How we react to short-term performance in fantasy baseball can be the difference between a championship run and a wasted season. As the All-Star break comes to a close, trust can be worn down and patience becomes a luxury for fantasy teams with high aspirations. Are the currently struggling players who we expected to anchor our teams more likely to continue with their slumps, or will their form return after the break? Learning to determine where to rightfully panic, and maybe more importantly, where to have patience while capitalizing on the panic of others, is a skill that comes from looking past the box scores, the bad weeks, and the major slumps.
Romanticism aside, I’m excited to be a bi-weekly writer on this important article. Luck is naturally such a massive part of any game of inches, and baseball is certainly not immune. The process of the at-bats, or the pitches thrown, will always be more predictive in the long run than just assuming players that are performing poorly will continue to do so and vice versa. We know it doesn’t work that way and it would be boring if it did. So, let’s check out some of the players that have been hurting rosters recently and see if, based on whats going on under the hood, we can figure out how to proceed.
All stats in this edition are through through the first half of the season a.k.a. pre-All-Star break.
Adley Rutschman, C, Baltimore
Season: .275/.339/.441 47R, 16HR, 59 RBI in 90 games
Since June 24: .145/.280/.258, 6R, 2HR, 6RBI in 17 games
It’s tough to make it into Patience or Panic as a bonafide top-three option at the catcher position, but that’s exactly the type of tumble that Rutschman’s stats took in the two weeks prior to the All-Star break. In 5×5 Roto, Adley is outside the Top 20 catchers by contributions over the last 30 days, and outside the Top 40 in the last two weeks. And it’s a thin position. So yeah, welcome to the circle of doubt, Rutschman.
Since June 24th, it feels like we’re seeing a different player. Before this stretch, he was hitting above .300 with a .478 slugging, which was actually beneath the .496 xSLG he carried in the same span. So the drop off from an .830 OPS hitter to a two-week slump in the range of a .540 OPS is definitely concerning. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on with the star sophomore.
The standout stats, prior to the June 24th start to this slump, are his BABIP at .333 a corresponding xBABIP at .315, and a barrel rate of 7.8%, which would be good for the Top 40 in the league if it had held up. Neither did. Since then we have seen a .140 BABIP with a .188 xBABIP and a 5.8% barrel rate, which is simply mediocre. There is some relief in his xwoBACON and xSLG both being 100 points plus higher than their actual counterparts in this slump, but still – there’s clearly a bit going on with the type of contact he’s making – even if some of the better contact might be going straight to a well-positioned defender.
The pitches he’s seeing in this cold streak are actually worse than the pitches he’s seen, on average, over the course of the season, per PLV. We’re talking a 7% decrease in Quality Minus Bad Pitch Rate and a massive drop in Hitter Performance. His HP this season stands at 23.5 and in this questionable stretch, it’s -4.8!
Verdict: Patience – Maybe this feels like an easy answer, who in their right mind is panicking on a player like this, but I will say that this wasn’t the most obvious of choices. There’s a lot to be worried about in the above information, but what makes me think this is likely just a bad phase is the whiff rates, the contact rates and even the outside zone swing rates have all been better in this ’slump’ period than they were when he was hitting to the numbers we have come to expect early in the year.
Honestly, it surprised me to see better pure contact rate with such terrible results. The BABIP issue is likely one that won’t stick around, it rarely ever does, and even the put-away rate against Rutschman has fallen a bit in this stretch. It’s really boiling down to the number of fly balls he’s hitting compared to the line drives we’re more accustomed to. Fly balls are up 12%, pop-ups are up 5%, and sweet spot is down about 5% as well. All of this has led to a 75% poor contact rate since June 24th… while his season numbers are at 58%… !!
If the lack of ideal contact continues into August, maybe we revisit and panic a bit more, but this is likely just a rough patch and there is nothing in the data that says pitchers have figured him out… he should improve out the gate in the second half and if you can pry him from worried fantasy owners… do it.
Max Fried, SP, Atlanta
I try to be a bit of a contrarian when writing this article, focusing on players that maybe wouldn’t normally get questioned due to their top-tier status. Fried is currently 8th overall on The List, and yet here we are, diving into his recent stretch of games because just two of six last starts have seen more than four strikeouts. He’s walked 12 batters in those same six starts, and surrendered 38 hits! That’s a 1.46 WHIP when spread over the 34.1 IP.
So welcome to the courtroom- Judge, Jury and Executioner Justin Perri presiding.
Now, I won’t be too harsh, Fried has shown his ability as a pitcher by limiting the damage in his rough patch. An ERA of just 3.41 while allowing close to three base runners every other inning in this stretch displays a masterful ability to get out of jams and throw your best stuff when it matters most. That, or, he’s getting lucky and the runners will soon start to get home. Our job here is to try to figure out which side of that coin is more likely to land. Let’s see what’s going on…
The first symptom I’m noticing is a decreased CSW rate on his secondaries, a seasonal clip of 29.3%, or 31.6% prior to his June 11 start, has fallen to just 24.9% in these last six outings. A very serious 6.5% decrease. The fastball hasn’t suffered much but there can be big issues when your out-pitches stop earning the whiffs (and called strikes) they need to. Hitters can stop sitting on the breaking or off-speed stuff and instead wait on the fastball while still having a chance to adjust to the now subpar secondaries if they see it. This has led to a bump in ideal contact rate, which is almost at 40% during the six-start span which has sat at 33% for the season. It is not surprising whatsoever to see this result and it is likely a product of the worsened pitch quality. Add in a few more mistakes, and Fried is lucky that this stretch didn’t go much worse.
Verdict: Panic – How much can you really panic with such a great arm, you might wonder. Well, I think it’s pretty fair to think he could fall out of the Top 15 fantasy arms pretty easily if the strikeouts don’t return. Even in years past, when Fried hit his rough patches, as he does hit them, the strikeouts stayed high. Striking out 28 in 34 innings just takes the floor out of his performances and if he’s crushing your WHIP to the tune of anything above 1.35, you’re going to eventually see those runs come home on top of seeing points/categories dissipate. His xERA for the season lines up perfectly with his actual, 3.05 vs 3.08, respectively, but that expected number is up close to 4.00 for the last month and I’m pretty confident that we will see the results trend towards that recent expectation.
I’m not full-on selling for pennies on the dollar, but the ‘Panic’ verdict does mean that if you can get full value on this player right now, especially if you’re battling for playoff relevance, you might want to consider it. The NL East is about as strong as it’s ever been, the Nationals are loaded with young talent that will be playing loose to end the season, the Mets’ offense is clicking and the Phillies are the best team in baseball. Fried has to see a lot of these competitors to close the year out, and without Acuña, Atlanta may have a tough time continuing to pick up the wins that have propped up his value. This is a sell point for me, especially in redraft.
Luis Castillo, SP, Seattle
Castillo is an intriguing question mark, and it’s not often I’ll make those inquiries about a player when they’re coming off a six-inning shutout. But, context reigns supreme, as it always does, and I’m not giving Castillo all that much credit for blanking the Angels. The story of his season appears to be that of a matchup-dependent pitcher – he has five starts of 20 where he allowed less than two runs and they came against the Angels twice, Colorado, Atlanta and Toronto. I’ll give some credit where it’s due against Atlanta, but even that isn’t the accomplishment it once was.
More context, his last two starts were included in those ‘easy five’ – so we’re kind of glossing over those and acknowledging that when Castillo lines up against one of the weaker offenses in the majors, he’s a worthwhile start – but most pitchers are! In the five starts before these most recent two, Castillo earned his position in this article; he only got out of the sixth inning once while giving up a total of 19 runs and just 22 strikeouts in 26 innings. Not good. Very not good.
The issue has been the command of the heater, it’s just not there frequently enough, and seemingly it depends on if he’s facing teams that have the pedigree to challenge him. The Angels, for example, do not, and so when he’s on the mound against those hitters he feels confident enough to fire the fastball in there for strikes – teams the like Guardians, Twins, Royals and even the Rays have seemingly made him question his pitch mix, going to the secondaries more and struggling to keep hitters off balance with the heater, which is his M.O.
Verdict: Patience, Probably – Look, having a guy that you know will dominate the easy matchups while giving you a good shot in the tougher ones is worthwhile, especially in the current state of the starting pitching landscape. Castillo will face easy opponents in the AL West and also is potentially lining up to see the White Sox and Tigers in the second half. He will dominate those, but I would recommend watching and waiting to see how the first few outings against top-tier competition go. It would not surprise me to see some of the better teams continue to challenge Castillo and his fastball with some potentially dire results to come from it.
His baseline seems to be around six innings with a couple of earned runs every time out, and while his strikeout rate and ground ball rate are both lower this year, pitching in Seattle will continue to give him some big advantages. There’s worry about the elevated xERA of 4.31 and the fact that he’s allowing the highest xwOBA of his career thus far, but unless the fastball command really slips – he should be more than serviceable. I’m maybe trying to acquire him for less than the actual price, but I’m also not averse to moving him for a fair return if pitching isn’t the weak point of your fantasy roster.
Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire | Adapted by Doug Carlin (@Bdougals on Twitter)