Welcome back deep leaguers! Congratulations to all the readers out there who are still fighting their way to championships. I realize the NFL season is underway and it’s very exciting. (Go Steelers!) But this baseball season ain’t over, and you have to stay focused. I just spent ten minutes counting how many projected starts my opponent and I have left to decide how to spend my last couple adds. Although, between injuries and starts getting pushed back (Glasnow and Strider to name a couple) my trust in those projections is waning. We’re in the twilight of the season now and I don’t believe anyone is really starting until they’ve got one out in the third inning.
Fallers
Tyler Freeman, Short Stop, Second Base, Outfield, Colorado Rockies
9% Rostered
Freeman has been a sneakily useful player for deep leaguers for a large swathe of the year. He hasn’t shown a ton of pop, but he slots in at three positions, and he batted .299 while stealing 14 bases between the start of June and the end of August. Since the start of September, though, Freeman is slashing just .214/.313/.214 with no steals, having been caught in his lone attempt.
Freeman has typical home/away splits for a Rockies batter, with a .777 OPS at home and a .651 mark on the road. He’s even more effective on the base paths at Coors, going 12 for 15 at home and just 5 for 11 on the road. This is all the data I’ve collected on the subject, but I’m prepared to believe Coors Field boosts base stealing now. However, Freeman struggled in his last home series, going 0-12 over three games versus the Padres.
His process chart highlights his downward trend as well. We can see that his power output was never helpful, despite the friendly hitting environment. But he’s mostly batted leadoff and has had few opportunities to drive in runs. Seeing his decision value decline and his contact rate crater over the past month is enough to make me scour the wire. Add on the fact that the Rockies are on the road for their next couple series (their current one, @LAD, and then @SD), and I’m definitely moving on from Freeman.
Bubba Chandler, Pitcher, Pittsburgh Pirates
28% Rostered
This hurts, but so did Bubba’s first MLB start. I will start off by admitting that I thought employing Chandler as a bulk reliever out of the gate was a weird choice. It seems just as easy to limit a young player’s pitch count as a starter as it would be for a reliever. In both instances, they start at the beginning of an inning, and you need to warm up a reliever to get them out either way. Typically, teams don’t warm up two relievers when planning to use a bulk guy, since they intend to use that bulk guy for a bulky amount of innings.
But it worked, especially from a fantasy perspective. Chandler pitched out of the pen for his first three appearances, allowing nine hits and walking one while striking out nine batters. Most surprisingly, he notched a save and two wins over those three contests. But then he got the nod to start his first MLB game last week at home against the major league’s winningest team, the Milwaukee Brewers.
Despite Jackson Chourio and Christian Yelich being out of the lineup, the Brewers jumped on Bubba right away, scoring four runs in the first inning and nine runs through 2.2 innings before sending the Bucco rookie to the clubhouse. I won’t get too far into the weeds here, since Chandler only has 11.2 MLB innings, and he’s only allowed runs to the Dodgers and Brewers, but it appears he’s relying a bit too much on his four-seamer. More than half the pitches he’s thrown as a major leaguer have been four-seamers, with his change and slider coming in around 20% each. It looks like hitters are just sitting fastball, as it’s the worst graded of his offerings.
But he’s a rookie, and days like that happen to everyone. Look at George Kirby’s game at Tampa last week for proof. It was also against the league’s current top team. What really worries me is that Chandler is currently listed as a starter for his next couple outings. If that holds up, and his pitch count is still capped tightly (65 vs. LAD and 68 vs. MIL are his high points), then he looks more like an opener than a bulk guy, and openers don’t pitch deep enough for wins or quality starts.
I did cast doubt on the veracity of scheduled starters earlier, but if he really is starting, and still on that tight leash, then the only help you might get from Chandler over the next couple weeks would be some strike outs and maybe some ratio help, but his strikeout rate has been nothing special and his ratios are very bad following his last game. You obviously can’t cut him in keeper/dynasty formats, but in redraft leagues, I just don’t see him helping much from here on.
Heriberto Hernandez, Outfield, Miami Marlins
1% Rostered
I’ve written about so many Marlins this season, I’m practically a marine biologist. We have one or two more of these articles to go, but I’m interested to tally up my team totals and see how far ahead the Marlins and Reds are from the rest of the league.
Heriberto was called up right at the end of May and promptly set the league ablaze with a .933 OPS through 57 plate appearances in June. He fell off a bit in July with an .853 OPS over 51 plate appearances and fell even further in August with a .642 OPS. Hernandez has a strong barrel rate over 10%, a solid hard-hit rate over 43%, and an alright exit velocity just under 90 MPH. He walks enough and is good at laying off pitches out of the zone, but his 36% whiff rate is a big problem that has contributed to a strikeout rate over 27%.
His process chart does a good job of illustrating his strong power metrics and good decision value. His contact chart does an even better job of illustrating his struggles with making contact. The good news is that his contact ability does appear to be on the upswing, even though he’s batted just .160 so far in September. I am honestly tempted to read way too much into that upward bend at the end of his contact chart. What if he’s figuring it out and is about to get hot at the hot perfect time?
But then I remind myself that he’s hit worse each month he’s been in the majors and that they play Detroit, a pitching powerhouse, next. However, after that, they get a trip to Coors. I would sign off on adding him just before the series in Colorado for a chance to catch lightning in a bottle.
Risers
Andrew Benintendi, Outfield, Chicago White Sox
7% Rostered
With 18 games left in the regular season, Benintendi is two homers shy of tying his personal best of 20 homers in a season. He had been fairly consistent all year, posting an OPS of .728 or better in every month from April through July. He slumped a bit in August, falling to a .637 OPS with just seven RBI (his lowest monthly total) and his worst strikeout-to-walk ratio of the year, 18:5.
However, he has found new life in September, slashing .381/.481/.857 with three dingers, nine RBI, and a 2:4 strikeout-to-walk split in just six games. Much of that is thanks to a two-homer, 5 RBI game against the Twins, but he followed that up by going 3-7 with a dinger and three RBI in two games against Detroit. If his process chart looks good, I’m buying.
Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Maybe I knew what the chart looked like, but I’ll never admit it. We can see his August slump, and everything is trending back up to where we prefer to see it. He’s probably not gonna be a league winner, but Benintendi is definitely getting hot at the right time, and I think he can be a helpful deep league outfielder over the last weeks of the season.
Bryce Elder, Starting Pitcher, Braves
17% Rostered
I know, right? So every week I struggle to pick fallers. I have to find three players who have performed poorly over the last week, month, etc. But they have to be players for whom we harbor positive expectations. No one cares about players playing badly unless we think they “should” be performing better. Risers are easy. I typically have a player in mind for the cover a few days ahead, and I then can just sort the best players by any time period and pick a few players with low roster rates I find interesting. So imagine my surprise when I did just that and saw Bryce Elder and his 5.35 season ERA in the top spot ahead of Tarik Skubal. Skubal hasn’t even allowed a run over his last two starts, covering 14 innings, making Elder’s recent run even more impressive.
Elder has gone at least six innings in each of his last four starts. He has allowed two runs or fewer in all four. Furthermore, he has a 21-5 strikeout-to-walk ratio over those games, covering 26.1 innings. If you rolled Elder out for all four of those games, I suspect you might have a sports book from the future. These were not lackluster opponents either. Elder faced the Mets, Philles, and then the Cubs twice. Those teams all have top ten MLB offenses.
Nick Pollack wrote a great bit on Elder in his SP Roundup (maybe the single best daily article to read for pitching insights) following his last start. Far be it from me to disagree, and I don’t anyway. I also don’t see a significant difference in what Elder is doing lately compared to what he was doing that led to his bloated ERA. But I also can’t advise you to ignore a guy who just stifled three very good teams in four starts.
He gets Houston next and then Detroit (another top 10 offense), so the downside is still very scary. Situations like this are why the Vargas Rule exists in the first place. The only problem with the Vargas Rule is that it tends to end the same way a Ponzi Scheme does. With someone holding a worthless bag.
Harrison Bader, Outfield, Philadelphia Phillies
8% Rostered
Bader was a sneaky good deadline acquisition for the Phillies. His .778 OPS in Minnesota was just a few points of his career high, and he’s been even better in Philadelphia, slashing .320/.389/.500 with three homers over 32 games. And he’s been even better-er than that in September, as he’s batting .400 with an OPS over 1.000 this month (with a .600 BABIP). His BABIP in August was .370 for those curious. That’s a high mark too, but not a crazy rate for a player on a heater.
Bader has mostly batted sixth, a few spots behind the big bats of Schwarber and Harper, but it’s still a good RBI spot in a very talented lineup. Bader is also just one homer away from matching his career high. While his exit velocity is poor and his hard hit and barrel rates are mediocre, they are also all better now than they were over his past five seasons. He is hitting the ball with more authority than ever before.
I also like what I see on this chart. Bader isn’t a big slugger, but he’s got those green power bars up above that MLB average line since the start of July, and everything is pointing upwards lately. I’m going to give Bader a strong add recommendation, just be aware that someone might try to grab him out of your hands and scream at you until you relent. Don’t give in, unless of course, you’re on the Jumbotron.
Thanks as always for reading, and good luck out there Deep Leaguers!
