It’s hitter week here at Buy/Sell, and if you happen to live in one of the many areas where it’s ridiculously hot outside, why not sit in a nice air-conditioned room and make some fantasy trades? This week’s shopping list features some struggling bats who could easily be top-five players at their respective positions over the rest of the season. On the sell list, we’ve got a couple guys who have been top-eight at their positions so far but may not even be top-12 options the rest of the way.
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Players to Buy
Brian Dozier (2B – MIN)
We’re fast approaching the halfway point of the season, which means it’s time to make a play for Dozier. Dozier is an incredibly streaky hitter, which can make him very frustrating to own in fantasy leagues. But he has gone completely ballistic in the second half each of the last two seasons — he hit .301 with 21 HRs and six SBs after the All-Star Break last year, and .291 with 28 HRs and 11 SBs after the All-Star Break in 2016.
Dozier’s peripherals also indicate that he’s due for some better results. His .244 BABIP is among the bottom-15 in baseball, and almost 30 points below his career average. And his HR pace is way down, even though he is hitting just as many fly balls and making just as much hard contact as he did from 2016-2017, when he averaged 38 long balls.
If the Dozier owner in your league owned him in 2016 or 2017, they are probably wise enough to hold onto him and wait for the inevitable hot streak. But if you’re playing with a first-time Dozier owner, they may not realize what he’s capable of doing in the second half.
Travis Shaw (3B – MIL)
Shaw hit 31 home runs last year and he’s at 14 through 78 games this season, so his power is just about on track. But he is due for some significant improvement on his .239 batting average, which should also provide a boost for his run production numbers.
Shaw has displayed a better approach at the plate this season, with both walk and strikeout rates that are much better than he has had in past seasons. But he hasn’t been fully rewarded for those enhancements thanks to a .251 BABIP that is 44 points lower than his career average. His 23.9 percent soft contact rate has been a bit of a problem — it’s the eighth-highest among qualified hitters — but his 37.1 percent hard contact rate is also the highest of his career, so there isn’t much reason to worry about the quality of contact he’s making.
Last season, Shaw hit .273 with 31 HRs and 101 RBIs, making him the fourth-best third baseman in standard 5×5 leagues. Going forward, there’s a good chance he can do even better than that.
Salvador Perez (C – KC)
Perez is making much more hard contact this season than he ever has before, with a 43.7 percent rate that ranks among the top-30 highest in baseball. But that improved contact hasn’t shown up in his batting average, which sits at a lowly .213 due to a .223 BABIP that is over 60 points lower than his career average. Perez’s home run pace is also slightly behind last season.
The Royals’ inept offense hasn’t done Perez any favors in terms of run production, but his RBI and run totals should still improve a bit along with his batting average. And the fact he plays for Kansas City could make him an even more affordable trade target in fantasy leagues.
Players to Sell
Scooter Gennett (2B – CIN)
Gennett’s current 25+ HR power pace is sustainable — he hit 27 last year — but his .336 batting average is a product of a .386 BABIP that is highest among all qualified hitters. Gennett also had a pretty high BABIP last season (.339), so perhaps he’s a high-BABIP guy, but he’s still due for quite a bit of batting average regression no matter how you look at it. He’s a career .289 hitter, so that is a more realistic expectation for him going forward.
Gennett doesn’t steal many bases, so we’re left with a .290-25-3 type of hitter (over a full season) who should provide solid but unspectacular run production numbers. Second base isn’t the scarce position that it once was when compared to the corner infield and outfield spots, so while Gennett remains worthy of starting, his rest-of-season numbers may not move the needle much for fantasy owners in 12-team mixed leagues.
Nicholas Castellanos (3B – DET)
Just about everything I said about Gennett also applies to Castellanos. Both hitters topped 25 home runs last season and should be able to keep up their 25+ HR pace this year, but both are also due for some major batting average regression due to inflated BABIPs that are 40-50 points higher than their respective career averages.
In Castellanos’s case, that BABIP is .373, which is fourth-highest among qualified hitters. Castellanos is seventh in the league in hard contact rate, according to Fangraph’s Baseball Info Solutions data, so that could partially explain his high BABIP. But then again there is some doubt about the accuracy of the Baseball Info Solutions hard hit data for Detroit’s Comerica Park, and Castellanos is just a pedestrian 110th in hard-hit rate according to Statcast.
Regardless, Castellanos is a .273 career hitter who hasn’t hit over .300 in a full season since A-ball, so it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be able to maintain his current .310 batting average. He should be on a .280-25 type of pace going forward, and his run production numbers probably won’t be all that great on a Tigers team that struggled to score runs even before Miguel Cabrera was lost for the season. Third base is weaker than usual this year, so Castellanos should remain mixed league relevant, but don’t expect him to continue to carry your fantasy team.
Brandon Nimmo (OF – NYM)
Nimmo’s power and speed numbers look awfully good through his first 216 at-bats (12 home runs and seven steals), but his underlying peripherals are cause for concern. Nimmo ranks in the top-10 in baseball in strikeout rate, and Fangraphs’ data indicates that he’s also in the top-20 in soft contact rate. That’s not a great place to be.
Nimmo’s numbers look solid because he’s in the top-20 in BABIP and top-30 in HR/FB rate, but the Ks and weak contact should catch up to him eventually. In fact, it looks like they already are in the batting average department — Nimmo hit just .250 in June after hitting .313 in April and .277 in May. Also, while the stolen bases have been a pleasant surprise for his owners, Nimmo had just two steals in June and was never a big base stealer in the minor leagues. Runs and RBIs should also be hard to come by in a tame Mets’ offense, so it’s hard to see any category where Nimmo will be a major asset going forward. I’d try to sell him before his numbers erode further.
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Andrew Seifter is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Andrew, check out his archive and follow him @andrew_seifter.
