A rotisserie fantasy baseball league is as much about the strength of your roster as it is about your ability to survive a war of attrition. With the move from a 15-day injured list to a 10-day injured list a few years back, teams rarely hesitate to give their players a breather for even a minor tweak.
At the time of this writing, 176 players are on the injured list. Not all of them are fantasy-relevant, of course, but as that number indicates, your IL spots on your fantasy baseball roster are likely full at the moment.
Going to your waiver wire, particularly if you are fixing a small leak in your boat, is certainly an option. But there are times when the repairs needed are too great, and you have to address your team’s deficiencies through the trade market.
To that end, we provide some help along the way, in the form of our rotisserie-league trade chart. Updated every week, the chart is designed to give you a good baseline for your trade evaluation. All trades depend on team need and roster construction, but use the chart as a guide in the first instance to tell you if any deal is fair.
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Gary Sanchez hit his 15th home run yesterday against the Orioles. Yes, nine of them have come against Baltimore, a truly historically awful pitching staff. But they all count. Sanchez leads the majors in barrel percentage and is third in the league in average exit velocity. Willson Contreras is the only other catcher with double-digit home runs, but so long as Sanchez stays healthy, he should likely outpace Contreras by a good 10 to 15 long balls. Sanchez’s excellent season, particularly in light of the weakness at the position, vaults him up in value.
Hyun-Jin Ryu is really remarkable, as he extended his scoreless streak to 31 innings in his most recent start. He hasn’t been quite as good as his numbers suggest (his FIP and xFIP are roughly a run higher than his ERA), but that’s hardly an indictment of his value. Truthfully, the only thing holding Ryu back from rising further is his injury history, as he hasn’t pitched more than 152 innings in a season since 2013. But performance-wise, he’s legitimate, and rises in value accordingly.
Other notable risers include Joey Gallo, Paul DeJong, and Josh Bell. Gallo’s walk-rate is an outrageous 19.1%, and although his .406 BABIP is certainly high, so much of his performance is earned. Even if his .293 batting average drops by 50 or 60 points, he’ll still be an elite player.
Paul DeJong has a .413 wOBA! His batting average of .320 is nearly 50 points higher than his career mark, but his drop in strikeout rate and corresponding jump in walk rate shows real growth as a hitter. With a .301 expected batting average, much of DeJong’s success is legitimate, and his value should reflect that.
As for Bell, he hit another mammoth home run last night, his 15th of the season. Bell is in the top 3% in barrel rate, top 1% in average exit velocity, and has raised his launch angle by a degree. An argument could be made that he should be significantly higher in trade value, and he will continue to rise as his performance remains true.
As for fallers, the only thing keeping Joey Votto from being entirely irrelevant is his history. Nothing about his numbers or the underlying data suggests a rebound is imminent. Watch Votto take an at-bat sometime — he looks entirely uncomfortable from the time he walks up to the batter’s box to the time he inevitably strikes out or hits a weak ground ball. But Votto is a brilliant baseball mind, and if it is possible to find a way through this, he will. But expect to see him continue to decline in value absent signs of a rebound.
Other fallers include Trevor Bauer, whose struggles with his control and outrageous pitch counts are reasons for concern and Jose Ramirez, who still has not come around as expected. Both retain plenty of value. But until either shows concrete signs of improvement, they won’t reach their peak value again.
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Dan Harris is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Dan, check out his archive or follow him on Twitter @danharris80.
