Hello Deep Leaguers! It’s looking an awful lot like June out there. Since it’s a brand new month, I’m gonna lead with a quick recalibration rather than a silly baseball opinion. The top five scoring teams in the league entering play on Tuesday, June 2nd, are the Nationals, Braves, Dodgers, Yankees, and Pirates (Go Buccos!). I’ve been trying to sell yinz on Nat bats for a while now, but take this time to update your internal streaming barometer.
The bottom five offenses are the Padres, Phillies, Royals, Red Sox, and Tigers. The Padres feel right since Tatis’ lack of homers has been such a hot topic, and Machado is still batting under .200. The Phillies likewise have two big stars, but Harper has been solid, and Schwarber is our HR king, so it’s a little surprising to see them here. The Royals have not taken advantage of their new park dimensions yet, and the Sox and Tigers are lacking middle-of-the-order power bats. The two Pennsylvania teams are the ones you most likely need to adjust your thinking about. Now, let’s get to it.
Fallers
Zebby Matthews, Starting Pitcher, Minnesota Twins – 33% Rostered
Don’t get me wrong, Zebby has mostly looked good through his four MLB starts this season. The thing is, his results have gotten worse with each outing. He gave us quality starts through each of his first 3 games, but allowed more base runners and runs with each turn. He went 7 shutout innings vs Miami, allowing just four hits and a walk. Then he allowed 2 runs on 5 hits, no walks, and a homer against Houston. He walked one and allowed 5 hits, including 2 homers, to the White Sox in start number 3. Then the Buccos got to him in his most recent outing. Zebby walked two and allowed six hits, including two more homers, over 4.1 innings. He did rack up 7 Ks, though.
A few things stand right out. First, he has a great 24:4 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 23.1 innings. He’s pitched deep into games, picking up 3 quality starts in four tries. But, he’s also allowed 5 home runs already. His HR/FB% is sitting at 22.7% on the season, which also matches his career mark. He’s thrown 140 innings over the last 3 MLB seasons, which isn’t quite a full season for a starting pitcher, but it does suggest that Zebby has a small gopher problem.
But like, I said at first, he’s mostly looked good. I like his deep arsenal that includes 4 pitchers utilized over 10% of the time. I love the low walk rate. His CSW% was over 30% even in his poorest outing. I am wary of his poor ground ball rate, but his line drive rate is good and his air pull% has gotten better three years running, so he may be getting a handle on the homer issue. His next starts are at home against KC and then visiting Detroit. If he hit the wire after his last start, or you can pry him away from a manager whose ratios were destroyed on Sunday, I say go for it.
Nolan Gorman, Second Base and Third Base, St Louis Cardinals – 4% Rostered
Nolan Gorman is a career .216 hitter, so we don’t expect him to hit for average, but we do expect some power. He has averaged 27 dingers over 162 games so far, and he’s only 26 years old, even though it seems like he’s been around for a long time.
Gorman has a ton of swing-and-miss in his game. He’s in the 9th percentile for K rate on the season, and that is by far the best mark of his career. He is routinely at the absolute bottom of the league in whiff and K rates, although he doesn’t chase much. In fact, Gorman has been pretty good at drawing walks, often keeping his BB rate around 10%. But we ain’t here for free passes. Gorman needs to give us dingers to keep his roster spot, and that means he needs barrels.
Back in 2023 and 2024, when Gorman had his best HR rates, he was carrying top-of-the-chart barrel rates over 16%. Over the last two seasons, he’s settled in at just over 9%. He’s still hitting a ton of fly balls and has an elite air pull rate, but since he isn’t getting the meat of the bat on the ball, his HR/FB is actually below average. In fact, his HR/FB rate has dropped in four consecutive seasons. Gorman has gotten worse at doing what he’s done well, without getting better at making consistent contact or getting on base. I don’t like what I’m seeing here and would be looking for options. If Curtis Mead is still available in your league, make the switch.
Dylan Crews, Outfield, Washington Nationals – 36% Rostered
I get why the roster percentage is so high. Crews has great pedigree, and the Nats are the league’s best offense. I’ve been talking up the Nats for a month now. My friends and co-workers are sick of hearing about Mead and Ruiz. Crews just isn’t producing, though. He spent some time in AAA this year and was recalled in mid-May. Since then, he’s slashing .220/.256/.317 with one homer and one stolen base.
Unlike many, if not most, struggling hitters, Crews does not have a strikeout problem. He’s striking out just 16.3%of the time. His chase rate is way up, though. After chasing less than 30% of outside pitches over his first couple of seasons, Crews has gotten a little swing-happy and is chasing nearly 43% of pitches out of the zone. Needless to say, his walk rate has plummeted, and is barely over 2%. His .242 BABIP might lead you to think he’s been unlucky, but his career BABIP is .248 despite his great speed.
Still, Crews was a big, fancy high draft pick, and he plays for a high-scoring team, so I’ll put on my rose colored glasses and point out that his 91.2 MPH exit velocity is the best of his career by about 2 full MPH. That and the K rate are really the big positives, though. His high chase rate, abysmal air pull rate, and non-existent walk rate all scare me enough that I just can’t advise you to buy low here. He’s not getting on base enough to use his wheels. I’d hold in dynasty formats and probably bail in leagues with less than 16 teams.
Risers
Luke Raley, First Base and Outfield, Seattle Mariners – 31% Rostered
Raley had a pretty good April, but he was a monster in June. The lefty slugger slashed .328/.403/.719 with 8 dingers and 18 RBI on the month. He’s been a feast or famine type of player over the years, and that hasn’t changed. He whiffs, chases, and strikes out a lot. His K rate has been the league’s bottom 10% year after year, and he doesn’t walk much. But he hits bombs, and he’s doing it at the best rate of his career so far.
Raley is carrying an average exit velocity just shy of 91 MPH. He’s got a 49% hard hit rate and a positively Judgian 20.4% barrel rate. That’s the sixth-best barrel rate in the league so far. Only James Wood, Kyle Schwarber, Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, and Munetaka Murakami are ahead of him. I’m not suggesting Raley is going to keep pace with those sluggers. His average home run distance is only 384 feet, while the names ahead of him all average over 400 feet per dinger.
Raley also sits against lefties, and players that strike out as often as he does tend to be streaky. I like Raley a lot; he has a legitimate shot to hit 30 dingers this year, but he’s also carried a BABIP over .340 for the first two months of the season and is a .237 hitter over his career. There is a good chance he just had his best month of the year and might be more of a sell-high candidate than a guy you’ll ride for a full season. I’ll allow his rolling contact ability chart to make my final point. Even at its pinnacle, it’s well below average.
Jake McCarthy, Outfield, Colorado Rockies – 10% Rostered
This is the second time I’ve covered McCarthy this season, and I’ll keep doing it until his roster percentage gets too high. He was a faller the first back in our first article, but I liked that he was running, and urged readers to ignore his poor early batting average and add him if they needed some speed.
He’s given us 7 more stolen bases since that urging and is up to 10 on the year already. But he also gave us 3 homers, a .291 batting average, and 17 RBI in May. I wouldn’t expect the power surge to continue, though, as McCarthy has just an 84 MPH average exit velocity and 22% hard hit rate on the year. Also, like a lot of Rockies, he has extreme splits. McCarthy has a .952 OPS at Coors and a .690 OPS everywhere else. His process chart agrees, the power won’t last.
But he is leading off, getting on base, and still running with 10 steals in 12 attempts. He’s still available in 90% of leagues and looks like a much better option for steals, batting average, and even runs and RBI than a certain, previously covered outfielder with triple his roster percentage.
Jorge Mateo, Second Base, Shortstop and Outfield, Atlanta Braves – 15% Rostered
It’s small sample size time. Mateo has recently claimed Atlanta’s starting shortstop gig. He’s had the job for a week and has started five straight games (one at DH). Over those five games, Mateo has gone 7-15 with 2 homers, 5 runs, 5 RBI, and a stolen base. Sure, both homers came in Cincinnati, but they still count. The offensive outburst is pretty surprising since Mateo has just 30 homers, a .226 average, and a .644 OPS over nearly 1500 career at-bats. He’s been a light-hitting speedster.
He still has the wheels, too. Even at the ripe old age of 30, he’s got 100th percentile sprint speed. The rest of his underlying rates are pretty impressive right now, too. Mateo has a faster swing now than the last couple of years, and he’s got a 12.5% barrel rate, a hard hit rate over 48%, and an exit velocity over 90 MPH. Over the last few years, his barrel rate has hovered around 5%, his hard hit rate in the mid 30s, and his exit velocity well below 90 mph. He really has made better contact this season.
His process chart is spiking sharply right now, too. Honestly, I love what I’m seeing from Mateo right now, and he might be my first choice of shortstops if I recently lost one to some sort of hamstring injury. Still, I find it hard to believe this power will last, considering Mateo’s career performance. The speed is obviously legitimate, but Mateo has also been batting in the bottom third of the order, and Acuna likely isn’t moving out of the leadoff spot. He’s not going to be the league winner he was last week, but Mateo could definitely be a great stopgap for the next month.
That’s it for week 11. Thanks as always for reading, and good luck out there, deep leaguers!
