Welcome to week 21 of Deep League Risers and Fallers. DLR&F is finally old enough (in weeks) to buy a beer at the ball game. If only I could afford it… But I digress. Anyone still reading fantasy baseball articles now is probably in serious contention, so I will not waste your time. On to the…
Fallers
Jose Miranda, First Base and Third Base, Minnesota Twins – 32% Rostered
Miranda has really broken out this year with nine homers and an overall triple slash of .306/.346/.492 in 341 plate appearances. He was tearing it up with an OPS of 1.111 in July before hitting the IL with a back strain. Sadly, he has not seemed like that same guy since he returned.
Miranda has slashed just .241/.268/.407 with zero long balls and just three RBI in 15 games (56 plate appearances) since the start of August. As we can see in the dueling dual charts below, Miranda’s rolling contact ability has remained consistent. He remains elite at avoiding strikeouts and putting balls in play, but he’s been swinging at pitches he ought to lay off more often.
Those two images look odd juxtaposed like that, don’t they? That’s the portrait of a near-elite contact hitter with a chase rate in the bottom sixth of the league. Miranda swings a lot and makes an absolute ton of contact, but too many of those swings are on pitches out of the zone. He also possesses just league-average exit velocity and hard hit rates, and a below-average barrel rate.
I’d like to think Miranda is just shaking off some rust from his time on the IL, but that big July came with an absurd .515 batting average on balls in play. I’ve cited BABIP pretty frequently in this space as sort of a “luck measurement” and .515 is far and away the highest mark I’ve seen all season. In contrast, his August BABIP is a totally reasonable .277.
I cannot say that I have much confidence in Miranda bouncing back to the level of production he offered before his IL stint. I do think he’s better than his August performance showed, but he hasn’t, and likely won’t hit many dingers, and he does not run at all. However, he still bats in the front half of a top-10 run-scoring offense and plays almost every day. If you, like me, are frantically looking to replace Austin Riley, Miranda is someone to key in on as a possible replacement. Otherwise, you’re likely looking at someone like Jonah Bride in a terrible Miami lineup.
Lawrence Butler, Outfield, Oakland Athletics – 47% Rostered
If Lawrence Butler was part of the MCU, he would be Captain July. The A’s outfielder was a fantasy stud for those 30 days. He slashed a heroic .363/.408/.802 with 10 homers, 4 steals, 23 runs scored, and 27 driven in just 24 games (98 plate appearances). It is the only month of the year in which he has batted over .200 or recorded an OPS above .630.
Across the non-July months of the baseball season (66 games 202 plate appearances), Butler has hit three dingers, scored 25 runs, and driven in 22. He did carry a high, but not quite Miranda-esque BABIP of .371 in his big month, and has seen that mark drop well below league average to .219 in August, so there could be some back luck at play here, but that bombastic July still sticks out like a sore thumb.
Lawrence still has excellent exit velocities, hard hit and barrel rates on the season, and is an intriguing talent. But he also has whiff and strikeout rates in the bottom quarter of the league and plays for the sixth-lowest-scoring team in the majors. I’d be hesitant to cut bait since he was so good just a few weeks ago and still has strong power rates, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable with Butler as anything more than a 4th outfielder/bench bat for a competitive team right now.
Justin Turner, First Base, Second Base, Third Base, Seattle Mariners – 46% Rostered
Seattle is where offense goes to die. The Toronto version of Turner gave us a very useful .257/.351/.373 line with 7 dingers, 41 runs scored and 40 RBI over 400 plate appearances. That might not be too exciting for standard mixers, but totally useful 39-year-olds who can slot in at three infield positions are gold for deep leagues.
Sadly, Seattle Turner is slashing just .188/.304/.271 with a single homer in his first 14 games as a Mariner. I had mostly expected Turner’s struggles to be a small sample-size blip and that his rolling charts would look relatively flat…
Instead, I saw a dramatic drop off in Turner’s contact ability that coincided with his trade to Seattle. He is still an above-average contact maker; in fact, he carried a whiff rate in the top 10% of the league as a Jay, but his contact metrics have dipped from elite to above-average.
The batter’s eye in Seattle has gotten a bad rep from players for a while now, but Turner was just 1 for 16 on the Mariners’ recent six-game road trip. It is also not good news that Turner has started just four out of Seattle’s last seven games.
So we have a 39-year-old who was traded from a bottom ten offense to a bottom five offense, has struggled with his new club, is making less contact than he was just a few weeks ago, and has seen a minor reduction in playing time. I just checked if Jonah Bride was still available.
Risers
Jonah Bride, First Base and Third Base, Miami Marlins – 15% Rostered
Astute readers may have expected this. The 28-year-old Bride has had that quad-A feel about him. Over the past couple of seasons with Oakland, he hit well in the minors but managed an OPS of just .548 and .490 over stretches of 58 and 40 games in the big leagues. But he’s back in the majors now, getting regular playing time thanks to Miami’s deadline sell-off, and has thrived over the past few weeks.
Over 17 games in August, Bride is slashing .274/.395/.484 with 4 homers, 14 RBI, and an 11:15 walk-to-strike-out ratio. His on-base skills look legitimate, with a manageable 22% strikeout rate and a very strong 11.5% walk rate. However, he’s produced just an 86.7 MPH average exit velocity, 5.1% barrel rate, and a 36% hard contact rate. Those are all well below average marks, that do not suggest Bride’s modest power surge will continue.
Miami is also a low-scoring offense, so the upside in Bride is moderate at best. I do really like Xavier Edwards (mentioned here in week 17 with glowing praise), who always seems to be in scoring position when he’s on base. He’s the type of catalyst that can boost the production of anyone hitting behind him, and Jake Burger has found his power lately as well. So I think the Marlins might be a better offense right now than they were for most of the season.
I am not making any sort of long-term commitment to Bride, but an intense summer fling to get through the next 5 or six weeks, that we never speak of again? I can go for that.
Adrian Del Castillo, Catcher, Arizona Diamondbacks – 8% Rostered
Del Castillo was batting .319/.403/.608 with 24 homers in 452 plate appearances at AAA before an injury to Gabriel Moreno led to him taking over primary catching duties in the desert. His MLB career is off to a smashing start, as Del Castillo has batted .333/.405/.667 with 3 homers, 6 runs scored, and 14 RBI in just 9 games.
It is a very small sample size to be sure, but so far Del Castillo has an 88.3 MPH average exit velocity, which is nothing special, but he also has a 25% barrel rate, which would rank second in the majors behind only Aaron Judge if he qualified. He also has a walk rate of over 10%, which is both awesome and consistent with his walk rate at AAA.
My only real concern with Del Castillo’s profile is his 35% strikeout rate. But we are only talking about 37 MLB plate appearances and he was much closer to a palatable 25% at AAA. If you missed out on Joey Bart (featured last week) and need a backstop, get Adrian Del Castillo right now.
Nick Martinez, Starting Pitcher, Cincinnati Reds – 38% Rostered
Martinez made a few starts back in April and May but was used as a reliever through June and July. He made one last relief appearance on August 2nd, before moving into the Reds’ rotation, and has started 3 games since then. In those 3 starts, which have come @MIL, @MIA, and at home against KC, Martinez has gone 1-0, allowed just 3 runs, (all vs KC) struck out 16 batters, and walked none.
Martinez has been pretty effective this season in general. His average exit velocity allowed, chase rate, walk rate, barrel rate, and hard hit rate all rank in the league’s top 10%. He’s not just the classic two-pitch reliever having some quick success either. He throws five pitches at least 10% of the time, and none of them more than 25%. And four of his pitches have been plus offerings in terms of runs saved.
We all know that starting pitching this season has been a mine-filled hellscape of injuries and even worse injuries. But here we have a veteran having a great little run down the stretch. Martinez is currently scheduled to face the Jays in Toronto several hours after this article is due to be posted, and I’d jump on that one if I had the chance. His start after that is currently set to be a home matchup vs Oakland, and while the A’s have been raking for a while now, I would probably sign off on that one too.
As always, thanks for reading, and good luck out there Deep Leaguers!