Buys & Sells from All 30 Teams - AL
Highlighting buys and sells from all 15 American League teams for the second half of the fantasy baseball season
AL East
Rays
Buy: Tyler Glasnow
It’s definitely Glasnow for me. As we saw in my rest of season SP ranks, I view Glasnow as a top-ten SP while he’s healthy, and he’s healthy. So I would roll the dice on him staying healthy in the second half and putting together a dominant dozen starts or so.
Sell: Isaac Paredes
The guy has that special ability to out-homer barrel rate by pulling the ball as a high rate, but really the profile for him is so unimpressive that I can’t really see myself buying into what he did in the first half. He’s among the league’s RBI leaders despite a 5.8% Brl%. He makes a lot of contact, but just doesn’t hit very hard - and he’s not a fast player either, so you could really see a bad batting average coming in the second half. I’d bail on him now.
Blue Jays
Buy: Matt Chapman
He started the year on an insane run of barrels, but he couldn’t turn them into homers. The barrel rate has stayed high, but he’s stuck on my 12 homers.
Sell: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Vlad had all the hype in the world coming up, and then sputtered through a few seasons where he wasn’t very good for fantasy purposes, and then he had the total bust-out 2021 season and everybody figured he had figured it out and solidified himself as a top-15 fantasy pick for years to come. But he dropped back down last year to a .274 batting average and 32 homers. Quite respectable numbers, obviously, but with the three steals he just wasn’t a guy returning top-30 value. This year he’s running right at that same pace with a .274 average, 13 homers, and two steals, and he’s just the #6 earning player at first base. Despite that, you can probably still get a top-20 player in return for him, and that’s something I would try to do since the bulk of his career has shown him as a very, very good real-life hitter but not an elite fantasy asset.
Orioles
Buy: Gunnar Henderson
It’s been bad, and then elite, and then good for Gunnar so far. I’m not sure who he’ll be in the second half, but I’d rather be on the buy side of a guy with this kind of raw power and speed. He has an 11.9% Brl% and a 30% K% that’s been trending in the right direction, so maybe he’s figuring some stuff out and will meet some bit of his potential sooner rather than later.
Sell: Tyler Wells
He has a middling SwStr%, but a pretty good 25.4% K%. To me, that means the K% might tick down a point or two. The walk rate is reliably good, so we can believe in that - but the other thing working for him is the .202 BABIP. It seems pretty unlikely that he can repeat his first half again, so it’s a good time to ship him away if possible.
Yankees
Buy: Anthony Rizzo
I like the buy-low on struggling veterans. People will be pretty willing to believe that they’ve just aged out, but it’s quite often not the case. Old guys can go for long slumps just like young guys, so it’s possible that’s what Rizzo has gone through. The slash line is just .257/.346/.405 with 11 HRs and a 7.7% Brl%, but I’d bet on that improving a bit in the second half - and he should be quite cheap right now.
Sell: Luis Severino
Good luck with this one, I doubt anybody can actually pull it off - but I’d be at the point of just taking whatever scraps you can get for Severino. The numbers look awful. 18% K%, 10.1% SwStr%, .940 OPS allowed. He was a power pitcher before that relied on the strikeout, and it doesn’t look like those are coming this year.
Red Sox
Buy: Brayan Bello / Garrett Whitlock
I can’t pick one! If you read the daily notes, you know these are two of my favorite pitchers in the league, so I’m not even going to get into the details - just buy them! In Whitlock’s case, I guess you should wait for him to be off the IL, but be ready to pounce!
Fine I came back to say one thing on each pitcher. Bello is 6th in the league in GB% and Whitlock is 3rd in the league in Ball%.
Sell: James Paxton
Paxton MLB Innings Pitched 2022-2022: 21.2
Paxton MLB Innings Pitched 2023: 56All of the advanced numbers give a big thumbsupski (15% SwStr%, 34% Ball%), but I just can’t buy that it can be sustained given the lack of health in the past. It’s the common, running thread here, that most people are going to know this stuff and not really want to give much for him, but maybe you can find someoen very desperate for a good pitcher and get them to roll those loaded dice so you don’t have to.
AL Central
Twins
Buy: Bailey Ober
Have you seen what this guy has been doing? He’s been so solid. 14% SwStr%, 2.61 ERA, 0.91 WHIP, 49% Strike%. It’s good stuff. I don’t think many people really view him as a very good starter, but I’ve been on him all season long so I’m fully buying into him as a very good starting pitcher. Being 8 foot tall helps a lot, and I don’t think that’s going to go away!
Sell: Sonny Gray
Might be too late because the performance started dipping in the last month, but he’s still at a 2.80 ERA despite a 14% K-BB%. He was getting a ton of strikeouts early on, so it was convincing then, but now that’s gone and the ERA has stayed strong. He does have a lot of pitches and some good secondary stuff, but his fastballs are bad. Worse times ahead, methinks.
Guardians
Buy: Josh Bell
This is more for very deeper leagues, but Bell hasn’t been very good for fantasy in quite some time. However, he’s under-performed majorly this year with a .312 wOBA but a .349 xwOBA. You can probably scoop him up off of free agency, and he could hit well enough to be worthy of a starter role in deeper leagues.
Sell: Shane Bieber
Another guy where it might be too late on, but that Cy Young Award and other great seasons are probably still in people’s minds. He was good last year too, but this year he just can’t strike people out. His SwStr% is 11.3% and he’s not making up for it with called strikes at a 45.3% overall Strike%. It’s bad, so I’d be trying to bail.
Tigers
Buy: Spencer Torkelson
There is a trio of Tigers hitters I want in on, but Torkelson is the dog guy. He has been limiting strikeouts and hitting the ball hard all year long, but now he’s starting to elevate it. That has turned into a 16% Brl% since June 1st. Time to buy! (I also really like what we’ve seen from Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter on the hitting side and Tarik Skubal on the pithing side).
Sell: Matt Vierling
A lot of people know about this guy’s ability to hit the ball really, and for the last few weeks he’s been ripping the ball. But the bigger sample shows a guy that hits a lot of ground balls and just can’t really turn the swing speed into power, so I’d rather be on the fade side of that. I doubt you can get much for him, so maybe this is me just cautioning against buying too much into his recent performance.
White Sox
Buy: Lance Lynn
Only 9 pitchers have a dozen starts and a 15%+ SwStr%, and Lynn is one of them. The numbers are god awful still, but it’s hard for me to see him having a bad second half if he’s getting this many whiffs.
Sell: Eloy Jimenez
It might just be time to decide that Jimenez isn’t a valuable fantasy asset. The only way he really helps you are with homers and RBI, and those are honestly middling at this point with him hitting a ton of ground balls and the White Sox being a bad offense. The name value is still somewhat there, so maybe you can get a little bit of a return for him after the next time he hits a couple dingers.
I also want to mention Tim Anderson here, but he’s more like a “dump” than a “sell”.
Royals
Buy: Maikel Garcia
.284/.340/.389 on the year with 3 homers and 14 steals. That profile isn’t super hard to find elsewhere for cheap/free, but Garcia would seem to have an outside chance of some bigger upside. His 90th-percentile EV is just under 105, which is a respectable number. The issue, of course, is launch angle and ballpark. The ballpark isn’t going to change, and maybe the launch angle won’t either - but at the very least you get a good batting average and steals while you see if the power materializes.
Sell:
I really have nothing here. There’s no one I can even force in here. The guys with fantasy value (Witt Jr., Perez, Melendez) aren’t sell candidates, and there’s really no one else that I think anybody even rosters.
AL West
Astros
Buy: Jose Abreu
He’s in the Rizzo camp, but he’s already started the turnaround. He’s been pretty good since June, but it’s probably not too late to get a discount on him given how awful he was in April-May.
Sell: Hunter Brown
I like Brown just fine, but he hasn’t been specatcular this year with a mediocre 11.9% SwStr% and a 19.5 K-BB%. I mean that’s a good K-BB, but it’s not elite. The other concern is workload. He’s thrown 94 innings already, and his previous max was 126 last year (not counting playoffs if he pitched at all in there). The Astros will have a playoff spot wrapped up, and they’re going to be more careful with these young pitchers given how the rest of the stuff is going in their rotation, so I could see Brown being a bit limited down the stretch. And it’s not like you’d be bailing on one of the league’s best pitchers just out of concerns for the workload either. The risk feels pretty low in letting him go.
Rangers
Buy: Jon Gray
The SwStr% of 13% is beating the K% of 20%. He had a really rough year, and then was great for a stretch, but has had a few bad ones lately. I think he’ll just be a very solid SP from here on out, and you can probably acquire him for less than that.
Sell: Jonah Heim
He’s the #2 catcher in most leagues right now, but I’d probably say he’ll end up outside of the top 6 or 7 for the rest of the year. I’d ship him away from someone with a better track record in the fantasy game like a Daulton Varsho or Salvador Perez if possible.
Angels
Buy: Griffin Canning
He has a sweet 13.5% SwStr% and a good 48% Strike% on the year. And in his last seven he has a 14.8% SwStr% and a 50% Strike% - that’s not easy to do. The results haven’t been there though as he keeps getting hit around to the tune of a first-half 4.62 ERA. If he keeps up a 14% SwStr% and 49% Strike%, he’s going to have some very good results.
Sell: Shohei Ohtani (Hitter)
If you’re in a league with Ohtani the hitter, it’s a good time to ship him away in a redraft situation. This was almost certainly the best half-year of hitting he’ll have in his career with an OPS well above 1.000 and 32 homers. He has a 22% K%, which isn’t really backed up by a 69% Contact%. I don’t think he’s really this good at the plate, and Trout being on the shelf hurts too. It’s hard to get rid of the best baseball player to ever exist, but if you’re not also benefiting from his pitching - he’s a good guy to sell super high on. You could probably bring back anyone short of Acuna, and that’s something I’d be willing to do.
Mariners
Buy: Julio Rodriguez
He has been one of the bigger disappointments in the league with just a .249/.306/.411 slash line after going in the top three of most drafts. It’s not like he has a long track record of crushing Major League pitching, but the skills are so great that I think he just has to have a much bigger second half than this.
Sell: Bryan Woo
This isn’t a great one, but there aren’t many sell options on the Mariners. Woo has already surpassed his previous innings max by more than 20 innings, so you wouldn’t think the flailing M’s would want him making a ton more starts. Could certainly see a trip back to the minors for some workload management, and that makes him someone not to invest much in for 2023. But we’ll be back for 2024, because he does look really fantastic by the numbers.
Athletics
Buy: Tyler Soderstrom & Zack Gelof
Two top prospects getting the call-up here for the second half. I don’t have much hope for them, especially on a garbage A’s team, but at least you can say that they’ll be motivated - which is more than you can say for other veteran players on a 25-67 ball club. I wouldn’t add them now, but they’ll be good guys to monitor.
Sell: Esteury Ruiz
He’s a one category guy, but man that category is good. Maybe he’s single-handedly keeping your team in the steals race while you catch up in the other categories with the rest of your roster. If that’s the case, great, roto baseball is a complex thing and there are a lot of different ways to win - but if you can stomach losing the 3-4 steals a week, you’re definitely going to improve your team in every other category by replacing Ruiz.
That’s it, I have done it! That was a whole lot of typing across two days. Now I will enjoy the remaining 24 hours of my All Star Break, goodbye! And become a paid sub already, sheesh! We’ll make your money back with walk props in the second half #bookit.