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Fantasy Baseball Risers and Fallers: Week 9

Fantasy Baseball Risers and Fallers: Week 9

Welcome back to another weekly edition of the risers and fallers for fantasy baseball. I’ll continue to cover the hottest and coldest hitters from this past week. I’ll perform semi-deep dives to explain why each one of these players is on the rise or is likely to remain in free-fall. Last week, I covered Kris Bryant among others who remained hot while Trevor Bauer has continued to struggle. This week, the Twins went nuts offensively, blasting 17 home runs (eight in a single game). As a result, I’ve analyzed a couple of their players below. Some of the gains seem likely to stick. Let’s dig in.

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Risers

Justin Smoak (1B – TOR)
What if I told you that Smoak had only 39 strikeouts (18.9%) with 36 walks (17.5%) and a hard contact rate of 51.2% in 49 games this season? You’d think he’d be hitting better than .224 with 11 homers, right? Well, you’d be wrong, but you’d be on the right track. Smoak has a career-best 15.0% barrel rate with an expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) 0.064 points higher than his actual wOBA. Over the last seven days, some of those numbers have started to catch up to his quality of contact. He hit just .259 (.125 BABIP) but with five home runs. At some point, Smoak’s .224 BABIP will see positive regression to better reflect his career highs in hard contact and overall contact. You’re not owning Smoak for his batting average, but I can envision 30+ homers with close to 100 RBIs with the addition of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to the lineup.  

Max Kepler (OF – MIN)
Over his last seven games, Kepler is hitting an insane 15-for-30 with three home runs, 12 runs, and 13 RBIs! That’s a hell of a week. He has carried over his improved contact rate from a year ago along with 0.71 BB/K rate that nearly matches his 2018 clip. The difference is he’s much more aggressive, especially at pitches inside the zone.

There’s quite a bit of information to dissect here. Save for a late-April dip in zone contact, it’s similar to last year and remains strong. Both his swing and Z-swing (swings inside the zone) have seen a huge bump this year. That was also the case with his O-Swing (swings outside the zone), which has improved in recent weeks. Meanwhile, he’s continued attacking pitches inside the zone. In other words, he’s looking like a more disciplined hitter. His metrics back up his recent success, so 2019 may be a career year for Kepler.

Miguel Sano (1B/3B – MIN)
It’s one thing to draft Sano and be disappointed about his lengthy IL stay. It’s another to grab him in late-May off waivers for nearly nothing. He’s still available in 39% of FantasyPros’ consensus leagues (ESPN and Yahoo combined ownership), so you better act quick. Since his return, Sano is hitting .250 with five home runs and a .432 wOBA in just eight games. It has come with 13 strikeouts, but that’s part of the deal with Sano. Clearly, the hiatus hasn’t hurt his ability to barrel the baseball, so given the current environment, he should be owned in 12-team leagues and deeper. Slumps are bound to happen given his approach, but grab him while he’s hot if you need a power boost.

Renato Nunez (3B – BAL)
Nunez was on the brink of fantasy irrelevance when the Orioles made a visit to Colorado. Over the last week, he’s batting .400 (10-for-25) with five home runs, 10 RBIs, and a .626 wOBA. I ranked him just inside of the top-40 third basemen at the start of the season for two reasons: his power potential in Camden Yards and the fact that he was opening 2019 as the Orioles’ primary designated hitter. After starting like gangbusters, Nunez hit a slump near game 30, where he struggled to make much contact and was expanding the zone. He has since corrected those issues over the last 10 games with a hard-hit rate well over 40% and a Z-Contact rate over 80%. His ability to make adjustments in short order has intrigued me. Nunez is a deep-league option only, but given his 30-homer upside, I’d grab him if he’s available on your wire.

Lucas Giolito (SP – CHW)
I know I touched on Giolito two weeks ago, but it was a short blurb. All he’s done since then is compiled two wins, 22 strikeouts, and a 0.86 ERA capped off by a shutout of the Astros last week. His success is partially based on the change to his arm slot. He’s holding the ball close to his body during the windup rather than extending his arm out and down like he used to. This creates some deception. Oh, but then there’s velocity. He’s added about 1.5 miles per hour on his fastball and got rid of his sinker. He’s throwing his changeup more, and it’s been his best pitch with a pitch value of 8.1, per FanGraphs. If he can continue to curb his walk rate, we may be witnessing the full-blown breakout of the former top pitching prospect.

Shane Bieber (SP – CLE)
With Corey Kluber and Mike Clevinger injured and Bauer struggling, Bieber has been Cleveland’s hands-down ace thus far. He’s always been a control artist, but where did these strikeouts come from? He’s struck out 25 batters in his last two outings while giving up just one earned run. His called-strike plus swinging strike (CSW%) rate is an elite 34.4%, so the boost in his strikeout rate is legitimate. I just have a couple of minor concerns though. His zone rate is low, and I believe his BABIP comes back closer to .300. That said, he’s still very likely a top-30 starter at season’s end.

Fallers

Mitch Haniger (OF – SEA)
Haniger wasn’t all that bad over this past week. You’re probably wondering why he’s under the fallers section then. He hit .250 with a couple of home runs over the last seven games, but he’s hitting more fly balls. Although that’s normally a good thing, he’s not hitting the ball as hard, and he has increased his infield fly balls by five percent. While the home runs will be there, the decrease in BABIP is not an illusion. Then there’s the issue of the slider.

Against the slider, he’s hitting .178 with a .512 OPS. Most hitters have poor numbers off sliders, but Haniger is a career .263 hitter with a 0.765 OPS against it. Not only is he struggling against the pitch, but he’s also seeing them nearly 22% of the time, up from 19% in his career. Haniger’s strikeout rate has continued to rise which, along with his declining BABIP, is a reason for his plummeting batting average. It’s not all bad, but we need to recalibrate our expectations. He’s likely to hit 30 home runs this year with a batting average closer to .240 than .285.

Christian Walker (1B – ARI)
This seems to happen every year. A post-hype sleeper finally gets an opportunity and comes out explosively through the first month or so, then cools off and fades into oblivion. Recall Christian Villanueva with the Padres last year. After hitting 15 home runs through April and May, he only hit five the rest of the way. He now plays in Japan. Walker bears an interesting resemblance, as he went 1-for-19 with 10 strikeouts last week. He is hitting just .251 despite an elevated .346 BABIP. The Diamondbacks also recently called up the red-hot Kevin Cron from Triple-A, which could jeopardize Walker’s playing time. Cron started at first base on Saturday, so some type of platoon could be in order. While Jake Lamb had a slight setback in his rehab, his future return only complicates Walker’s situation. Walker still hits the ball extremely hard, but if his contact rate keeps slipping, so will his playing time.

Jake Bauers (1B/OF – CLE)
Bauers was a popular sleeper coming into 2019 after the Rays traded him to the Indians for Yandy Diaz last offseason. He was afforded a clear path to playing time given the lack of depth in Cleveland’s outfield and with veteran Carlos Santana occasionally slotting in at DH. Well, it’s been rough. Bauers hit just .100 (2-for-20) with 10 strikeouts last week. On the season, he is hitting .213 with five home runs and two stolen bases. The power/speed combination that intrigued the fantasy community has not panned out. On a positive note, his plate discipline and contact rates have improved since 2018. Unfortunately, his quality of contact has declined. It’s safe to drop him in most leagues except AL-only and deep mixed leagues.

Jon Lester (SP – CHC)
Lester has started to see some regression recently with a 5.40 ERA over his last three starts. On the season, his ERA sits pretty at 2.68, but his 1.32 WHIP paints a darker picture. The 23.3% strikeout rate is solid with an even 9.0 K/9. Overall, owners should be happy with the production they have gotten from Lester thus far. However, now is the time to flip him. His low 8.2% swinging-strike rate (SwStr%) and 27.3% CSW rate do not support a strikeout rate above 20%, let alone Lester’s 23.3%. I also don’t trust his extremely low walk rate that sits 2.8% below his career mark given his zone rate and O-Swing%. As his K-BB% stabilizes, there will be more balls in play and more runners on base. Lester hasn’t been awful by any means, and he typically outperforms the ERA estimators, but expect an ERA closer to 3.80-4.00 with below-average strikeout numbers by the end of the season.

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Max Freeze is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Max, check out his archive and follow him @FreezeStats.

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