Late July means it’s time for fantasy football baseball! Yes, while others are shifting to the gridiron with training camps in full swing, staying locked in on baseball and making those key late-season moves can make all the difference in your fantasy team’s chance at bringing home the championship. Let’s take a look at three of the game’s hottest players to see if they’ll be the difference maker you need down the stretch or if their recent success is nothing more than a hot streak.
Lawrence Butler, OF, Oakland Athletics
No, that’s not peak Barry Bonds batting at the top of the Oakland lineup, it’s Lawrence Butler, although you could be forgiven for confusing the two given just how great Butler’s been over the last few weeks. Since the start of July, Butler’s slashing a ridiculous .412/.467/.956 with nine home runs, 26 RBI, 19 RBI, and three stolen bases. Please stop and re-read those numbers to let it sink in. This calendar month, Butler is near the top of every single offensive leaderboard: AVG (2nd), SLG (1st), R (2nd), RBI (1st), HR (3rd), wRC+ (1st), and fWAR (2nd).
Describing Butler’s season as weird would be an understatement. He made the big league roster out of Spring Training, but through mid-May posted just a 68 wRC+ and was sent down to Triple-A. He hit fine in Triple-A, slashing .255/.349/.418 which was only good for a 92 wRC+ in the elevated offensive environment that is the PCL, and was recalled to the bigs on June 18th. Butler struggled his way to a measly 14 wRC+ over his first 29 plate appearances back with the A’s and then suddenly everything changed. He’s lit the league on fire with his 294 wRC+ in July.
Here’s a look at a lot of his process stats from before and after his breakout so we can dive into the differences.
Plenty of things jump out here, but the first thing that may catch your eye is Butler’s 180-point increase in BABIP. On the surface, it’s cause for concern that his recent stretch is largely driven by good batted ball fortune, but looking at his batted ball numbers quiets some of those fears. When a hitter is barreling the ball over 20% of the time and running hard-hit rates in the mid-60s, his BABIP is going to be ludicrously high, especially when he also bumps up his line drive rate by 10 percentage points.
From a plate discipline standpoint, Butler’s aggression hasn’t changed, but he has done a much better job honing in on whether a pitch will be a ball or a strike. He’s both chasing pitches outside of the strike zone less often and making more contact when he does swing. That’s the exact recipe you want to see behind his big strikeout rate increase. Before July, his 30.7% strikeout rate is near the top of where you can expect a hitter to live while still being productive. He’s dropped that all the way down to 20%, a number a few points better than the league-average punch-out rate.
On the surface all these numbers look promising, so I was surprised to find that PLV isn’t as big of a fan of Butler’s recent performance. The system does buy into his batted-ball changes allowing him to get to more power, but it isn’t convinced that he’s actually making significantly better swing decisions.
Savant gives us another vote of confidence in Butler’s quality of contact. For the entire season, even taking into account his less-than-ideal first 150 MLB plate appearances, each of Butler’s xwOBA, xSLG, Avg. EV, Barrel%, and Hard-Hit% are 85th percentile or better.
Verdict: Legit tools. Not legit pace. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of improvement Butler’s made over his first few months facing MLB pitching, and I think the A’s have found a great piece to their next competitive core. Of course, this torrid pace won’t continue over the remainder of the season, and although Butler should continue to be a strong contributor the rest of the way, don’t be surprised when he hits some bumps in the road. It’s only natural for a very toolsy rookie with a history of swing-and-miss issues to struggle at times.
Juan Yepez, 1B, Washington Nationals
Yepez joined the Nationals on a minor league deal this winter and has looked great in a short MLB stint, slashing .361/.407/.583 through 81 plate appearances. It’s tough to evaluate such a small amount of playing time–it’d be like meaningfully evaluating a player in the third week of April–but at least with Yepez, we’ve seen him face MLB pitching before.
The Cardinals gave Yepez a decent run in 2022 and he performed slightly above league average. Over 274 plate appearances, the then 24-year-old utilityman hit .253/.296/.447 with 12 home runs, 27 runs, and 30 RBI. It was a promising big league debut, but he followed it up with a clunker of a 2023 season, albeit with very inconsistent opportunities. Yepez was only given 65 plate appearances in which he posted a 51 wRC+. The Cardinals granted Yepez free agency in December and the Nationals quickly signed him to a deal in hopes that he would join Lane Thomas as another former Cardinal that they turn into a productive lineup piece.
Yepez began the year in Triple-A and hit well, slashing .263/.357/.438. Those were good numbers, but not necessarily good enough to force the Nats’ hand to promote him to the majors, but after Joey Meneses continued to disappoint with just a 68 wRC+ through early July, the team opted to make the swap and hand over starting first base duties to Yepez. Since being called up, Yepez has started every single game and has won the cleanup spot in the batting order.
The first thing you’ll notice on Yepez’s player page is his unsustainable .400 BABIP. Yes, it’ll come down quite a bit. Entering this year he had a career .275 BABIP, so he’s due for some major regression. On the plus side though, He’s shown nice improvements in his plate discipline metrics. Both his strikeout and walk rate are at career-best levels, and he’s cut his swinging strike rate nearly three whole percentage points to 9.9%. Those gains have come with a less aggressive approach from Yepez. He’s dropped his swing rate from a career mark of 53.8% to 48.7% this year, so while you may notice he’s chasing fewer bad pitches, that’s largely due to him swinging less overall, not necessarily because he’s developed a better eye at the plate. PLV is less than impressed with his swing decisions.
When Yepez swings, he’s been doing a better job than before at making contact. His 79.7% contact rate is over three points better than his previous career average, and the most notable gain has come outside of the strike zone. That’s a bit of a double-edged sword. If you’re swinging at balls, you’d prefer to at least foul them off to extend at-bats, but at the same time, contact on the pitches outside of the strike zone is typically weaker than contact on pitches in the zone and can lead to easy ground outs or pop outs.
On contact, Yepez is getting rather good results. We’ve already mentioned his unsustainable .400 BABIP, but both Baseball Savant and our own metrics here at Pitcher List think he deserves a good average. He doesn’t qualify for any leaderboards yet, but if he did, Savant’s .306 xAVG would be one of the top marks in baseball and our .367 xAVG would be the best mark in the sport. Yepez’s 8.1% barrel rate is just middle of the pack, but what he’s really doing well that’s getting those strong xStats is keeping his contact in the sweet spot and hitting line drives. His 37.1% sweet spot rate is 70th percentile and his 27.4% Line Drive rate is 95th percentile. PLV is a much bigger fan of his contact than his swing decisions.
The contact metrics are good, but the power numbers aren’t. Yepez’s 25.8% fly ball rate is just the 12th percentile, and when he does hit the ball in the air, he isn’t exactly crushing it. His 82 mph FB EV is in the bottom 5th percentile of all hitters.
Verdict: Not Legit. I want to love what Yepez is doing, but the underlying numbers won’t let me buy into this as a true breakout. Sure, the contact metrics point to some improvement, but the sky-high BABIP is going to come down, and when it does, it’s going to hit his numbers hard. The plate discipline gains seem like a mirage due to an overall more patient approach at the plate, and the power metrics leave a lot to be desired. That said, I do see him still being a useful bat the rest of the way in deep fantasy formats like 15-teamers or NL-Only leagues. He should continue to play every day and does have a good hit tool. If you’ve already picked up Yepez in your league like I have, there’s nothing wrong with riding out the hot streak, just don’t give him too long of a leash when he inevitably cools off.
Luis Ortiz, SP/RP, Pittsburgh Pirates
After struggling to a 4.78 ERA and 1.70 WHIP in 18 games last year, Ortiz wasn’t just off the fantasy radar entering 2024, he was also booted from the Pirates’ starting rotation. He did stick around with the big league club pitching out of the ‘pen, and his strong results (3.49 ERA) earned him another starting opportunity. He’s now started five games in 2024, throwing 29.2 innings with a 1.52 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, and 20.7% strikeout rate.
Ortiz’s opponents have been a relatively tough group. He’s faced @CIN, NYM, @CHW, PHI, @ARI. Besides that White Sox start, none of those lineups are cakewalks.
The biggest changes we’ve seen in Ortiz’s arsenal this year is that he’s added a cutter and almost entirely shelved his changeup. Both have been big positives for Ortiz. His cutter sports a 29.6% CSW%, good for the 64th percentile of MLB cutters, and he’s been able to pump it in for strikes reliably — the pitch has well above-average zone and strike rates. PLV likes the cutter quite a bit, grading it at 5.41, a mark that falls in the 78th percentile. As far as the changeup goes, Ortiz isn’t missing it much. He didn’t throw it often last year, and when he did the results were ugly. Its strike rate was just 8th percentile and PLV viewed it as well below average.
The addition of the cutter gives Ortiz a third fastball offering, pairing well with his four-seamer and sinker. That three-fastball approach seems to be on the uptick around the league, and having a straight, arm-side, and glove-side offering goes a long way in neutralizing both-handed hitters. It’s a similar fastball approach that’s helped lead to Jake Irvin’s success, but Ortiz mixes his offerings more evenly.
With the changeup barely in the picture, Ortiz’s lone non-fastball is his slider. It’s his most thrown pitch at 30% usage, but the results have been a mixed bag. The pitch’s percentile rankings are below average nearly across the board: Strike% (31st), CSW% (15th), wOBA (57th), BIP% (28th). There is one thing that Ortiz’s slider does well, and it’s that it gets plenty of swings outside of the strike zone. Its 37.7% O-Swing% is 70th percentile. While PLV sees the pitch as unremarkable, other pitch grading systems really like it. Ortiz’s slider may have a 5.15 PLV (39th percentile), but Stuff+ grades it at 120 (100 being average), and Pitching Bot grades it at 55 (20/80 scale).
As a whole, it’s been a year of growth for Ortiz. He’s gotten better results in nearly all metrics, but especially on batted balls. Ortiz has better than average numbers for each of the three pitching metrics that we typically equate to “being lucky”: BABIP (.273), HR/FB% (4.5%), and LOB% (76.9%). While each of those marks is better than you may expect them to be, only the HR/FB rate is at a point that has me concerned that regression to the mean could cause a stretch of ugly outings. Here’s a great look at how Ortiz’s percentile rankings have changed from year to year, note the big batted ball results gains.
Verdict: Legit enough for 12-teamers. You don’t need to rush out to grab Ortiz in shallow formats, but in 12-team leagues and deeper, I think he’s showing enough improvement that he’ll be worth starting in most matchups. Having three mid-90s offerings each with different break directions does a good job of keeping hitters off guard, and he’s a name I’m circling for drafts next spring. If he brings that changeup back or adds another offspeed or breaking pitch, he could really round his arsenal out nicely and it may even push him to another level. If you pick him up or add him to a watch list, be sure to add the correct Ortiz: Luis L Ortiz of the Pirates.