Your Last Chance Home Run Buy List

We’re running out of time to improve our teams, so let’s use my xHR/FB rate equation (unadjusted for home park) to identify a handful of hitters potentially due for a home run spike over the remaining month-plus of the season.

Mitch Moreland has delivered his typical ho-hum performance, but he has done enough to fend off prospect Sam Travis, who many thought would steal Moreland’s job by midseason. His Brls/BBE, however, suggests that better results should be coming. Interestingly, his Brls/BBE is at its highest mark going back to 2015, the first year we have Statcast data for, yet his HR/FB rate has tumbled. It’s not like Fenway Park has hampered him, as he sports a 15.7% home mark. It’s in away parks he has had issues with, posting just an 11.1% mark. Moreland should come cheap and makes for an excellent target in deep mixed or AL-Only leagues if you need homers.

Though he’s hitting his fly balls into the middle part of the field a bit more often than he has over the previous two seasons, Kyle Seager’s Brls/BBE is identical to his mark in 2015 and just slightly down from last year. And yet here Seager is sitting with a HR/FB rtae that just misses double digits. He’s been the same hitter he has always been, though this version has come with a career high fly ball rate. That’s even better news for his potential home run output the rest of the way as more fly balls plus more of those flies sailing over the wall will really increase that total. Unfortunately, the new batted ball distribution will do no favors to his BABIP, but the increased homers should offset it.

We know that Miguel Cabrera hasn’t been completely healthy and Alex Chamberlain recently used Statcast’s new estimated swing speed to try explaining Cabrera’s career low wOBA. But I keep coming back to this — injured or not, we already know his Brls/BBE, and it suggests his HR/FB rate should be significantly higher. Yes, his Brls/BBE is down dramatically from last season, but that’s solely because it spiked off his 2015 mark. His current mark is slightly higher than his 2015. We would figure injuries may have caused his Brls/BBE to crash, which would explain the power drought. But it hasn’t. So whether he’s injured or not, he’s still barreling up the ball, and often. When you also see a career low BABIP despite a career high line drive rate and career low pop-up rate, you have to believe he’s either the ultimate acquisition target or the ultimate exception to the Statcast rules.

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to include our favorite future breakout star Nick Castellanos on this list. I’m still waiting for an explanation as to why his barrels yield fewer homers than everyone else.

Even after swatting three homers last Friday, Manny Machado is still hitting for less home run power than we should expect. His Brls/BBE actually sits at a career best after remaining just about stagnant the last two years. He’s even pulling it and going the opposite way more often as well. A big rest of the season should be in the cards, especially with some BABIP upside if his line drive rate improves.

Yoenis Cespedes has amassed just 305 plate appearances having missed time to injuries, so he’s been relatively quiet despite generally doing what he has been. But his HR/FB rate is well down from the last two years, even though his Brls/BBE is up from last season. He’s even doing what Machado is doing and hitting it less frequently to the middle of the field. But he isn’t getting rewarded! With the possibility that he’s lost a bit of luster with the missed time and the younger breakout star Michael Conforto shifting the spotlight, Cespedes could come at a reasonable price.