Buy High, Sell Low: Bryan Reynolds, Joe Musgrove, Matt Chapman

This article represents an important milestone toward which the league has been working since the offseason. That is, most teams are at — or approaching — the 60-game checkpoint for the 2021 season. In other words, the players and teams are about to reach the point that last year’s regular-season ended.

And they are still going.

We should be fair to both ourselves and the players. Much of the offseason debate involved questions as to how to handle the 60-game sprint. Can’t we ask the same question now? The difference is that we have another 100 games to find the answer. Let’s keep that in the back of our minds as we approach the rest of the marathon.

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Players to Buy High

Bryan Reynolds (OF – PIT)
We see it every year, but the transition from 2020 to 2021 has highlighted it even more. That is, players we targeted as breakout candidates miss early but then actually emerge as expected.

One of those players is Bryan Reynolds.

Had we been given a full, 162-game season in 2020, we could accurately gauge how heavily to weigh it and the statistics of players like Reynolds. Instead, we had to decide how to handle the shortened season, which included an impossibly bad .189 batting average.

Now, we know. We know that 2020 was an aberration, and we know that Reynolds is hitting as we expected. As it turns out, Reynolds is starting to deliver on 2020’s offseason now.

That should be fine with us. We can still buy.

Reynolds is not exactly known for power, but he has nine home runs through 57 games, and his RBI total has already eclipsed last year’s. The key, though, is his batting average, which now sits at .286. His on-base percentage is also a career-best .388, while his slugging percentage of .500 is barely lower than his 2019 output of .503.

All told, Reynolds was easy to overlook in 2021 because of his terrible season last year, as well as the state of the Pittsburgh Pirates — where many are quick to discard anyone from the team’s offense. It appears as if Reynolds is developing into a gem.

Joe Musgrove (SP – SD)
Joe Musgrove appeared in the first installment of this series and, two full months later, I’m still looking to add him wherever possible. Simply put, he’s been outstanding. His ERA sits at 2.33 — easily his career-best by a whopping one-and-a-half runs — and his strikeout rate just below last year’s 12.48 K/9 mark.

It is worth mentioning that there are some key signs to watch for the foreseeable future. Musgrove’s xERA of 3.29 definitely suggests a regression, but his FIP and xFIP, while higher than his ERA, are still under 3.00. Putting all of this together, we should look for Musgrove to drift back toward reality but remain excellent. It also helps that his fastball velocity is high, and he continues to strike out batters.

Musgrove hasn’t reached 100 pitches in a start outside of his no-hitter from April 9th, but he has steadily performed at an admirable level throughout the season. Again, even as some numbers catch up to him, he should remain an important piece for any fantasy baseball team.

Nathan Eovaldi (SP – BOS)
I’ve had Nathan Eovaldi’s name on my list, but I admittedly was teetering on which side of the buy-sell scale he should land. Eovaldi has now settled on a direction with his last start, and the arrow is pointing up.

Perhaps the most surprising number in Eovaldi’s set of statistics is his strikeout rate. It has dropped to the lowest point of the last three seasons, yet his ERA is only a fraction of a run higher than last year’s 3.72. Put another way, even though he isn’t striking out batters at an elite rate, he’s still preventing runs and winning games — he already has his highest win total since 2016. Granted, wins are certainly not the best barometer for a pitcher, the total still counts in most fantasy leagues, and Eovaldi is trading strikeouts for victories.

Really, the better tradeoff is missed bats for weaker contact, where Eovaldi is allowing hard hits at the second-best rate of his career — the only better season was ten years ago as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and in 34.2 innings, at that.

Eovaldi’s career track now shows his bloated 5.99 ERA of 2019 as a massive outlier, where he is still improving and throwing well. He also has a FIP of 2.39, nearly one-and-a-half runs below his ERA, and easily the best of his career.

Players to Sell Low

Matt Chapman (3B – OAK)
Matt Chapman is another player who will appear in this column for the second time, and, like Musgrove, Chapman was also listed in the first week of the season. A little more than one week into June, Chapman is being highlighted again, and the outlook is just as bleak.

Chapman has never been known for a high batting average and, instead, gave his fantasy managers value strictly through power. The issue is clearly that he’s failing in the power department and destroying fantasy teams’ batting average.

Chapman is walking more — at a career-best rate, actually — so he hasn’t lost all of his value in leagues that include an on-base percentage. The problem is that, even with a better eye at the plate — his strikeout rate hasn’t increased — he’s not driving the ball. His hard-hit percentage is drastically lower than any other season of his career.

As I wrote at the beginning of the season, fantasy managers would take some level of balance between a low batting average and a high power output, but Chapman is tilting the scale too heavily to accept. What’s worse is that he ranks below average in basically every metric that compares his numbers to those found throughout the league.

Travis Shaw (1B/3B – MIL)
Travis Shaw isn’t going to carry any value in a trade, but the painful reality is that he also isn’t carrying any value for a team. Like the aforementioned Chapman, Shaw is capable of giving power at the expense of batting average. Also, like the aforementioned Chapman, Shaw is failing miserably at striking an appropriate balance.

Throughout his career, Shaw has battled with playing time frequently. He returned to Milwaukee after a year with Toronto, however, and the opportunities have been there. The results have not.

Unless he shows the ability to turn his season around and head back toward a 30-home run pace, Shaw is not worth owning in any format.

Frankie Montas (SP – OAK)
I’ll always mention when a player is not exactly at a “low” or “high” but is being listed as one in this article. That’s because so much of the fantasy baseball game is relative. Frankie Montas’ 4.52 ERA isn’t bad, but it also isn’t a sign of future success.

Montas was abysmal in 2020 with an ERA of 5.60. The positive for him was the strikeout rate, which reached a career-high — outside of the 15 innings he pitched in 2015. That, coupled with an xERA of 4.58 and a FIP of 4.74, showed that he might be ready to return to his career averages.

That’s the key with Montas now. He has returned to his career averages, and that might be all we get from him.

Montas’ xERA and FIP are both near his current ERA, while his strikeout rate has dipped again. In a word, he’s been “inconsistent,” but the reality is that we might not see anything more from him. It’s also important to note that he has never thrown more than 100 innings in a Major League season, and he’s already over 60 on this current campaign.

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Mario Mergola is a featured writer at FantasyPros and BettingPros and the creator and content editor of Sporfolio. For more from Mario, check out his archive and follow him @MarioMergola.