This is “The Watchlist.”
“The Watchlist” is a weekly column designed to help you monitor and pick up players in the coming weeks. Whether waiver wire or trade targets, these are the players you’ll want to add now before becoming the hot waiver commodity or trade target in a week or two.
Using underlying and advanced metrics, “The Watchlist” will help you get ahead of the competition in your league and reap the rewards later from your pickups.
The players could be anyone from a prospect in an ideal situation close to the Majors, a reliever in a saves+holds league, or even a starter doing well with misleading surface-level stats like ERA.
They might even be hitters with quality underlying stats. Or they could be none of those types of players and a different kind of player entirely. The point is that they’ll help you find success in your fantasy league while staying ahead of the curve of your league mates.
The payoff might not be immediate, but they should eventually provide significant value, more often than not.
These are some of those players for this week.
Back from a stint on the injured list due to a finger injury, Suzuki has immediately impacted the Cubs since rejoining the club. He has four hits and a walk in 11 plate appearances in three games. Two of those four hits were home runs, including an inside-the-park home run in his first game back against Josh Hader. The ball missed being a regular homer by a few feet as it hit the wall in Milwaukee, but came off the bat at 109.9 MPH, Suzuki’s fourth-hardest struck ball this season.
It was certainly an encouraging sign and a reminder of just how impactful Suzuki can be. The inside-the-park home run was perhaps a microcosm of that, showing the outfielder’s ability to drive pitches and log home runs and make a difference with his legs. The 27-year-old currently ranks in the 87th percentile in Statcast’s Sprint Speed metric and logged three stolen bases in 44 games.
Overall, Suzuki is hitting .257 with a .353 on-base percentage, six home runs, and three stolen bases in 173 plate appearances.
The recent home runs may have driven up his perceived fantasy trade value. Still, for fantasy managers, he’s worth it to trade for in the right deal – because his production could get even better. This isn’t a case of positive regression because of a low BABIP, but more about whether Suzuki can make more contact in the zone.
Suzuki is sporting a 19.3% chase rate in the 94th percentile league-wide. In other words, he’s elite at laying off pitches outside the zone. Yet, the 27-year-old ranks decidedly middle of the pack regarding in-zone contact. Among the 289 batters in the league with at least 150 plate appearances, 161 had a better zone contact rate than the 81.6% metric that Suzuki has.
Not all strikes are pitches that can be driven or barreled, but good things tend to happen when Seiya Suzuki makes contact. The outfielder is sporting a 42.6% hard-hit rate and a .347 xwOBA. His 12.9% barrel rate is currently sitting in the 86 percentile league-wide.
There’s a difference-making fantasy upside here with Suzuki’s ability to hit home runs and steal some bases, especially in leagues where an on-base percentage is part of the scoring, given the 27-year-old’s penchant for drawing walks. He’s sporting a 12.7% walk rate that sits in the 91st percentile in the league. If he’s not on your team already, now might be the time to swing a deal for the slugger before the home runs keep flying.
Kirby was mentioned in a previous Watchlist as a potential free agent or waiver wire addition for fantasy managers due to his potential role in the Mariners rotation and ability to limit walks.
The starter has largely lived up to the hype with a 3.75 ERA, a 4.28 FIP, 58 strikeouts, and just eight walks in 60 innings. Among starters with at least 50 innings of work, only Jameson Taillon has a lower walks per nine innings rate this season. Among the same starters, only Aaron Nola and Shane McClanahan currently have better strikeout-to-walk ratios than Kirby.
Now, the hurler is more of a trade target for fantasy managers.
Because while he’s lived up to the billing with limiting walks, Kirby also has limited runs in a fairly efficient manner.
In his first nine starts, the right-hander turned in a 3.12 ERA and a 3.74 in 49 frames. In his next start, on June 27, Kirby was tagged for nine hits and seven earned runs while striking out two batters in four innings.
It was very much an outlier of a start for the 24-year-old, who allowed one of his eight walks during that start and a third of the total home runs he’s surrendered this season. The outlier has undoubtedly impacted his overall numbers and could help you acquire him from one of your league mates for less in a trade than you may have given up before the bad start.
Kirby is certainly much better than that start. He’d allowed three runs or fewer in each of his five starts before the Orioles outing. The right-hander followed up the aforementioned start against Baltimore by scattering three hits, an earned run, and a walk over seven innings against the A’s while posting nine strikeouts and a stellar 37% CSW rate.
With the ability to help your weekly WHIP with his walk-limiting ways, Kirby can be an incredibly useful rotation option to utilize down the stretch, especially in the right matchups.
Brown’s role as a platoon bat in Oakland likely limits him to deeper fantasy leagues, but he’s certainly impactful in the right situations against right-handed pitching. The first baseman and outfielder is batting .218 with a .278 on-base percentage, 10 home runs, and seven stolen bases in 270 plate appearances.
For the season, 227 plate appearances and nine home runs have come against right-handers. He’s also hitting .238 with a .295 on-base percentage and a .740 OPS, in addition to a 111 wRC+, against right-handers this season. The wRC+ is perhaps the most crucial bit there. It might not be a fantasy scoring stat, but it makes the 29-year-old first baseman and outfielder an ideal trade target for contenders looking to add a platoon bat ahead of the trade deadline.
If that’s the case, and Brown is dealt, his fantasy value will only improve as Oakland’s home park has certainly impacted his numbers. Just one of the slugger’s 10 home runs has come at home. Elsewhere his expected home run total is higher than 10 in two-thirds of the league’s stadiums. There are also vast expanses between his home OPS and ISO numbers (.618 and .125) and his road OPS and ISO numbers (.755 and .257).
The A’s outfielder is also one of just 20 players in baseball to hit at least 10 home runs and steal at least seven bases. It’s likely that the other 19 players on that list are already rostered in your league. Brown is one of just two players not on the list rostered in at least 90% of Yahoo leagues as of Thursday afternoon. The other player not rostered in at least 90% of Yahoo leagues, Tommy Pham, is still rostered in the majority of leagues – 59% of them, to be specific. Brown is currently rostered in 7% of Yahoo leagues.
Lange was highlighted in a previous Watchlist back in April for being a potential source of ancillary saves in a Detroit bullpen also featuring closer Gregory Soto and high-leverage options Michael Fulmer and Andrew Chafin based on his early-season performances and the promise he showed late last season.
Fast forward to July, and Lange has emerged as an elite bullpen option in a decidedly underrated relief corps in Detroit. Entering play Thursday, the 26-year-old is sporting a 2.01 ERA and a 2.54 FIP with 41 strikeouts and 15 walks in 31.1 innings of work. Elsewhere, he’s logged 11 holds for A.J. Hinch and company.
Unfortunately, the Tigers’ record might indicate another summer spent as something resembling sellers. A complete teardown is unlikely, but unless Detroit can continue to string together wins – they had won six of eight before Thursday’s series opener against Chicago – it might make sense for the team to move some established performers in the bullpen.
Soto, Fulmer, and Chafin all stand out as potential trade candidates and could, speculatively speaking, all be dealt in the coming weeks, which would open the door for Lange to step into the lion’s share of save chances in Detroit.
He certainly has the stuff to thrive in such a role. The 26-year-old ranks in the 99th percentile league-wide in whiff rate and the 83rd percentile in chase rate. Just seven qualified relievers have a better swinging strike percentage than Lange, sporting a 16.7% metric that checks in ahead of the likes of Liam Hendriks, Tanner Scott, Raisel Iglesias, Tanner Houck, and Emmanuel Clase.
Soto has logged 16 saves for Detroit so far despite the losing record, and the Tigers likely won’t be undergoing a significant overhaul at the deadline outside of the bullpen, so there’s plenty of fantasy potential for Lange if he steps into the ninth-inning role come the first week of August – if not sooner.
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