Welcome back to our Patience or Panic series! We are officially in the home stretch of the MLB season. Teams have played a bit more than 80% of their games, and it’s shaping up to be a fun finish with quite a few battles for divisional titles and wild card spots. For us as fantasy managers, it’s time to tweak our rosters to gear up for the playoffs or to help get your team into the money in a rotisserie league. Because trade deadlines have passed in most leagues (if your league allows trading), recommendations here are centered more around start/sit or drop/hold decisions. All stats are through the games of August 27th.
Corbin Burnes, BAL, SP
Since 7/25: 34.2 IP, 39 H, 25 ER, 11 BB, 30 K, 6.49 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, 19.5% K%, 25.1% CSW%
Season: 159.1 IP, 140 H, 59 ER, 40 BB, 146 K, 3.28 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 22.5% K%, 29.0% CSW
It’s been a tough month for the Baltimore Orioles ace, and an especially tough last week. His last six starts have seen a massive jump in his ERA and a bit of an an alarming amount of walks. Burnes had only walked 30 batters in his first 125 innings with 116 strikeouts, close to a 4:1 K:BB ratio. In this recent stretch since the end of July, that ratio has fallen to to below 3:1. Surprisingly, he’s only 2-2 in this stretch and the Orioles offense has given the team enough support that they won the first four starts in this down stretch for Burnes.
The most notable changes in this stretch, outside of the results Burnes is getting, is that the his first-pitch strike rate is down about 5% from his season average and the amount solid contact is up a bit in this bad stretch. However, nothing else is very significant. He is definitely getting a bit unlucky, his BABIP allowed is up 50 points from the season average but the expected BABIP is up only 27 points. Exit velocities are actually a bit better than what Burnes’s numbers are on the season so I think there’s probably a pretty easy verdict to be made here…
VERDICT: Patience – Yeah, this feels right, let’s relax a little and pump the breaks on getting too concerned about what Burnes brings to the table. You can’t trade him away so this is mostly about if he’s worth trusting in his upcoming starts. He’s got a big test tonight against the Dodgers, but I think you trust a guy like Burnes until the wheels literally fall off, and honestly, I don’t think two bad lines against solid offenses should rattle the cages all that much, considering that the other options probably aren’t great.
Here’s the other thing that stands out for Burnes, entering into this bad six-start run, he had a hitter luck of -3 and now on the season it’s up at +9. What that means is that PitcherList data has expected him to allow a total of 12 less hits based on the Pitch Level Value of what Burnes is throwing. There are certainly issues with his cutter, but the underlaying stuff, in general, is still very good. The Pitch Level Average, which uses PLV to come up with an ERA type scale for a pitchers expected results, sits at 2.96 in this bad run, a staunch difference from the 6.49 ERA he’s trying to shake off from this slump. He goes as his cutter goes, and the location needs some improvement but I expect a pitcher like Burnes to get himself back into a groove, and given that the Orioles can still get you wins even if he’s a Holly and not an AGA, you very likely don’t have any other choice but to ride with Burnes, it should reward more than hurt you.
Freddie Freeman, LAD, 1B
Since 7/10: .241/.315/.397, 15 R, 4 HR, 15 RBI, 2 SB (30 Games)
Since 8/17: .154/.214/.231, 1 R, 0 HR, 2 RBI, 0 SB ( 7 Games)
Season: .284/.382/.475, 70 R, 17 HR, 73 RBI, 6 SB (122 Games)
The double split here, on top of the standard seasonal line, is because Freeman is dealing with a very specific injury related scenario that he has decided to play through and well.. it’s going badly. On August 17th Freeman suffered a hairline fracture in his right middle finger and has since gone 3-for-23. Reports were that Freeman would manage the injury and his play time would be dependent on how much pain her could tolerate. Tuesday was his first missed game since suffering the fracture, so while the pain doesnt seem to be keeping him out of the lineup, it is certainly impacting his play.
If it were just a week of injury, it would be a pretty easy verdict, be patient and he’ll likely get back to his normal .850 OPS self. However, there have been symptoms of larger issues for about five weeks prior. In his last 30 games he has only worked 11 walks, compared to the 54 he had earned in the 92 games prior. He’s also seen his Z-Contact% go down by about 4% and, as a result of all this, a big dip in his wOBA.
So what do we do about a bonafide star that’s having a down month compounded by an injury?
Verdict: Panic – I have a hard time suggesting you use roster spots on a slugger that isn’t slugging. With out the injury, I probably say patience, as the slash line for the last 30 games isn’t nearly as bad as what the last week has looked like and honestly the expected stat line looks okay, but there’s a dead-mans-zone of not resting and not being at 100% that Freddie is clearly stuck in. The Dodgers are in a tight race for the division, just three games ahead of each the Diamondbacks and the Padres at the time of writing. I’m no major leauge skipper but I would probably have Freeman rest a bit more where possible in order to get his finger back to full health.
The issue with that is the looming series against the Diamondbacks this week, which is four games and goes straight through to Monday. It would not be shocking to see Freeman get some rest in the following series against the Angels, and then wherever he can in the home stretch with the idea of getting right for the Playoffs. I’m not sure how they’ll handle it, and hopefully Tuesday’s rest helps Freeman figure it out. However with Max Muncy and Mookie Betts back, it might just make sense to let the slugger heal up- in which case he becomes a major week to week liability for teams with roster locks. Play it safe and let Freeman ride the pine until he warms up, unless, of course, you don’t have a decent backup for him.
Steven Kwan, CLE, OF
Since 7/30: .183/.280/.269
Season: .299/.362/.439
Steven Kwan is a player that I have in both of my important dynasty leagues so he’s someone I’ve bemoaned frequently to anyone who will listen. He’s not himself of late, and for a someone like Kwan that means two things; the average has dropped, and, therefore, the majority of his value is gone. Or, at least that what it certainly feels like it when you see he’s batting .183 in the last month. Was his run at a .350 batting average earlier in this season purely lucky? Or is there something else at play? I took the opportunity to use some PL Pro graphs to see what was going on under the hood for Kwan.
Let’s start with the all encompassing Process+, the graphs below are from Kwan’s season this year and last. I’ve set the denomination to rolling 100 pitches to get a sense of the ups and downs a bit more clearly. There’s certainly more noise as compared to the standard 400 rolling pitches faced, but what’s important for Kwan is that he does have these dips somewhat frequently. At least he certainly did go below the 80th %ILE in Process+ for a bit in July of ’23 and had a rough June/July similar to his tough July/August of this season. The issue is that we are in the thick of it.
Verdict: Patience – Kwan’s contact ability hasn’t dipped, he’s still one of the best at putting the bat to the ball and even with the dip in production, he does get on base in front of a competitive lineup in Cleveland. He will continue to be a run scoring option even when he’s a bit cold and he has had slumps in his young career that have all ended. This one will end too. It might even end quickly, but if we were in the middle of the season, this would be a buy low spot on a very talented player.
You can’t really expect Kwan to hit for power like he did at the start of the year. Any flashes of slugging should be taken as a cherry on top rather than an expected part of the deal. What makes Kwan’s potential so high is that he’s had consistently strong swing decisions, has a good eye out of the zone, and can be relied on to get on base. The metrics are showing a slight dip in those choices here, but it shouldn’t last and Kwan will more likely than not be a valuable player to deploy in the playoffs.