Welcome back to our Patience or Panic series! We are officially in the home stretch of the MLB season. Teams have played roughly 75% 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), my recommendations here are centered more around start/sit or drop/hold decisions. All stats are through the games of August 11.
Luis Robert Jr., CWS, OF
Since 7/13: .159/.204/.239 (22 wRC+), 5 R, 1 HR, 4 RBI, 9 SB, 5.4% BB%, 44.1% K%
Season: .198/.262/.397 (80 wRC+), 28 R, 12 HR, 26 RBI, 17 SB, 8.0% BB%, 36.9% K%
The über-talented Robert Jr. has been a disaster this year pretty much any way you look at it, just like his White Sox. Robert Jr. has followed up a 38-homer, 20-steal campaign in which he hit .264 and stayed healthy for an entire season with an absolute stinker in 2024, and things have only gotten worse lately. He has started to strike out even more, driving his career-high K% so high that he now ranks in the 1st percentile in the big leagues. In the last month, Robert Jr. is among the bottom 10 hitters (minimum 50 PA) in each of the following marks: SwStr% (20.6%, 6th-worst), K% (44.1%, worst), and CSW% (36.6%, 2nd-worst).
While these numbers go hand-in-hand to some extent, I don’t see anything in Robert Jr.’s profile that makes me think a turnaround is imminent. He’s known for showing questionable effort at times, and playing out the string on a miserable White Sox team isn’t likely to provide much inspiration. Robert Jr. still hits the ball hard (13.8% Barrel% in ’24, 93rd percentile), so he’s always liable to go on a homer spree, but he’s shown no signs of breaking his slump with two hits and 15 strikeouts in his last 35 at-bats.
Verdict: Panic. I am a little ashamed to admit that I traded for Robert Jr. a couple of weeks ago in a league where you have to start one LF, CF, and RF. I trusted his track record as a decent hitter with sky-high fantasy upside. Evidently, I didn’t place enough weight on his recent performance and the low floor it suggested. Robert Jr. is actively hurting you everywhere except SB, and I wouldn’t think twice about dropping him in shallower formats such as 10- or 12-teamers where you only start three OFs. Viable alternatives in your leagues might include Joc Pederson and Jake McCarthy. I will be riding it out with Robert Jr. in my 16-teamer for now but expect to have him on the bench as often as he’s in the starting lineup.
Will Smith, LAD, C
Since 7/13: .141/.236/.172 (15 wRC+), 8 R, 0 HR, 6 SBI, 0 SB
Season: .247/.325/.432 (110 wRC+), 55 R, 15 HR, 61 RBI, 0 SB
The fact that Smith can post the line you see above in a 72-PA stretch yet still be on pace for his sixth straight season as an above-average bat at the toughest position in the game tells you what a stalwart he has been, both for our fantasy teams and the Dodgers. But if you were like me and assumed that Smith is a bankable top-tier catcher every year, you may have missed the slight degradation in his offensive skills in recent years.
Over the last three years, Smith has continued to show a strong plate approach, with above-average strikeout and walk rates. However, his chase rate has slowly ticked up, and his swinging strike rate has followed suit. This has led to the increased, but still decent, K% we’re seeing this season. There are also some concerning trends in Smith’s batted ball profile. He’s continuing to hit the ball in the air a ton and with authority, as his fly ball rate and exit velocity on those fly balls rank in the 96th and 78th percentiles, respectively. But, Smith has always struggled to pull the ball, which prevents him from putting up elite power numbers. His pull rate has fallen even further this year, all the way down to the 7th percentile.
Verdict: Slight Panic. With his current batted ball profile, Smith will never be a batting average asset, and his inability to pull the ball this season makes me concerned his power ceiling is as a 22-homer bat unless we get another rabbit ball. With Shohei Ohtani entrenched as the DH in LA, Smith also loses out on some valuable volume that would help make him a top-flight catcher. He’s fallen to 6th this year among backstops after being drafted among the top four at the position. There’s not much action that can be taken on Smith at this point, and he remains in the middle of a strong lineup that just got Mookie Betts back. While I will have some concerns about rostering Smith in the future, I trust he will be a solid yet unspectacular contributor the rest of the way.
Cristopher Sánchez, PHI, P
Since 7/13: 28 IP (5 GS), 17 K, 1 W, 6.11 ERA, 1.64 WHIP
Season: 131.1 IP (23 GS), 104 K, 8 W, 3.63 ERA, 1.32 WHIP
Sánchez has been up and down this year, to say the least. Right now, it’s down. He followed up 16 scoreless innings in late June with a 7-ER dud at Wrigley Field on July 4 and has continued to remind managers of his volatility ever since, with three or fewer earned runs in four of his last six starts and six or more in the other two. Sánchez’s pitching style is unique in today’s game, as he generates a ton of groundballs (59.2% GB%, 97th percentile) with all three pitches in his arsenal while not getting a ton of whiffs.
Sánchez’s core skills are rock-solid, but his contact and groundball-oriented approach leaves him vulnerable to ugly outings and poor stretches. His BABIP over this stretch is .375, well above his season-long mark of .333 and .309 career mark. Our hit luck metric here at Pitcher List lends even more support to the idea that Sánchez has had poor fortune on balls in play, as his hit luck in the last month is +16. This means that he has allowed 16 more hits than you would expect based on the quality of batted balls against him, which comes out to more than three per start! With that in mind, Sánchez’s 3.54 FIP and 3.63 xFIP more accurately reflect his skills over this stretch. Additionally, Sánchez has posted a PLV of 5.25 or higher in each of his last seven starts and ranks 6th among all pitchers this season in the metric at 5.38.
Verdict: Patience. He might never be a strong source of Ks or an attribute in WHIP, but I have faith in Sánchez to continue to eat innings with a good ERA down the stretch for a solid Phillies team. Every fantasy (and real-life) team needs mid-tier starting pitchers like Sánchez, and I would only consider sitting him in the toughest of matchups.