It’s nice to be right sometimes. Last week, I advised buying low on Maikel Franco. Over his first two games, after that piece came out, he went 3-of-8 with two home runs and six RBIs.

Naturally, I felt pretty good about myself. Of course, over the next three games, he went hitless in 13 at-bats. I never said I was perfect.

The point of that anecdote is that this advice is for season-long leagues. Every hitter is going to have good and bad stretches, and one week is never enough to judge someone’s skill level. I still believe in Franco’s talent, despite the 3-of-21 stretch.

If anything, that just made him a more attractive trade target. I won’t go into detail about why I like Franco again (check last week’s article for that), but here are some other players that you should be trying to acquire or trade away.

Import your team to My Playbook for instant Lineup & Trade advice

Buy Lows

Sean Manaea (SP – OAK)
Manaea earns the status this week of making this list for the second time. You might be asking why I’m choosing to write about Manaea again while I only skimmed over Franco, and to that, I just say: it’s my article, not yours. There’s also the fact that I am head-over-heels in love with Manaea.

This guy is just the king of generating whiffs. He’s allowed contact on just 65.3 percent of swings, lowest in baseball among qualified pitchers. He’s generated a swinging strike on 15.6 percent of his pitches, second-highest in baseball in the same group (it was highest until Danny Salazar passed him last night — buy that kid too for the same reasons).

What else could you ask for? His strikeout percentage of 28.2 percent doesn’t even do justice as to what he’s accomplished this far. While there’ll obviously be some regression, he showed a similar skill last year and certainly deserves better than his current 5.51 ERA. Get this guy.

Lance McCullers (SP – HOU)
McCullers is a guy I was high on before the season started, and nothing I’ve seen so far has changed that. Just like last season, McCullers is once again near the top of the leaderboard in strikeout rate, punching out over 30 percent of the batters he faces. While he hasn’t missed bats as much as Manaea, he’s still top-20 in both contact percentage allowed and swinging strike rate among qualified pitchers.

His advantage over Manaea this year though has been his ability to limit free passes — he’s allowed a walk to just four percent of the batters he’s faced this season. It certainly helps that he’s getting ahead of batters more this year, throwing a first-pitch strike to 63.2 percent of batters.

His 40.0 HR/FB percent will regress to league average soon, and his 1.89 xFIP should give you an idea of the kind of success he’s capable of having when it does.

Miguel Cabrera (1B – DET)
He’s certainly the biggest name on this list and the one that’ll be the hardest to acquire in any league. But if you can get him for any discount, take advantage of the opportunity immediately. This is Miguel Cabrera we’re talking about — he’s going to be fine.

He’s currently hitting just .220, but a career-high 16.3 percent walk rate has his OBP at a healthy .347. His BABIP is sitting at just .250, which is surely a fluke — he’s never had one lower than .310 in his career, and his career rate is .347. That’ll go up, and his batting average with it.

Cabrera’s as consistent as they come, and while age may soon be a concern, it isn’t yet. He’s still hitting the ball hard, ranking third in exit velocity among hitters with at least 10 balls in play — in fact, his exit velocity this year is higher than it’s been in either of the previous two, as is his average launch angle. He’ll be fine, and so will your team if you can nab him in your league.

Sell Highs

Eric Thames (1B/OF – MIL)
Let’s run through a few quick questions. Is he secretly Mike Trout playing for a different team? Is he the reincarnation of Babe Ruth? Is he bribing pitchers to let him hit home runs?

The answer to all those questions is (probably) no. Therefore, he won’t keep this up. His 50.0 HR/FB percent is unsustainable, as is his .417 BABIP.

Even if he does manage to run an HR/FB north of 20 percent, that still means he should have three or four home runs right now instead of the seven that he does. That would still prorate to a 40+ home run pace, which might make you question why I’m calling him a sell-high. I’ll tell you why I’m not confident he can keep this up. Baseball teams are smart nowadays.

Every front office is scouting Thames right now, trying to find a weakness, and odds are they’ll find one (assuming he’s not Mike Trout or Babe Ruth). He can still be a productive player, but he won’t be this good. Sell him, but only if you can get good value for him.

Chris Davis (1B – BAL)
Another first baseman with an unsustainable BABIP, Davis shows up on this list not because he’s bad, but because he won’t hit .300 all season. His .455 BABIP will certainly regress, and he’ll go back to hitting .250 soon enough.

If that was the only issue, though, he might have still managed to be on this list, since nearly anyone playing fantasy in today’s age knows to look at BABIP. The bigger problem is his exit velocity, which is down significantly from the past two seasons.

 
It may be just an early-season fluke, but it could also be something more concerning. He certainly bears watching in the coming weeks to see if this trend continues, but I’m selling where I can in the meantime.

Ivan Nova (SP – PIT)
For each of the two pitchers I recommended as buy-lows, I referenced their ability to miss the bat. Nova sits on the opposite end of that spectrum, allowing contact on 89.0 percent of swings and generating whiffs on just 5.1 percent of his pitches (worst and second-worst, respectively, among qualifiers). Zero of his fly balls have gone over the fence this year, hiding a 3.68 xFIP behind a 2.25 ERA and 2.90 FIP.

It’s unlikely his contact rate will remain this high, so he should be able to generate a few more strikeouts, but he’ll start walking batters at some point too.  Nova’s proven over the course of his career to be a four-plus ERA pitcher, and the results of 14 starts (11 last season after being traded, three this season) don’t’ indicate to me that he’s suddenly a sub-three pitcher.

Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher | SoundCloud | Google Play | TuneIn | RSS

Brian Reiff is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Brian, check out his archive and follow him @briansreiff.