It’s Memorial Day and it’s time to take inventory of what we think we know about the baseball season. It’s difficult to know when a sample size is big enough to make a decision, such as trading away a first-rounder, but Memorial Day seems like a natural reflection period. Each week I take a deeper look at players exceeding or underperforming expectations. Here are some buy-high and sell-low targets for Week 10.
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Buy High: Maikel Garcia (3B, SS – KC)
Maikel Garcia is slashing .269/.314/.425 with 31 runs scored, five home runs, 33 RBI and 13 steals in 51 games. He had five hitless games in back-to-back series against the New York Mets and Chicago White Sox in mid-April. Since then, he’s batting .317 with hits in 29 out of 34 games and has a current 13-game hitting streak. The steals and runs are impressive enough, but the RBI are a surprising bonus. He is batting leadoff for a top-five team in runs scored and should have many more run-scoring opportunities. He’s lowered his strikeout rate by 6% from last year while maintaining the same high average exit velocity (91.4 miles per hour). Garcia has a nearly 30% line drive rate which will probably dampen his home run ceiling, but his contributions in every other category are valuable.
Buy High: Jack Flaherty (SP – DET)
Jack Flaherty is 1-4 with a 3.84 ERA, 1.08 WHIP and 12.0 K/9 through 10 starts. He leads qualified pitchers in K-BB% and his FIP is nearly a run better than his ERA at 2.98. His velocity is up on all of his pitches and his whiff rate is a career-best 35.7%. Wins are hard to count on, but if he keeps pitching like this, it’s hard to believe he won’t rack up more. Flaherty’s seemingly only flaw is allowing home runs as he’s in the top 15 of most given up with nine. However, his career-low walk rate of 3.7% helps limit the traffic on the base paths when those homers are hit. We’ve seen him as an ace before, but this is the best Flaherty has ever looked and his surface-level stats haven’t caught up yet.
Sell Low: Corbin Carroll (OF – ARI)
Corbin Carroll’s Rookie of the Year campaign follow-up has been brutal. He’s slashing just .188/.274/.284 with 23 runs scored, two home runs, 17 RBI and nine stolen bases in 51 games. His strikeout and walk rates are in line with what he did last year, but his hard-hit and flyball rates are down significantly. All of his expected stats are in the bottom-third percentile of the league and his barrel rate has dropped as well. Carroll is struggling in a way he never did at any point as a rookie. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have been a first-rounder. He should be better than this going forward and it shouldn’t be another month between steals. His 25 homers and elite counting stats from last year are unlikely to be reproduced.
Sell Low: Aaron Civale (SP – TB)
Aaron Civale is 2-4 with a 5.72 ERA, 1.34 WHIP and 9.1 K/9 through 11 starts in his first full year with the Tampa Bay Rays. He had three quality starts in his first four starts of the season but has yet to go even six innings in a single start since. His xFIP (3.72) suggests he could improve but he has given up the second-most home runs this year, which xFIP doesn’t take into account. The Rays have a great track record with pitchers but it hasn’t worked so far with Civale. His strikeout and walk rates are slightly above average but his groundball and home run rates are career lows. He has never pitched more than 124.1 innings in a season. With the way he is pitching so far, we don’t want him pitching that many innings for our fantasy teams.
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