Happy July 4th everybody. You might have the day off, but baseball does not. Games are still going on, which means there are still opportunities to be had. While I’m not advocating for you to spend your holiday making trades, it’s true that you need to be constantly trying to improve your team if you want to win, and there are no breaks from that. With that said, here are a few players to buy and sell based on the difference between their actual and market values.
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Buy Lows
Between June 24 and 26, Moreland was 5-for-11 with three home runs. Since then, he has just two hits in 19 at-bats. In fact, since June 17, he has just a .167 average, due in large part to a .152 BABIP.
His wOBA over that stretch isn’t pretty either, sitting at just .239. However, StatCast paints a prettier picture, as his xwOBA is over 100 points higher at .351. That difference is the largest among all players with at least 40 at-bats over that time.
He’s clearly hitting the ball hard as well, making soft contact on just 13.9 percent of his plate appearances during that time according to FanGraphs. That’s right around his usual rate, following up a strange spike where he approached 30 percent.
He’s back to his normal self, hitting the ball hard while situated in the heart of the Red Sox order. Trade for him before the results start showing it.
Duda is another first baseman who is hitting the ball hard. In fact, starting June 19—an arbitrary starting point, I’ll grant you—and through the games of July 2, Duda put 22 balls in play. Zero of them were softly hit according to FanGraphs.
What does that look like, you might ask? Well, he had a .290/.405/.677 line during that time, with a .387 ISO and .443 wOBA to go along with it. The reason he’s a buy low, though, is that StatCast says he’s been even better than that, to the tune of a .459 xwOBA.
Duda’s average exit velocity over that stretch was 95.6 mph, fourth-highest among players with at least 20 balls in play. It also represents a massive improvement over his average exit velocity before that date, which sat at a still-good 90.5 mph. He probably won’t continue hitting the ball as hard as Aaron Judge the rest of the year, but he’s certainly capable of staying within eyesight. Duda hit 30 home runs as recently as 2014, and he looks set to make a run at that mark again.
There are a couple of ways to look at Verlander’s recent performance. You could say he’s allowed no more than three runs in six of his last seven appearances, striking out 34 in 37 innings. Or, you could say he’s allowed no fewer than three runs in any of his last three appearances, allowing 13 runs in just 16 innings. Both are equally true, and show how devastating one start can be for a pitcher.
However, even with that one start, Verlander’s numbers over his last three starts aren’t dreadful. He’s striking out more than a batter per inning and has allowed an FIP of just 3.58, less than half his ERA of 7.31.
The usual suspects are at fault—a .400 BABIP shows he’s gotten unlucky, and StatCast agrees. He’s allowed a .319 average over those starts, yet has a .271 expected batting average. The other metric that stands out is his 57.9 percent strand rate. Small samples can be deceiving, but Verlander’s actually been decent over this stretch. His season ERA is ugly, but he’s worth taking a flyer on, especially now that his market value is low.
Sell Highs
Don’t be fooled by Escoabr’s recent hot stretch. He’s hit safely in 17 of his last 19 games, but it’s hard to find any sustainable gains. His exit velocity hasn’t improved, and his xwOBA has only marginally.
Even with that improvement, though, it’s still not good. He has just a .281 xwOBA from when the streak started through July 2, compared to .220 before then. His wOBA, meanwhile, was .410 during that time, clearly a fluke aided by a .424 BABIP.
Escobar is no longer leading off, hitting eight most often over the past month. Much of his value came from his spot in the batting order, and now that he doesn’t even have that, it’s hard to make a compelling case to keep him on your roster.
Since allowing eight runs to the Nationals on June 12, Foltynewicz has been lights out. He’s allowed just four runs in 19 innings, a 1.89 ERA. He’s struck out more than a batter per inning and has allowed a wOBA of just .256.
Looking deeper, the numbers aren’t as pretty, though. He’s walked nine batters out of the 78 he faced in those 19 innings, an 11.5 percent walk rate. Fortunately, not many of those baserunners have come around to score, as his strand rate over this stretch is 93.8 percent. Perhaps more runners would be scoring if more were reaching base, but a .222 BABIP has prevented that from happening. Even the fly balls he allows haven’t hurt him, as despite allowing a 56.5 percent fly ball rate over this run, only 7.7 percent of them have ended up as home runs.
All of that adds up to a 3.88 FIP and 4.95 xFIP over the three games, remarkably different from his low ERA. He’s gotten lucky, plain and simple, and when he faces the Nationals again on Thursday, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar outcome as the last time.
Facing said Nationals last night, Matz shut them out over seven innings. The performance dropped his ERA for the season to 2.12, but his FIP still is high at 4.55. He stranded 100 percent of his baserunners (obviously) and allowed just a .200 BABIP, which moved those respective numbers to 96.4 percent and .214. Meanwhile, his xFIP actually rose because of the game from 4.44 to 4.64.
While Matz has had quality seasons in each of his first two campaigns, this year has been different. Going into last night’s game, he was posting career lows in zone percentage, first-strike percentage, and swinging strike percentage, and a career high in contact rate allowed. He’s getting hit harder and more frequently, not exactly what you’re looking for.
Matz is still a sexy name, but he just hasn’t been as good this year as he was the previous two years, and there’s nothing to indicate that a bounce-back is likely.
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Brian Reiff is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Brian, check out his archive and follow him @briansreiff.
