New Everyday Starters — July 29, 2021

Man, waiting for the excitement of trade deadline day is hard. Why must teams wait until the last minute to complete a trade?! So to finish off my week of posting, let’s once again discuss another group of new everyday starters. Once the trade deadline passes, we will likely have a ton more worthy of discussion.

Greg Allen | NYY OF

Even with Aaron Judge back from the COVID IL, Allen got the start again, this time in center field. It says quite a lot about the state of the Yankees roster when the career .287 wOBA hitter is now an everyday starter, but hey, fantasy owners might as well take advantage.

Allen has never played a full season and his highest PA total in a season is just 291, which came back in 2018 with the Indians. His greatest fantasy asset is his speed and stolen base potential. Although he’s never played a full season, his career actually covers about a full season’s worth of plate appearances. Over that time, he has stolen 37 bases, with just six caught stealings. That’ll do no matter the league size and format. Unfortunately, he has had trouble getting on base, as he owns just a .307 OBP, even with a slightly above average career BABIP of .301. That’s because he walks infrequently and strikes out a bit more than you want for a guy who owns below average power.

With the Yankees clearly still in the thick of the race for a playoff spot, you have to assume they will make some moves that will push Allen out of a job. Until that happens though, Allen is worth picking up if you need speed, but he’s unlikely to contribute anywhere else. He’s basically Jarrod Dyson, but with a starting job at this very moment. A full-time Dyson is a valuable one, but he simply doesn’t hit well enough to keep a starting job, and Allen likely won’t either, especially on a big market team competing for a playoff spot.

Nico Hoerner | CHC 2B

Cubs manager David Ross loves mixing and matching, so it’s not always easy to tell who the everyday starters are. Hoerner played every day for about a month from late April to late May before a hamstring injury cost him over a month. He now has his job back, so he’s not a new everyday starter using the same definition as others on these lists.

The former top ranked Cubs prospect had a short minor league career, with the majority of his plate appearances coming at the Double-A level in 2019. He rarely swung and missed there, resulting in a low strikeout rate, but also a below average walk rate. He showed little power though and only an averageish BABIP, but did steal eight bases over about a half season’s worth of PAs. His skill set looked better from a real baseball perspective than fantasy, as power development would be needed for him to make a dent for fantasy owners.

In the Majors, his strikeout rate has risen, but his plate discipline still remains good, as he has posted a better than average SwStk%, has kept his strikeout rate in the teens, and walk rate has hovered around 10% the last two seasons. Sadly, his power remains MIA. He did hit three homers during his 2019 debut, which was driven by a 20% HR/FB rate. But he hasn’t homered since in 239 at-bats. At least he has stolen six bases in that time, so the double digit steals is delivering some fantasy value while we wait for his power to develop.

The other good news is that because of his good contact rate and an inflated BABIP, which is not likely to be sustainable, he’s hitting over .300, which is more valuable than ever as the league batting average sits at its lowest mark since 1968. I wouldn’t expect the batting average to last though, but it shouldn’t tumble to the point it hurts you. Right now, he’s more of a deep leaguer with the hope in the near-term of something closer to a 10/10 season with a good batting average. That’s a mix that’s always undervalued.

Willi Castro | DET 2B/SS

A breakout 140 plate appearances last year ensured Castro would open the season with a starting job in Detroit. Unfortunately, poor hitting earned him a demotion to Triple-A where he spent about a week. He’s back now and has been immediately inserted back into the starting lineup as the team’s second baseman.

In the minors, Castro didn’t walk a whole lot, posted league averageish strikeout rates, and mostly showed below average power with single digit HR/FB rates. He did, however, flash good speed, swiping as many as 20 bases in a season, and stealing at least 16 every year since 2015. Then he got the call to the Majors last year and showed more home run power than ever had before. It was an exciting development for the 23-year-old, but it hasn’t carried over into this year. His HR/FB rate has been nearly cut in half, while his ISO has tumbled right back down to the mid-.100 range where he typically sat in the minors. The odd thing is that his maxEV, which was perfectly solid during last year’s power breakout at 109.6 MPH, has actually surged even higher to an elite 115.4 MPH. You can’t fake that exit velocity, so that suggests he still has more power in his bat than he has shown so far this year.

The key here is simply matching those high EV swings with better launch angles, as his Barrel% has been more than cut in half this year. That seems much more correctable than trying to increase EV itself. The plate discipline still needs work as he swings and misses often and still doesn’t walk often enough. He also hasn’t carried over his stolen base prowess to the Majors, as he’s swiped just four bases over 553 MLB plate appearances.

The Tigers have nothing to lose by just letting him play the rest of the year to see if he’s a part of their future. He’s shown the seeds for strong power output and speed in the past, so there’s definitely upside for a nice power/speed mix here. He’s worth another shot.

Rowdy Tellez | MIL 1B

Sitting in first base, the Brewers simply couldn’t keep running Keston Hiura out there at first base, who has been a massive disappointment this year. So they went out and got Rowdy Tellez, who hit poorly with the Blue Jays this year and was squeezed off a team who had too many good hitters.

Through 2019, Tellez looked like your typical power hitting left-handed first baseman who strikes out a lot, posts a low BABIP, but a .200+ ISO and 20%+ HR/FB rate. Those types seem like a dime a dozen, so his future in that mold was unclear. But then last year over a small sample due to injury, Tellez significantly cut his strikeout rate driven by a big improvement in SwStk%. He didn’t even have to give up any power to do so, as his HR/FB rate and ISO actually increased from 2019. That improvement lifted his wOBA to a solid .369 and made him an interesting sleeper, despite the logjam in Toronto.

The good news this year is he has kept more than half his strikeout rate improvement gains and his SwStk% has actually improved again, so this doesn’t seem like a fluke. The bad news is his HR/FB rate has nearly been cut in half, though his maxEV remains near elite levels. Oddly, his Barrel% is at a career best, so one wonders how he’s only managed about a league average HR/FB rate. His BABIP stinks again, and that’s probably par for the course for a slow left-handed hitter. That should improve a bit, along with his HR/FB rate, so that the end result is actually an acceptable batting average, and not only that kills you.

Milwaukee is a good landing spot for him as the park plays well for left-handed home runs and he may not even be platooned as he started against the last lefty the team faced. I’m absolutely taking a shot here if I needed a corner guy.





Mike Podhorzer is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year. He produces player projections using his own forecasting system and is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. His projections helped him win the inaugural 2013 Tout Wars mixed draft league. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.

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Greg Simonsmember
2 years ago

Re: Tellez. And then the Brewers got Escobar…I’m very curious how playing time will be allotted.