I love, and I mean freaking LOVE, visiting those Most Added and Most Dropped pages on sites like Yahoo and ESPN early in the season. I feel like I am Tywin Lannister or something laughing at all funny things my subjects do to try and amuse me. “Ah, look at all the townspeople rushing to pick up Sir Joey Gallo. Go fetch me my concubines!”
We are bound to see some wild overreactions based on what amounts to about 2% of the baseball season because people don’t want to get beat to grab the new hotness or can’t bear to watch Andrew Heaney get BABIP’ed to death by the Baltimore Orioles anymore. I get the feeling, but we have to be smart with what we are seeing here. Does Corbin Burnes actually suck now or is there something else? Does the lack of a shift mean Gallo is only going to keep up a 17% home run rate? Me thinks not.
But I’m certainly watching some guys based on the first six days of the season. Here is who I have my eyes on that are rising and falling in my personal ranks.
Risers
Garrett Mitchell, OF, Milwaukee Brewers
Did Garrett Mitchell let it bother him that he did not draw the start today against a mediocre lefty in the Mets’ David Peterson? No, he did not. He grabbed his two plate appearances once he subbed in and used one of them to smash a laser-shot walk-off home run, his second of the season. He already has as many bombs in 20 plate appearances this season as he had in his 68-plate appearance debut in 2022. And he is just getting started.
The scary thing for Mitchell is he hasn’t even started stealing bases yet. Across four levels in 2022, he stole 25 bases. He stole 17 bases in just 64 games in 2021. If there is any player on the Brewers who seems to get an advantage from the new pick-off and base size rules this season, it would be Mitchell. He hit seventh in his debut and sixth in three straight games since. How long do we realistically think it takes him to supplant lefty Jesse Winker in the second spot in the order? Not long at all, if I had to bet on it.
Brendan Donovan, 1B/2B/3B/SS/OF, St. Louis Cardinals
It turns out the winner of the Yepez-O’Neill-Nootbaar-Carlson lineup/roster debate was Brendan Donovan all along. Donovan has started at second base and hit leadoff in five of the Cardinals’ first six games, hitting a cool .300 with a .600 slugging percentage along the way. He has bumped Tommy Edman all the way down to the bottom of the order and it looks like Donovan is going to lead off every time the Cardinals face a right-hander.
Donovan is the ultimate Swiss-Army knife for fantasy, considering his position eligibility and his power-speed combo. He also has produced a walk rate over 9% at every stop of his professional career after Low-A ball, so he looks like the perfect fit to start off the order ahead of the four or five mashers St. Louis has in the lineup in the six spots that follow him. This is a player who was picked around pick 244 in spring drafts, so he has earned his spot on those Most Added pages after one week.
Jesus Luzardo, SP, Miami Marlins
In the history of the Marlins’ franchise, there are eight total times that a pitcher has thrown at least 10 strikeouts in the team’s first week of the season. After Wednesday, Jesus Luzardo owns two of those. Yesterday against the Minnesota Twins and last April against the Los Angeles Angels. Luzardo had a crazy-high 20 swings and misses in that game (five more than he had in his opening start last week) and he was consistently sitting around 99 miles per house with his fastball.
Luzardo showed tremendous gains in the second half of last season, with his walk rate falling from 13.4% to 6.8%, his HR/9 rate falling from 1.24 to 0.76, and his ERA falling from 4.03 to 3.03. It appears those have all stuck through his first two starts of 2023 with only one earned run allowed in 12.2 innings. Not bad for a pitcher who was the 53rd starter off the board in March drafts.
Fallers
Tyler O’Neill, OF, St. Louis Cardinals
I don’t care if you are on a Major League Baseball team, generate the best fantasy #content in the world, or are a pencil-pusher for the Acme WhateverWeDos, if you are publicly feuding with your boss five days into a new year, you ain’t gonna see your picture on the Employee of the Month wall anytime soon. O’Neill was rumored to have been benched on Wednesday for lack of hustle. While the team tried to play it off as a routine day off, O’Neill just had a day off on Sunday. Further complicating matters, there is no shortage of hungry dogs on that roster ready to attack a roster spot or starting gig if someone leaves it up for grabs.
The numbers for O’Neill look good so far (.294/.333/.471 with a homer), but unless you are mf’ing Barry Bonds in 2001, you don’t call out your manager and expect to live to tell about it. I now worry that once Lars Nootbaar is back from injury, we might see the “routine days off” becoming much more routine for O’Neill in this stacked lineup.
Sean Murphy, C, Atlanta Braves
Do you watch The Mandalorian? If you haven’t caught up yet this season, don’t worry. You’re not missing anything. And I mean literally, you are not missing any of the Mandalorian. He and his sweet Baby Yoda have been reduced to window dressing and mere accessories this season while others have taken the lead driving the story. Just like Sean Murphy. You may recall that the Braves traded All-Star William Contreras and top prospect Kyle Muller to acquire Sean Murphy…just to play him three times in six games? Meanwhile, Travis D’Arnaud has played in all six.
He couldn’t get in the game against soft-tossing Miles Mikolas on Wednesday and is sitting on a .100/.250/.100 slash line through just 12 plate appearances. Yes, it is just 12 plate appearances in what is likely to be more than 450 over the course of the season. But you have to, you know, actually play in the games to accumulate those plate appearances. Head-shaking moves so far from the Braves. But they are 5-1 to start the season, so what do I know?
Joey Meneses, 1B/OF, Washington Nationals
Small sample size or were we all just on an episode of Punk’d? Can a 30-year-old rookie hit 13 home runs and drive in 34 runs in a third of a season actually be legit? Anyone who has spent 11 years in the minors before cracking the big league club is a farce, right? Are we sure this isn’t Dennis Quaid out there with a camera crew making a Disney+ movie about the down-on-his-luck farmer who made it to the big leagues against all odds?
The truth is, we hesitatingly bought in on Meneses this offseason, drafting him around pick 180 and as the 18th first baseman off the board. Now that he is five games into 2023 and is slashing .190/.227/.190 with no home runs, do we feel differently? The other problem, of course, is that this Nationals lineup is just atrocious and offers very little opportunity for run production. He is already striking out 36% of the time this season which is 15% higher than last year. Is it early? Yes. Do 30-year-old rookies normally turn into stars? No.
