Hello Deep Leaguers! Heck of a trade deadline last week. We are really coming in to the home stretch now. Most teams have roughly 50 games left, and if your fantasy league trade deadline has not already come and gone, it is coming up fast. With that in mind, lets get down to brass tacks.
Fallers
Simeon Woods Richardson, Starting Pitcher, Minnesota Twins – 25% Rostered
SWR is in the midst of a very nice rookie season. He has posted a 3.87 ERA and 1.22 WHIP with 84 strikeouts to just 31 walks in 19 starts covering 95 innings. However, he was much more effective during the first two months of the season than the last two. Woods Richardson finished May with a sub-3.00 ERA, a 1.1 WHIP and a 30:9 strikeout to walk ratio in 30 innings. He then posted a 4.5o ERA in June and a 4.62 mark in July. He has not gotten off to a great start in August either, getting yanked after allowing three runs in four innings to the White Sox over the weekend.
Richardson has mostly gotten by with a combination of a 93 MPH four seamer (40% usage) and a hard, 87 MPH slider (30% usage). He also throws a changeup roughly 20% of the time, which is well down from 2023, when he used the off-speed offering closer to 40% of the time. His changeup has been his least effective pitch in 2024, with a negative run value and a slugging percentage allowed over .500.
Overall, SWR has done a good job of limiting hard contact, with a hard hit percentage and average exit velocity allowed both better than MLB average. He carries an average walk rate, but is held back by a below average strikeout rate, which comes down to his off-speed stuff again. SWR carries a league average CSW of 27.6% on his fastball, but comes in well below average with a 25.7% CSW on his slider and a 20.1% CSW on his changeup.
I don’t want to get too negative here, because I still really like what I’ve seen over the course of the season, and SWR will be high on my list of guys I think can take the next step forward in 2025. He has two plus pitches already, and if he can improve his changeup, it could go a long way toward improving his strikeout totals. But, he is just about to eclipse his highest total inning count as a professional and has been trending the wrong direction for two months. I worry about fatigue becoming a factor as his walk rate has increased and he has barely averaged five innings per start since the beginning of June. For teams chasing a championship, it is likely time to look elsewhere (maybe deal him to a team out of contention), especially in quality start leagues.
Luis Ortiz, Starting Pitcher, Pittsburgh Pirates – 23% Rostered
Ortiz was featured as a Riser about a month back in the week 15 edition of DLR&F. He’s still in the midst of what looks like a breakout season, but has struggled in his last two outings, walking as many batters (6) as he’s struck out and allowing four homers in 10.1 innings. The lack of strikeouts is both concerning and par for the course for Ortiz. He has just 65 strikeouts and 27 walks in 84 innings on the year. His walk rate itself is perfectly average, but his strikeout rate sits in the bottom 25% of the league.
Ortiz throws a surprisingly even mix of four pitches, each at least 20% of the time. His cutter, which he uses least often at 20% is his strongest pitch in terms of runs saved, and also his only offering with an above average CSW%. His slider, which he uses the most at 29.5% has been his only pitch with a negative run value on the year. Clearly I’d like to see a bump in cutter usage at the expense of a few sliders.
But I’ve intentionally buried the lede a bit here. Ortiz’s two rough outings both came against the same team. The Arizona Diamondbacks are the NL’s highest scoring offense and rank fifth on the senior circuit in dingers. There is no shame in getting roughed up by a top tier offense, and the three homers he allowed in first inning in his most recent outing came immediately on the heels of a first inning error from Oneil Cruz.
Ortiz won’t be a great source of strikeouts, but I think he still deserves to be rostered in most formats and should be a solid option down the stretch as the Pirates fight for a wild card spot. Just watch out for snakes.
Jake Cronenworth, First Base and Second Base, San Diego Padres – 75% Rostered
I’m sticking with my trend of featuring one heavily rostered player in the fallers section. Cronenworth has more than earned this spot by slashing just .198/.278/.309 with two homers, eight runs and eight RBI through 81 at bats in July. He had maintained an OPS over .700 for each of the first three months of the season, although it had trended downward, peaking at .786 through April, dropping a tad to .776 for May, and then .720 in June before cratering in July.
There is a very cool chart available in Pitcher List’s PLV tool chest titled “process” that overlays a hitters decision-making, power and contact metrics over the course of a season. But it’s a little over-saturated with information, so I’m going to include the decision value chart here as well, which gives a great visual of Cronenworth’s season to date:
Jake’s downward trend is pretty apparent in the Process+ chart, most notably his power production, which shows that his run production per batted ball, has dropped significantly over the course of the season. There is a bit of good news at the far end of the decision chart though. Cronenworth looks to have rebounded a bit over the past week and has been swinging at better pitches than he had been during most of July
Cronenworth has only played 3 games in August at the time of this writing, so the sample size is barely existent, but he does have a .364/.462/.536 line with a couple doubles already this month. I’m not expecting the world from Jake, but the Pads do have a top 10 offense and if Fernando Tatis Jr. ever returns from the IL, that should boost their lineup even more. The problem though, is that Jake isn’t offering much power, speed or battering average of his own accord, and his fantasy value has to come from his hitting environment. Runs and RBI are really the only categories where Cronenworth can be a difference maker.
Risers
Alex Call, Outfield, Washington Nationals – 2% Rostored
Call has been a major beneficiary of the Nats’ trade deadline moves. He was promoted thanks to the Nationals trading away Jesse Winker and Lane Thomas. So far, the 29 year old has hit the ground running. He has a .382/.523/.559 line with one homer and three stolen bases in just 44 plate appearances. Call also has a great feel for the zone, as he’s drawn eight walks while striking out just six times.
As you may have already surmised, Call didn’t hit like this in AAA. If he did, he would not have been in the minors as a 29-year-old. Before his call-up, Call had a .775 OPS in 312 plate appearances at AAA. He did have 11 homers and 13 steals, and he had drawn 54 free passes while striking out just 60 times. So at least his on-base skills seem legit.
Call does not have enough at bats to qualify for league rankings, but his 13.6% strikeout rate and 18.2% walk rate would be elite if he did. He has just a 7.1% barrel rate and 87.1 MPH average exit velocity, so there isn’t much pop in his bat, but Call does have above average speed. He has batted 6th or 7th so far, but if the Nats see fit to bump him to the top of the order and maybe slide Abrams to the two hole, Call could be a solid source of speed and OBP for the remainder of the year. I don’t this is a “must act now” situation, but for teams that are in need of speed, Call is a player to at least keep an eye on.
Gavin Lux, Second Base and Outfield, Los Angeles Dodgers – 35% Rostered
Lux ran his hitting streak up to ten games with a two hit performance against Aaron Nola and the Phillies on Monday. He missed all of 2023 with a knee injury, and took a while to get going this season but the 26-year-old slashed .299/.385/.552 with four homers and a stolen base in July. He had been batting third while Freddie Freeman was away from the team, but slid down to fifth upon the future hall-of-famers return.
It’s not all runs and roses though. Lux has produced just an 87.3 MPH exit velocity and 4.7% barrel rate that both rank in the bottom quartile of the league. His hard hit rate is below average, and his walk and strikeout rates are both right around league average. He was a fast runner a couple years ago, but has lost a step, possibly due to the major knee injury.
Similarly to Cronenworth, the biggest aspect of Lux’s value comes from his hitting environment. Lux has been hot lately, but with just six homers and four steals on the season, he offers little category juice. If and when Mookie Betts returns, the lineup will get even better, but Lux will likely slide further down in the batting order and have less opportunity to produce runs.
Still, the Dodgers are the second highest scoring team in the NL, and as deep league fantasy managers, we want whatever pieces of that lineup we can get. He likely won’t carry a .900+ OPS the rest of the way like he has for the past month, but Lux should continue to be a useful player who can slot in multiple positions.
Wilyer Abreu, Outfield, Boston Red Sox – 38% Rostered
Abreu is going to receive Rookie of the Year votes. According to a poll taken a few days ago, Colton Cowser was the favorite for AL ROY, but Abreu leads him in batting average, on base percentage and slugging percentage. Cowser has almost 100 more at bats, and has accumulated more counting stats, but Abreu looks the better hitter in my opinion. And he’s been absolutely on fire, slashing .323/.380/.736 with six homers, 15 runs scored and 20 driven in over the last 30 days.
Abreu did miss time to injury in June, and often sits against lefties. He does have just a .547 OPS vs left-handed pitchers compared to an OPS of .910 against righties, but we usually know starting pitchers schedules well in advance, so I don’t worry too much about platoon bats sitting sometimes.
Abreu has produced an average exit velocity and barrel rate in top fifth of the league and a hard hit rate in the top tenth, while carrying a slightly above average walk rate too. In fact, the only real caveats in Abreu’s game are his whiff and strikeout rates that both rank in the bottom fifth of the league. But we have seen plenty of sluggers carry strikeout rates over 25% and still have success.
Quite frankly, Abreu is criminally under-rostered right now and should not be available at all, let alone in almost two thirds of leagues. If he is available, add him immediately. If you can pry him away from a team that may be scared off by his platoon situation, deal for him. If you already have him, or added him recently, congratulations, I think you nabbed a solid slugging outfielder.
Thanks as always for reading, and good luck out there deep leaguers.
Featured Image by Justin Paradis