Hitter List 8/14: Ranking the Top 150 Hitters to Own ROS

Hello and welcome to Hitter List, where every Wednesday I’ll be flawlessly ranking the top 150 hitters in baseball from now through the end of the season.

To truly hate something, you must first understand it, so here’s a general overview of how I go about evaluating players so you can be upset with these rankings more thoroughly:

• Given that these rankings are taking place in a vacuum, I tend to value stolen bases more than home runs. The 5,585 homers hit in 2018 were the fourth-highest total in modern history. And the 2,474 stolen bases from last year were the lowest total since 1994 and the eighth-lowest total since 1969. In other words, stolen bases are a scarce resource getting even scarcer, like Pittsburgh Pirates that Yasiel Puig hasn’t tried to punch. Meanwhile, home runs are an abundant resource that are becoming more prevalent, like baseball fans who can now correctly spell “Aristedes.” All else being equal, I’ll take the guy with 15 HR/20 SB over the guy with 20 HR/15 SB.
• I’m generally not a believer in positional scarcity, so position eligibility only comes into play in two instances: as a tiebreaker when two players are fairly evenly matched, or if a player is eligible at catcher, because catcher is a barren wasteland this year filled with adrenaline-fueled maniacs playing guitar riffs while strapped to 18-wheelers. Wait, no, that’s Mad Max: Fury Road, but catcher is just as bleak and weird.
• I’m an old man who’s afraid of change, so I tend to be low on young players without major league track records.
• I lean on track record more than recent performance, unless I see a significant underlying change in approach.
• These rankings apply only to leagues using standard scoring (R, RBI, HR, SB, AVG) and lean more towards rotisserie and H2H categories leagues. Adjust accordingly for other formats.
• These rankings are meant to be from today’s date through the end of the season. These are purely for redraft, so I’m not taking 2020 into account here at all.
• A player’s movement in the rankings can be just as much about where guys around them have moved as anything else. A player might move down purely as a result of someone below them rising, and vice versa.

 

[hitter_list_2019 list_id=”35122″ include_stats=”1″]

 

Now onto the recaps:

• Injuries: It was a very light week injury-wise, as Lourdes Gurriel, Avisail Garcia, Nelson Cruz, and Austin Riley were the only ones to officially go down. Jeff McNeil tweaked his hamstring yesterday, and may join this group soon. Gary Sanchez and Dee Gordon were activated, and Mitch Haniger appears to be nearing a return.
• Additions: Randal Grichuk, Teoscar Hernandez, Wil Myers, Will Smith, Francisco Mejia, Colin Moran, and Aristides Aquino join the list this week.
• Mike Trout, true to his name, has been swimming downstream the last couple of weeks. First Christian Yelich leapfrogs him, and now Ronald Acuna. It’s no knock on Trout–he’s having another unbelievable year. But with roughly six weeks to go in the regular season, I’m much more comfortable with riding the hot hand than I would have been earlier in the year. And few players have been as hot as Acuna lately. He hit .419 over the past week with seven homers and three steals. If he maintains anything close to that pace, he’ll be just the fifth player in history to reach the 40/40 club. The debate over who gets the #1 overall pick in drafts next year just got a little more interesting.
• The Aristides Principle, first formulated by Cincinnati wunderkind Aristides Aquino, postulates that hitting eight homers over your first 39 career at-bats is very good. After submitting said principle to several proofs and extended scholarly scrutiny, it appears as if it may be an incontrovertible truth. It’s always hard to know what to make of recent call-ups when there’s such a small sample size of major league data. Based on his minor league track record, I am a bit concerned that the strikeout rate and pronounced flyball rates will result in an average at-or-below .250 in the long run. But the tradeoff is that you’ll likely get 30+ homers over a full season, which is plenty useful. In terms of rest-of-season value, he’s definitely worth an add in most formats.
• If you picked up Mike Tauchman last month, you must be really feeling yourself right now–and not just because you own one of only two players in the majors whose heads look like giant wet thumbs (the other is Brian McCann). With eight homers, four steals, and a .398 average over his last 30 games, Tauchman has been one of the hottest hitters in baseball. So, will it continue? Probably not. Tauchman is drastically overperforming his expected stats to this point. He’s posted just a .248 xBA, and has a 150-point gap between his SLG and xSLG. He’s also historically posted some pretty high groundball rates, and while he’s curbed that to some extent this year, I’m not totally sold that he’s totally revamped his swing. All that said, enjoy the production while it lasts, but don’t be afraid to cut bait once he starts to tail off.
• I love Gio Urshela, and you should too. Very few players make as much contact as he does (81%) while also crushing the ball as much as he does (43% hard contact). Sure, the plate discipline isn’t as refined as you might like, but he’s been batting in the heart of the Yankee lineup lately and everything he’s done to this point looks legit. After hitting .517 with four homers this past week, your window to add him has likely passed, but add him immediately if he’s still available.
• After a rough stretch that lasted nearly a month, the Josh Bell has begun ding-ing and dong-ing again. It’s a .360 average over the past week with four homers, and all appears to be right with the world again.
• When it came to Tommy Pham in the preseason, I was a big Tommy fan. The quality-of-contact numbers he’s able to post speak to a guy who could post high averages with 25 HR/20 SB upside. However, he incurred a hand sprain a few weeks back that he’s been trying to play through, and the results have not be stellar. He’s hitting .218 over his last 30 games, and while he has swiped six bags during that time, he’s just not able to hit the ball with much authority. If he continues to try and play through it, everyone will have a bad time.
• I panned Jorge Soler earlier in the year as I thought his contact issues would prevent him from posting a batting average much higher than .250, and I wasn’t sure more than 30 homers was in the cards. That prediction was looking pretty good until these past 30 games, during which Soler has hit .330 with 12 homers and become an absolute offensive force. Perhaps most impressive is that his strikeout rate has plummeted to around 20% during this span. He’s actually underperforming his xwOBA by about 10 points so far if you can believe it, so this all seems pretty legit.
• There was a brief glimmer of hope earlier this month that Khris Davis might be turning things around, but that has been immediately stamped out over this past week. He’s hit just one homer in his last 30 games, and as I mentioned last time, I think he’s playing through a hip injury. Sometimes, miraculously, these things sort themselves out and guys can get back on track. But in the current hitting environment, where several guys will likely eclipse the 40-homer mark this year, I’m not sure holding out hope for a big turnaround is really worth it.
• The prodigal son has returned! Wil Myers, who I notoriously love more than people related to me by blood, makes his first appearance on the list in months. With Franmil Reyes out of the picture, playing time has returned for Myers, and he’s been… fine. I still contend that there’s a 20/20 hitter here, and even if that comes at the cost of a low batting average, that’s nothing to sniff at. He’s worth a flier in deeper leagues.

 

Graphic by Michael Haas (@digitalHaas on Twitter)