopping off the first 300 picks of the Average Draft Position and then picking our players.

Later this week, I’ll have the rest of the lineup and then next week, I’ll share my pitchers.

Catcher

Hunter Goodman | COL – 313 ADP

This one is very straightforward: a super powerful catcher-eligible bat in Coors. He also played some 1B and LF so he could be a non-catching catcher. He must figure out how to hit first!  Goodman clubbed 13 HRs in just 70 games last season, but his 0.13 BB/K was tied for 3rd-lowest (min. 220 PA) as he posted a 61 wRC+ in 224 PA. He did have a 0.35 BB/K (MLB league average: 0.36) in 1259 minor league plate appearances so he has shown some ability to draw a walk. Think Patrick Wisdom in Coors if things work out for Goodman. Wisdom clubbed 30 HRs/500 PA from 2021-23 despite a paltry 0.26 BB/K and .214 AVG in 1211 PA.

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