Sometimes when I write about fantasy baseball (and certainly when I play fantasy baseball), I feel a lot like Ruth Langmore. You’ve seen the meme from Ozark by now. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know s*** about f***. Case in point. Some dummy wrote in the preseason that the new park dimensions in Camden Yards were death to Ryan Mountcastle’s fantasy value. Welp.
Case in point 2.0. Just two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about the abysmal season Masataka Yoshida was having and how hard a time he was having adjusting to major league pitching. WillFerrellWhatAnIdiot.Gif. It just goes to show you that no matter how reasoned or sound your argument may be, fantasy baseball can often make us look foolish. Do we abandon all hope ye who enter a fantasy baseball league? Never. We just play the long game and try to make the best calls we can with the information we have.
With that in mind, here are six players whose fantasy values I am watching closely based on their recent play.
Risers
Ryan Mountcastle, 1B, Baltimore Orioles
Maybe I should give myself a grade of “Incomplete” on Ryan Mountcastle until we see what the full season brings. The crux of my argument was that the new higher, deeper walls in left field at Camden Yards would sap the power from right-handers like Ryan Mountcastle. In actuality, that has happened. The home run park factor for Camden Yards this year is just 79 for right-handers, meaning it is 21% below league average. The overall park factor is 91, or 9% below league average.
The thing is, however, Mountcastle just doesn’t care about all those fancy numbers. He has eight bombs, 26 RBI, and a .504 slugging percentage despite just a .275 on-base percentage. His strikeout rate is the best of his career, and he has cut his groundballs down by two percentage points. I remain mildly skeptical he can keep up the home run power, but so far he is proving me and everyone else wrong.
Masataka Yoshida, OF, Boston Red Sox
In the piece two weeks ago, I pointed out Yoshida’s 67% groundball rate and wondered how he could ever succeed with no launch on the ball and such weak contact in over two-thirds of his at-bats. He had been a pull hitter in Japan, but everything was being driven into the ground.
Just two weeks, later, he is one of the hottest (if not THE hottest) hitters around. Since April 21st, Yoshida is slashing .439/.489/.829 with four home runs and 11 RBI for good measure. His .829 slugging percentage and .544 wOBA is first among all batters over the last 14 days. He dropped his strikeout rate to 12.8% and he is still walking 10.6% of the time. Hitting near the top of the Red Sox order near Rafael Devers, they make a tremendous 1-2 punch and Yoshida has adapted to major league pitching must faster than perhaps anyone thought he would.
Ezequiel Duran, SS, Texas Rangers
With all of the talk about the hot starts from Josh Jung and Adolis Garcia, what Ezequiel Duran is doing has been somewhat lost in the shuffle of all the runs the Rangers are piling up. Remember Yoshida’s .544 wOBA over the last two weeks? Right behind him is Duran was a .524 total, which props up his .432/.475/.757 line in that span.
But Duran has been a five-category contributor over the last few weeks as well. He has three homers, six runs, 10 RBI, and two steals. By some measurements, he has been a top-five fantasy asset over the last two weeks. The Razzball Player Rater puts Duran as a top-100 hitter this season. But perhaps the best thing about Duran for fantasy is that he started the year batting ninth and playing very irregularly. Now, he is in the lineup every day and is routinely hitting sixth or seventh.
Fallers
Nolan Arenado, 3B, St. Louis Cardinals
Somebody needs to do a wellness check on this guy because his season is already on freaking life support. Did the Mets or White Sox training staffs get ahold of this guy? I know that it’s only one month, but a .233/.280/.310 line with two homers through more than a month of play is now starting to look concerning. His strikeout rate is the highest of his career. His walk rate is the lowest. His average exit velocity is in the toilet (86 mph). And he is hitting a groundball 43% of the time. His BABIP is just a few points below league average, so it’s not as if he is getting incredibly unlucky. Something is wrong here.
Is it the general Cardinals malaise that has plagued this whole offense the entire season? Could Arenado have possibly fallen off a cliff at age 32? Those are unlikely, so we have to just point to things like his approach at the plate to identify the issues. His swing rate outside the zone is five percentage points higher than his career. His contact rate overall is 3.5% lower. All these things can (and likely will) be fixed. Practice patience and grab him for 50 cents on the dollar if you can.
Eugenio Suarez, 3B, Seattle Mariners
It’s certainly possible that the last 11 games have been the worst stretch in Eugenio Suarez’s career. In that time he is hitting .132/.267/.158 with no home runs and just two runs driven in. In those 11 games, he has struck out 15 times, which would be 221 times over a full 162-game season if the streak continued. Much like the Cardinals and Arenado, the Mariners and Suarez have been scuffling lately, and their respective performances are correlated to one another. Suarez is still batting third or fourth in the Mariners’ order every night, so they are showing the faith, but he has got to start delivering soon.
It’s not a given that he will, however. His BABIP sits at .333 right now, 33 points above his career average and 35 points above the major league average. He still has only managed a .234 batting average with that high BABIP, but we have to watch to make sure it doesn’t start falling into 2021 territory (.198 over 145 games). The bad part is that he now owns that part of the range of outcomes, and it’s entirely possible the bottom falls out before things get better.
Dylan Cease, SP, Chicago White Sox
After a phenomenal first three starts, Cease’s overall performance has come back down to earth faster than a SpaceX rocket test launch. Over the last three starts, Cease has treated fantasy managers to a 7.07 ERA, a .339/.417/.548 slash line, and an 0-1 record. The most glaring problem seems to be the horrific walk rate that is creeping into dangerous territory after improving each of the last two seasons. Cease’s walks per nine inning now sits at 4.45 which essentially means he is putting a free man on base every other inning.
Overall, the numbers are still respectable. He has a 4.15 ERA and is striking out 11 batters per nine innings. But in his last three starts he has a total of 13 strikeouts to go along with nine walks. He has not made it past four innings in each of his last two games because the pitch count simply gets too high too fast.
I’m personally not selling Cease at the moment, but rather holding. We have seen higher strikeout rates and lower walk rates over larger samples, so I am going to wait a few more turns in the rotation before making the call.
