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Very few players have the ability to put a fantasy owner’s team on their back and say, “Don’t worry, I got this.” Well, maybe they don’t necessarily say that to the fantasy owner, but you know what I mean. Even rarer is the opportunity to buy one of those players who happens to posses that ability at a very discounted rate. However, that opportunity is here, and the player all you readers should now be targeting is Edwin Encarnacion.
Let me begin by saying that Encarnacion’s value may never be lower. He has sat out since Sunday dealing with a hamstring issue. While all reports indicate that it is not serious and he should be returning this weekend, it is possible the owner in your league is afraid the injury will linger and eventually land him on the DL. Add in the fact that Encarnacion is currently in the midst of a 1-for-24 slump and the owner could really be beginning to worry.
You may be asking yourself, why would you want to trade for a player suffering a hamstring injury that is currently slumping hard and batting .216 on the year? Encarnacion currently is sitting with an absurdly low .213 BABIP. To put that into perspective, that is the seventh lowest BABIP among qualified hitters, and well below his .271 career rate. Not only that, his Isolated Power (ISO) sits at .221, on pace with his career number, but well below his average over the past three seasons. I personally do not think those numbers are going to hold true.
I’m going to omit the past 1-for-24 slump as he may have been attempting to play through the hamstring injury. Going way back to May 24th, his hard hit percent of 29.2 is well below the hitter we have come to know and love, but still has him on pace as a league average hitter. He still has hit fly balls at a high rate and his HR/FB rate of 24.5 percent is not just great, it’s elite. Not only that, as of Thursday, Encarnacion leads the league in “No Doubts” shots, according to ESPN’s homerun tracker.
There is one more reason I believe Encarnacion is not as bad as his numbers show. He has always been a notoriously slow starter. Just look what he did last year in April, hitting .250 with only two homers before erupting for a .281 average and 16 home runs in May. Despite that slow April, he still came into this season as a top-five first baseman and a first round pick in many fantasy drafts. This year he hit .205 in April with four homers, before beginning to heat up in May, belting eight homers and hitting .225 in 29-games. Encarnacion begins to heat up as the weather does, which makes me believe he can turn things around.
There are not many hitters who can get hot like Encarnacion is capable of doing (we already went over his May of 2014), and his low BABIP and ISO show that there is plenty of room for improvement. Yes, his strikeout rate is up and his hard hit percentage is down, but he is still an elite home run hitter, a category that is not easy to find.
Explaining why you should want to buy Encarnacion was my job. Here is where your job begins. First, send a respectable offer of say Eric Hosmer or Lucas Duda for him. If that doesn’t work, convince the owner of him in your league that his days are done. Sell him on the high strikeout rate, the hard hit percentage going down, that he is 32 years old, and his best days may be behind him. Lastly, that his hamstring injury may linger longer than expected. Make sure to make the owner believe that while there are risks, you are in a position to take those risks or have always been a big E5 fan and want to kick the tires on him. Otherwise, the other owner will be questioning himself on why you even want him to begin with.
Good luck and go buy low!
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Michael is a Staff Writer for RotoExperts. If you have any Fantasy questions make sure to follow him on Twitter @MichaelFFlorio.
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