Garrett Crochet lost a bunch of velocity yesterday:
Garrett Crochet Fastball Velo by Start
The blue/green line is the sinker. He still had a good outing:
5 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 6 K, 2 BB, 15.7% SwStr%
But he labored a bit, and now he has a 12:5 K:BB in his last dozen innings. What to do about that if you have Crochet? Hope and pray, I guess! If you want to be super bold, you could go trade him away for fair value for someone who feels a little bit safer. Maybe if you’re loaded up at SP and are missing some thump in your lineup, trade him away for a stud hitter. Do some trade that you won’t be mad about even if Crochet is perfectly fine.
Kevin Gausman posted the #55 start of the year on Saturday. He’s been an interesting case to follow, so let’s check the season numbers on the Gaus man.
Kind of a mediocre ERA, but an elite WHIP. That’s a little weird given the 16.4% K-BB%.
He has given up a strong but short of elite .314 xwOBA, and he’s benefited from a .212 BABIP. He is also not getting ground balls (33%) this year. So he’s also been helped by a well below-average 10% HR/FB.
But the good news is that his SwStr% is fine (12.9%) and he’s throwing strikes (33% Ball%).
It’s still pretty much the same thing that we’ve been talking about with Gausman. The four-seamer is elite, but the splitter has not been great,. A 37% Strike% and a 46% Ball% on a pitch thrown one-third of the time isn’t the best situation to be in, but for now the fastball has kept him above water.
I think you’re going to get some very bad outings from Gausman, but they will be mixed with good ones. If it were me, I’d be seeing what I could get back for him in a trade. I’m not convinced that he’ll be good the rest of the way home.
MacKenzie Gore struck out nine yesterday and now has a massive 36% K% and a 7% BB% on the season. And we are about to the point where these samples are pretty telling. So we can get back to the basics, escape all of the crazy advanced pitching metrics, and come back to our old friend K-BB%.
Here is your top 25 in K-BB% this year, with a five start minimum to qualify.
Logan Gilbert 32.5%
MacKenzie Gore 29.4%
Cole Ragans 28.9%
Hunter Greene 28.5%
Zack Wheeler 27.6%
Tarik Skubal 26.9%
Joe Ryan 26.6%
Nathan Eovaldi 26.4%
Hunter Brown 24.7%
Chris Sale 23.6%
Yoshinobu Yamamoto 23.5%
Nick Pivetta 23.3%
Logan Webb 22.1%
Michael King 21.8%
Chris Bassitt 21.6%
Jack Flaherty 21.5%
Jesus Luzardo 21.2%
Bryan Woo 21.2%
Cristopher Sanchez 20.7%
Max Meyer 20.4%
Matthew Liberatore 20.3%
Carlos Rodon 20.1%
Paul Skenes 20.0%
Pablo Lopez 19.6%
Hayden Wesneski 29.6%
Drew Rasmussen 29.6%
One good way to use this would be to find the pitchers with high K-BB% and high ERA. Here’s everybody over an 18% K-BB% and a 4.00+ ERA:
E-Rod is an interesting case. He struck out ten yesterday on a 14.9% SwStr%. His season SwStr% remains low at 11.4% and the ball rate is very high at 38%. So the numbers don’t really make any sense. His SIERA is 3.40. I’d say he’s a buy-low in a deep league. I wouldn’t want him in a league that rosters fewer than 75 or so total SPs, but anything deeper than that, I think Rodriguez is a good value right now.
Roki Sasaki made a start on Saturday. He survived and got a win, giving up three runs in five innings. But he struck out just four on a 6.1% SwStr% and walked two more. The season K% is now 18% with a 15% BB%. He’s looking like one of the worst pitchers in the league on the K-BB% front. The four-seamer has gotten hit hard (.371 xwOBA), and he continues to lose velocity on it.
It would seem like this guy is a ticking time bomb. He’s being saved by the splitter so far. Nobody can do anything against it (.219 SLG, no homers), but it’s not a pitch he can rely on (55% Ball%).
Start-to-start, it seems to me that Roki is hoping to get lucky on the four-seamer and then put guys away with the splitter. He’s throwing the four-seamer 56% of the time on 0-0 counts and generating just a 2.7% SwStr% with it while hitters are slugging .750 when they put it in play. Hitters should and probably will start just sitting on that four-seamer and crushing it.
That’s easier said than done, I’m sure, but it is a pretty simple formula on how to hit Sasaki. Swing at the four-seamers and let the splitters go. You have a pretty great chance of either taking a walk or hitting a ball very hard if you pull that off.
As for me, I drafted Sasaki in the home league ten-teamer. And I’m about to get rid of him. Unless this guy is just like waiting until June to start throwing upper-90s again, I can’t see much of a path to success this year. Maybe the Dodgers got something wrong for once.
Of course, if they did, it cost them nothing since Sasaki could only sign a minor league deal.
Max Meyer has been really bad since that 14-strikeout performance against the Reds.
He has given up 15 hits and ten earned runs on a 6:6 K:BB these last two. That goes to show what happens when you don’t have a good fastball. I’m sure he’ll have some more big outings down the road, but it’s going to be a mixed bag from Meyer, and from any other SP who does not have at least a decent fastball.
Another thing. I saw that Tony Gonsolin went for like 20%+ of people’s budgets in the NFBC Main Event. The entry fee is something close to $2,000 for that. I am continually shocked by stuff like this. How are people that are paying $2,000 to play in a fantasy baseball league thinking Gonsolin is worth that? Where is this coming from?
My take on the Main Event is that I’d never pay that much money just to play against people who are obviously really good at this. The buy-in itself, you would think, filters out the beatable players. But then I see stuff like this! Apparently there are a ton of fish playing in this huge competition. Are there enough in there to convince me that I could actually be profitable in that? No. And I promise you I’ll never play in that thing, but it does go to show that there are silly people all over the place.
And actually, I could see myself playing in that thing someday. One of my readers this year brought up the idea of me selling “shares” of a team. So I would draft and run the team, and a small group of people would pay me to do it. And if I won, they’d get most of the money.
I imagine I could make that happen. I bet there are people out there convinced that it would be a good investment for them. Since I have the platform that I have, people think I’m automatically fantastic at all things fantasy baseball. At this point, I think they’re wrong. I think it would be a very bad investment.
That’s mostly about the set up of those NFBC contests. They take a rake, obviously, but also, most of the money is pushed up to the overall contest where just a few people out of the hundreds that play in it (there are a bunch of different leagues, and they all compete in that league as well as in the overall competition). So that makes it a lot more like a lottery than an actual competition of fantasy baseball skill.
But it’s also about me. I am definitely not very good at NFBC fantasy baseball. It would be wrong of me to offer such a thing, so I won’t be doing it.
Now, before I go, I’m going to highlight one or two hitters at each position. These will be guys you could consider adding if the league type fits, or maybe they’ll just situations to monitor. We’ll keep it under 40% owned on Yahoo just to cast a wide net.
Catcher
Luis Torrens: .039 xwOBA OE, .325 xBA, .399 xwOBA in 74 PAs. But he’s the Mets #2 catcher behind Francisco Alvarez currently. That takes him out of standard league consideration, but who knows - maybe he’ll hit his way into more playing time.
Edgar Quero: He’s been impressive. No homers yet, but he’s hitting .340/.446/.404 with a stellar 9% K% and a .345 xBA. The bat skills are great. I think he’ll continue to pile up hits.
First Base
Ryan O’Hearn: O’Hearn is in a strong-side platoon. And he has done this thing before where he crushes early in the season but then fades away as we get into things. But he’s been very convincing with the bat so far. He’s hitting .306/.379/.600 with seven homers on a 14% Brl% and a 14.7% K%. Very impressive numbers, he’s someone you want in your lineup against right handed pitching.
Rhys Hoskins: Hoskins looks like his old self. He has a 14% BB% and a 21% K%. That’s about where he was in 2021-2022 when he was a very productive bat for the Phillies. The Brl% is at 12.2%, which isn’t fantastic, but it will play just fine as long as the K% stays about where it’s at. He’s a solid add in OBP / points leagues.
Second Base
Colt Keith: This is for deep points leagues only, probably. Keith hasn’t shown much ability to hit homers or steal bases in the Majors so far, but things are on the upswing. He has a 22% K% and a huge 18% BB% this year with a .362 xwOBA. The batting average is suffering (.190), but it should be coming up in a hurry (.240 xBA). He’s an extremely patient hitter (38% Swing%). That’s not great for roto leagues where you don’t get credit for walks, but he is posting very a very competitive OBP right (.340) even with that .224 BABIP holding him back.
Shortstop
J.P. Crawford: He’s boring, and we know with certainty that he will not be a game-changer for your fantasy team. But he does have a .359 xwOBA with an 18% K% and a 15% BB% this year. He’s getting on base, and he’s managed three homers on a 7.2% Brl% along the way.
Third Base
Luis Urias: Another “deep leagues only” consideration. Urias has been a AAAA type guy for several years now. But he’s found playing time with the Athletics, and he’s returned a .246/.338/.492 slash line with five homers on a .352 xwOBA so far. He does not hit the ball super hard, and he’s very slow of foot, but the bat-to-ball skills are there and it’s a good ballpark to play in.
Brooks Lee: He has seemingly added power this year. The 10.7% Brl% and .334 xwOBA are both surprisng to see, and he’s done that without losing much of the contact ability (10% K% so far). He’ll have to keep hitting to stay in the lineup once Willi Castro and Royce Lewis are back, but there are some positive signs from Lee
Outfield
Kyle Stowers: He’s improved the K% so far this year. It’s still kind of high (27%), but way better than last season. the slash line is elite (.324/.390/.546) right now. He’s homered six times on a 19.7% Brl% and the .401 xwOBA checks out as well. I don’t think it’ll stay this good, but Stowers looks like a much improved hitter in 2025.
Trent Grisham: Maybe I was wrong about Grisham! The K% improvement is for real (20% this year), and the quality of contact has been great (.398 xwOBA). The biggest plus is that he’s the Yankees lead-off man against righties. That’s a very valuable spot.
Alexander Canario: He is not an add anywhere right now, because the Pirates will not play the guy. But maybe they’ll come to their senses and start. He has a 21.4% Brl% and a .391 xwOBA in his 42 PAs. The guy has huge raw power. The bad news is that he strikes out an absolute ton. And while his K% this year isn’t bad (24%), it almost surely will be soon with his 60% Contact%. But if he gets into normal reps, he’ll hit some dingers. And that’s something the Pirates lineup desperately needs right now. Enough with the Tommy Pham thing, please!
Dane Myers: Another Marlin! Myers has slashed .347/.413/.595 with three homers on a .390 xwOBA over his last 50ish PAs. The downside is that he’s 29 years old and hasn’t been on anybody’s fantasy radar in the past. But he missed most last year to injury, so it’s hard to say much about him one way or the other. It might not last, but numbers look good right now.
That’s it and that’s all. I’m ready for another week of baseball.
I’ve been trying to take down a DraftKings tournament lately. It’s just too much fun. I’ve been putting a bunch of lineups into a 25 or 50 cent contest just to see what I can make happen. And I do think, maybe, just maybe, there’s an edge there for a guy like me who has solid projections and knows how to work an optimizer. Knowing how to work with Excel between the optimizer and the DraftKings website is a pretty big advantage. So I’m going to pursue that this week. We’ll see if we can splash one and turn 50 cents into a few hundred. And then we’ll go from there.
