Third Base Stock Watch: Early August

One of the drawbacks of adjusting to having a weekly column is that there are only so many opportunities for features in general, let alone ones that can avoid being outdated or immediately undermined. Given that we’re still in early August, though, allow me to indulge in some samples from July for this particular column. I tried to steer clear of the big names, largely because their stock tends to remain up throughout the year. And if it doesn’t, it finds a way to right itself in relatively short order. Circumstances for each presented here are different. Some guys have seen increased opportunity for playing time at different positions while others were moving around the field and getting at-bats, only to see their respective club’s lineup solidified and land them on the bench. Either way, here’s a sampling of folks who have their stock up heading into the middle of August and the home stretch of the regular season and a few who face questions moving forward.

Stock Up

Javier Baez – There is virtually nothing that Javy Baez cannot do on a baseball field. He’s hitting for power and average while providing elite defense at a variety of positions. That type of player in invaluable. He’s only logged five games thus far in August, with the Cubs having a couple of off-days mind you, but is coming off of a month of July where he hit .325 and reached base at a .364 clip. The strikeout rate is obviously still high, as it will probably always be, but his improved approach is evident but his ever-slightly-increasing walk rate (up to 4.5% for the month of July). He didn’t hit for quite as much power as he did in June (ISO came in at .157), but he made really solid contact throughout the month, with his 15.0% soft contact rate representing his lowest of the season for any month, and a might impressive 19.3% linedrive rate. He’s not technically a starter anywhere on the depth chart, but there’s a reason that Joe Maddon is finding him at-bats on a near daily basis.

Miguel Sano – He made his valiant return to the hot corner amid speculation that he could be sent down to the minors after the return of Trevor Plouffe. The power has been there to an absurd extent, with already four home runs in the month. That has him on pace to eclipse his season high of eight, which he hit back in May. As a result of that power, his ISO and wRC+ are off the charts, at .484 and 220, respectively. His 13.9% walk rate is his highest since the first month of the year, which is a welcome sight given that his penchant for free passes has tailed off a bit here in the second half (14.0% vs. 7.4% between the two halves). His strikeout rate is still astronomical as it lingers around 30%, but he’s been hitting the ball hard all year, as his 45.0% Hard% this month isn’t even his highest over a full month. Imagine if he was playing for a larger market.

Justin Turner – Chalk this one up under “yeah, obviously.” I wrote about Turner back in June when this hot streak was getting underway. The first couple of months of the year saw him struggle to reach base consistently as he engaged in a losing effort against BABIP, where he recorded figures of .239 and .253 in the season’s first two months. That number alone has jumped up to .348 here in the second half, as Turner has been hitting the absolute tar out of the ball. July saw a wRC+ over 160 and the short sample size in August has him at 190. He doesn’t necessarily walk or strike out a lot. He just hits. He’s discovered the power stroke, with 18 home runs and an absurd .341 ISO since the beginning of June. He’s been white hot and a reason that the Dodgers continue to nip at the Giants for first place in the National League West.

Stock Down

Nick Castellanos – This probably goes without saying, if anything because of the injury that he suffered after just a brief time in August. What started off as a year of promise that he’d finally break out has resulted in disappointment and a trip to the disabled list for the Tigers third sacker with that hand fracture. His .260 average and .308 OBP in July were his lowest in any month this season. His second half wRC+ is all the way down at 66, which is obviously not helped by the fact that he had failed to produce anything during his 13 August plate appearances. His hard hit rate had declined in each month of the year, finding its way down to 33.3% in his brief time in August (a five percent decline from the figure that he posted in May). It’s obviously really unfortunate that he suffered his broken hand at all, but especially so because it would have been interesting to see if he could snap out of it and finish the year out the way that he started it.

Josh Harrison – Harrison is an interesting entry on this list for a couple of different reasons. Such is the case because Harrison, unlike Castellanos, is off to a pretty good start through his first 20 or so plate appearances in August. I’m also higher on Harrison than others, so his 2016 has been an intense disappointment, leaving me with little hope that his August will continue. His swing and contact trends haven’t necessarily changed, but he isn’t making impressive contact, which hasn’t lended itself well to the BABIP side of things, where he posted figures of .224 and .258 in June and July. Harrison was always sort of a fringe-type in fantasy to begin with, but his versatility made him an attractive option. An ISO of .133 and an OBP of .253 across July tends to sap him of any sort of appeal. Perhaps his solid start in August could indicate better things on the horizon, but the rest of the year tends to allude to otherwise.

Brandon Drury – Like Harrison, Drury is a guy that I tend to be high on, going as far as jumping all over that bandwagon early in the season. But since a nice month of May that had the potential to open up more playing time, we haven’t seen the same type of production from Drury, let alone playing time. He spent some time in the minors, but has largely just had a difficult time cracking the rotation, whether on the infield or in the outfield. He wasn’t a high OBP guy to begin with because of his penchant for swinging at everything, but his ability to make hard contact has declined throughout the summer (39.1% in May down to 32.2% in July and 25.0% thus far in August), and his power isn’t necessarily anywhere near where I thought it’d be based off of the early season results. A large part of that is likely due to the inconsistent playing time he’s receiving, but it’s still frustrating to see nonetheless. That absence of regular hard contact certainly makes Drury lose his luster, given the lack of approach (thus, fewer walks) and the subsequent lack of power that has resulted.