Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the All-Star festivities. Its Cal’s world right now and we’re all just along for the ride. Plenty of room on that caboose for everyone though. It’s also great to see Oneil Cruz represent my Buccos with moonshots that MLB parks can’t even hold. That ball would have been out of Yosemite! But the regular season will back before we know it (crazy Yahoo decided to break up the long week the ridiculous way) so let’s move on to the…
Fallers
Tommy Edman, Second Base, Short Stop and Outfield, Los Angeles Dodgers (62% Rostered)
It’s been a while since I’ve included a player rostered this widely, but I reserve the right to do so for fallers and if you don’t exercise your rights, you’ll lose them. Edman is 0 for his last 23 as I type this and just 2-32 in July. He’s got 10 homers and 39 RBI on the season, but 80% of those dingers and 61% of those RBI came back in April.
Edman isn’t a big swinging slugger. He has well below average bat speed. His exit velocity, hard hit ad barrel rates are squarely in the league’s bottom third. He also has an average chase rate and K and whiff rates in the league’s top quartile. That is not a profile where sustained slumps are expected. His power output is obviously poor lately, so I’m gonna leave the process chart alone and pull his contact and decision value charts.
You can see the slump in his contact ability chart starting in mid May, but also that despite the downturn, Edman’s contact ability remains well above the league average. His decision value is the issue. We already pointed out that Edman doesn’t chase pitches out the zone often, which leads me to believe he’s laying off pitches he should be taking hacks at. So, I have to bring a third chart, swing aggression.
And I’m flabbergasted. I very much expected to see a dip, a telltale sign that Edman was being too patient. Instead I see a graph of the Nebraska landscape (it’s flat). This is the part where I reveal that Edman has a .083 BABIP this month and still carries an expected batting average of .282 on the season. I think he bounces back sooner rather than later and could be a nice asset down the stretch with his eligibility at three positions. Edman is an excellent buy low candidate right now.
Brooks Lee, Second Base, Third Base and Short Stop, Minnesota Twins (4% Rostered)
Lee was our featured riser back in week 12 thanks to a blistering 378/.404/.622 line with 3 homers 9 RBI and a stolen base over the first couple weeks of June. However I wasn’t impressed with his profile that featured just an 88.8 MPH average exit velocity, a 7% barrel rate and a 39% hard-hit rate. He did (and still does) carry above average whiff and strike out rates, but those are the only commonly tracked metrics in which Lee performs above the average major league hitter.
Lee’s barrel rate, hard hit rate and exit velocity are virtually unchanged since last we checked in on him and his process chart continues to trend downward.
There are certainly players than can be productive with below average power metrics, but Lee doesn’t walk (4%) and is also very slow (bottom 15% sprint speed), so he’s not legging out infield hits or stealing bases. He is also starting to lose playing time since Royce Lewis returned, finding himself on the bench for 4 of the Twin’s 12 games in July. There just is not a good reason to hold on here.
Miguel Vargas, First Base, Third Base, and Outfield, Chicago White Sox (20% Rostered)
Vargas is another player who appeared as out featured riser. He was murdering baseballs back in May and his process chart (reproduced below) supported the breakout.
Overall, Vargas mashed 7 homers and drove in 19 runs in May. He has managed just 2 home runs and 9 RBI over the entirety of June and first half of July. Vargas posted an .899 OPS is May, but a .661 OPS in June and just a .386 mark so far in July.
It is worth noting that Vargas has an BABIP of just .167 this month. His chase and whiff rates remain in the top quartile, his strikeout rate is still under 20% and he walks enough at 8.9%.
We can even see on his more recent process chart that he did indeed peak in mid May, but he’s maintained most of his gain in contact and decision value. It’s just his power output that has fallen off. Back in May I thought he be useful batting average asset, a .270ish hitter with a bit of pop, that batted in the heart of bad lineup.
The chart above, combined with his low BABIP indicates that he’s been rather unlucky, and I think my earlier assessment still holds, but that lineup is just a killer for his run production. He could still be a target if you are in desperate need of a corner infielder. He probably won’t ding your average but I wouldn’t expect more than 5 homers and 20-30 RBI for the remainder of the season.
Risers
Jorge Polanco, Second and Third Base, Seattle Mariners (26% Rostered)
Polanco exploded out of the gate, mashing 9 homers, driving in 29 runs and posting a 1.226 OPS over 80 plate appearances in April. Then he hit just 2 homers, drove in 13 runs, and posted an OPS around .500 for May and June. But he has come back around strong in July, with 4 dingers and an OPS over 1.000 over the first couple weeks of the month.
He did get extremely unlucky in May with a .155 BABIP, and his process chart suggests he’s been the same player all season.
His decision value dips below average for a while, but has improved lately. It’s an odd chart in general considering how much more productive Polanco was in April than May and June. But we are talking about a hitter with above average exit velocity as well as barrel and hard hit rates. He doesn’t walk a ton (under 7%) but he also has above average whiff and chase rates and only strikes out in 14% of his at bats.
Polanco is also unlucky in terms of his home park. Safeco is the worst park for offense in the majors, and by a decent margin over the next two parks in Milwaukee and San Francisco. However, just like his performance seems to oppose his process chart, Polanco has an OPS 100 points higher at home than on the road!
He’s a walking paradox. His actual performance is better when his underlying metrics look worse, and he hits better in the league’s most pitcher friendly park than he does outside of it. His chart has been trending down lately, which by this upended logic means he’s about to go on another heater. I might be more confused now than when I began this analysis.
I’m going say I do like Polanco as a target. He’s 32 years old and shouldn’t be too expensive to acquire via trade if he isn’t on waivers. He slots in at two very useful positions and hits in the middle third. I also think Seattle is going to bring in a bat before the deadline (Josh Naylor would be a great fit) and that could give the lineup a nice boost.
Brady House, Third Base, Washington Nationals (4% Rostered)
House posted a .304/.353/.519 line with 13 homers over 283 plate appearances in AAA before his MLB debut in June. He struggle a bit out of the gate, slashing .231/.268/.288 with no homers, and a couple steals over his first 56 PA. He’s come around in July though, with a .293/.310/.488 triple slash, two homers, and 7 RBI already this month.
That’s some nice production, and House has posted mostly average power metrics with an 89.7 MPH exit velocity to go with a 42.3% hard hit rate. But his barrel rate is just 4.2%. Its a little surprising that he’s managed to maintain a K rate under 25% with his whiff and chase rates looking pretty ugly at 32% and 38% respectively.
His July OPS is almost 250 points better than June OPS though, so I’m expecting to see that improvement in his chart…
Ok, I lied, I knew what the chart looked like before I typed that sentence about expecting to see House’s improved production appear in that gorgeous orange and purple. House has only walked once and struck out nine times in his 42 July plate appearances. He’s working with a .333 BABIP this month, up from an already lucky .308 mark in June. He does have a strong line drive rate, a above average ground ball rate and a fantastically low pop up rate, so a strong BABIP is to be expected, but that’s still a rate I’d consider “lucky”.
He does have moderate power and that 25% K rate isn’t too bad and is perfectly in line with his MiLB K rate before his promotion. House isn’t going to be a game changer for teams competing for championships this year, but he’s an intriguing target for teams selling off and looking to acquire young talent.
Andrew Vaughn, First Base, Milwaukee Brewers (6% Rostered)
Vaughn struggled mightily in Chicago during the first couple months of the year, slashing just .189/.218/.314 with 5 homers in 48 games for the Pale Hose, but he’s been lightning in a bottle for the Brewers since taking over the cold corner for the injured Rhys Hoskins.
Vaughn has played just 5 games for Milwaukee but has hit safely in all 5, going 6-14 with two homers, two walks and two strike outs. That’s an extremely small sample size to be sure, but Vaughn’s underlying rates look strong. He’s carrying a 91.8 MPH exit velocity, a 13.5% barrel rate and a 48.4% hard hit rate that all sit in the league’s top 20%.
His chase rate is rough at over 33% and his walk rate is barely over 4%, (but looking better lately), but both his whiff and K rates are just about dead on league average. There just is not enough data available from his brief time with his new team to take away a lot of meaningful impressions, and I won’t make you look at another chart. I’ll rely entirely on my persuasive wordage.
Vaughn is still just 27, and was the third overall pick in 2019. He’s spent the first half decade of his career on a team that has failed spectacularly to develop hitters lately and is seeing success as soon as he got a change of scenery.
Gavin Sheets is great comparison here, and he’s posted an OPS 100 points higher this season in San Diego than he did during his last two seasons in Chicago. I can very easily see Vaughn having similar success in his new home and I think he’s a strong buy in most, if not all formats right now.
That’s it for week 16. Thanks as always for reading, and good luck out there deep leaguers!
