Young players are all the rage. We are coming off of one of the best seasons in recent memory for rookie players to emerge and play a big part in the fantasy landscape. A year later we need to take a look at the crop of last year’s rookie to see who may have a sophomore slump and who may take another step forward. Here is my full fantasy baseball primer for second-year hitters. Below we dive into a few notable names.
Fantasy Baseball Draft Advice
Triston Casas (1B – BOS): NFBC ADP 110.18
Casas is coming off a season in which he hit 24 home runs and 65 RBIs with a .263/.367/.490 triple slash. He had a truly weird season as Casas struggled in the first half, hitting .225/.330/.398 with nine home runs, but the skills were actually really good with a good chase rate, decent contact skill and a ton of power in the bat. He was a clear buy low at that point. So when he broke out in the second half and hit .317/.417/.617 with 15 home runs it wasn’t very shocking. However, the skills under the hood completely fell apart. His zone contact dropped to an atrocious 78% and the exit velocities dropped in spite of the power spike. He was lucky with the BABIP with a .365 and the HR/FB at 26.8%. The problem is I don’t know who the real Casas is. I tend to believe that he is a mixture of the halves. When the story doesn’t make sense like this it often means that the profile is too risky to bet on.
Yainer Diaz (1B/C/DH – HOU): NFBC ADP 115.80
Diaz is coming off of a brilliant rookie campaign where he hit .282/.308/.538 with 23 home runs and 60 RBI in just 377 plate appearances. Diaz was the second catcher last year, but benefited from getting DH and 1B at bats especially when Yordan Alvarez was injured. This year Diaz is the the No. 1 catcher and will still have chances to pick up extra plate appearances when Alvarez is hurt or needs days off. He has the opportunity to be a 30 homer catcher which is hard to find especially when he also can hit for average at the same time.
Anthony Volpe (SS – NYY): NFBC ADP 131.98
Volpe is coming off of a really interesting rookie season in which he hit for power with 21 home runs and stole 24 bases. However, at the same time he hit .209/.283/.383 in 601 plate appearances which really hurt his value. Volpe has a better hit tool than he showed and he did get unlucky on balls in play, but he also struck out too much. I think Volpe is a really nice gamble at his price, but he is a gamble because of the average downside.
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