New Everyday Players — Aug 10, 2023

Time to meet some more new players recently joining the starting lineup!

Blake Rutherford | WAS OF

Since his recall last week, Rutherford has started three of five games in left field, all against right-handers, clearly indicating a role on the strong side of a platoon. The 26-year-old is a non-prospect, last appearing on a top prospects list back in 2021 and ranking just 14th overall in the White Sox organization he was a part of back then. But something may have clicked this year.

Heading into the season, he was coming off his first double digit HR/FB rate over a full season at Triple-A in 2022. This year, he took his power to new heights, as he first posted a 25% HR/FB at Double-A while with the Nationals affiliate, and then a 16% mark after being promoted to Triple-A. His ISO also jumped and reached as high as .271 at Double-A, before regressing to a still impressive for him .198 mark at Triple-A. It seems pretty clear that he’s experiencing a power surge. Of course, with a max EV of 108.8 MPH and a sub-30% FB%, I still wouldn’t expect him to be much of a home run contributor, but he’s certainly better than he looked in previous seasons.

Interestingly, he appears to be in the “swing at everything” camp, as his strikeout rates have typically been pretty good, despite high SwStk% marks. How on Earth did he manage to post a strong 14.2% strikeout rate at Triple-A this year, despite an 18.9% SwStk%?! That’s really hard to do, especially when he was still walking at about a league average rate at 8.3%. I would love to see his plate discipline metrics as he couldn’t walk that often if he truly swung at everything.

He has posted high BABIP marks nearly everywhere he has played, but it’s not until 2022 when he started hitting lots of line drives. I’m not sure how well his BABIP will carry over, but at the very least, it should be league average at worst and perhaps meaningfully above .300. Finally, he does own some speed, stealing as many as 15 bases back in 2018.

Putting it all together, perhaps a full season upside yields 15 homers and 10 steals, with his batting average up in the air as it’ll depend on whether all those swings and misses become strikeouts or not. That’s not too bad and worth looking into in very deep mixed leagues, and of course, NL-Only formats.

Johan Rojas | PHI OF

Rojas was recalled back in early July and started games here and there, but Brandon Marsh’s injury has made him the starting center fielder for now. The 22-year-old was ranked as the team’s third best prospect, but beware, he skipped Triple-A to get to the Majors, which often times suggests a major adjustment period.

Rojas has been tagged with some of the most divergent power grades I have seen. His 55/60 Raw Power grades suggests he owns pretty good power, but just a 30/35 Game Power grade suggests he is rarely able to actually tap into that power. I don’t recall seeing such gaps between the two grades, so I guess this is the definition of power potential that might never be realized.

His minor league HR/FB rate has only maxed out at 12.7%, while his ISO has peaked at just .178, so those Game Power grades are winning so far. He also hit fly balls at a sub-30% rate at Triple-A this year, so even if he were to raise that HR/FB rate, he isn’t hitting enough balls in the air to fully take advantage.

That said, I do like his contact ability, having posted single digit SwStk% for three straight minor league stints. His BABIP has been on the rise, but he hits a ton of pop-ups and has struggled at times to hit line drives. So I’m not too optimistic he’ll finish well above the league average.

The big fantasy potential here is from his speed. With a 70/70 Speed grade and ranking 43rd in Sprint Speed, there’s big stolen base potential here. He had already swiped 30 bases at Double-A this year in about half a season, and combined for 62 steals last year between High-A and Double-A. Getting on base might be a problem, but he could run wild when he does get on. He’s already stolen five bases with the Phillies and has come to the plate just 55 times!

Clearly, if you’re starving for speed and don’t care much about any of the other categories, he’s a prime pickup.

Liover Peguero | PIT 2B/SS

The Pirates have quite a number of new faces in their lineup and Peguero looks to have some of the better fantasy potential compared to the others. The 22-year-old was ranked as the team’s fifth best prospect, but only recorded 30 PAs at Triple-A before his latest recall in mid-July (he actually debuted last year, recording four PAs with the Pirates). As you should be aware by now, I’m always skeptical of prospects who have little or no experience at Triple-A, especially when they hadn’t totally crushed Double-A pitching.

Peguero has shown some power throughout his career, posted double digit HR/FB rate marks three times, including a 12.6% mark in his Double-A stint this year. He also pushed his ISO back up to .193 during that time and has posted a maxEV of 110.2 MPH with the Pirates already over just 46 at-bats. That suggests that there’s some power in the bat and he has hit a decent enough rate of fly balls in the minors to take advantage too.

Like Rojas, Peguero also steals bases, though not nearly as frequently as the former. Peguero had stolen 21 bases between Double-A and Triple-A this year before his recall over about a half season. He also swiped exactly 28 bases in both 2021 and 2022. So think of him as a more powerful Rojas, but with less steals potential.

The projections suggest something like a 10 homer, 20 steal upside over a full season and that’s more than worthy of consideration in deeper leagues.