The biggest Fantasy Baseball storyline all season long has been the misalignment between pitchers and hitters, with the former being overpowered and the latter underpowered.
But that balance is beginning to shift. As always happens when the weather warms up, offense is picking up, and the increase has been particularly stark in the past couple weeks. This table pretty much sums it up:
| | League BABIP | League HR/FB |
Through June 14, 2023 | .297 | 12.2% |
Through June 14, 2024 | .288 | 10.8% |
June 15-30, 2023 | .299 | 12.3% |
June 15-30, 2024 | .294 | 12.6% |
The 2023 season struck a pretty good balance between pitching and hitting and was pacing well ahead of the 2024 season in terms of hitting "fairness" through June 14, as you can see. But 2024 has about caught up since June 15, still trailing in terms of BABIP but having an even higher home run-to-fly ball rate.
Not surprisingly, some of the biggest risers from this weekend are underachieving hitters suddenly returning to form.
Stock Up
When Vladimir Guerrero entered June with only five home runs, I decided it was time to stop ranking him like a stud hitter for Fantasy. Sure, he was underperforming his expected stats, his Statcast page still being lit up in red, but the same was true in 2022 and 2023, when he also disappointed with his actual production. You'd think two-plus years would be enough time to sniff out an aberration, but you'd think wrong. Guerrero went on to hit .318 (34 for 107) with eight home runs in June, with six of those homers coming in his last nine games. His fly-ball and pull rates were both up for the month -- not enormously, but enough to more than double his home run-to-fly-ball rate from the previous two months. I've long suspected that a suboptimal spray angle was the source of his statistical shortfall, and there may be more correction to come. For as hot as he's been, his actual batting average (.297) and slugging percentage (.471) still lag behind his expected marks (.304 and .538).
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Many were quick to blame Manny Machado's offseason elbow surgery for his slow start, which is a reasonable enough assumption except that none of the underlying data seemed out of character for the 31-year-old. The exit velocity readings were as high as usual (88th percentile average and 94th percentile max), and the plate discipline was in line with career norms. So it shouldn't have been surprising to see him wrap up a big month of June in which he hit .333 with five homers, two steals and a .900 OPS. The capstone was his two-homer game Saturday. I'm going to guess your buy-low window closed with that performance, but the overall numbers are still middling enough to take a shot.
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To say Zac Gallen looked refreshed after missing a month with a hamstring injury would be an understatement. It's not just that he one-hit the Athletics over six innings, striking out seven. It's that his fastball was up 2.3 mph on average (95.2 vs. 92.9), making it the hardest he's thrown in any game in his career. "I didn't want to come back here and be caught off guard," Gallen said. "Felt like the things I've been working on delivery-wise had kind of clicked." Seeing as Gallen was already a borderline ace at 93 mph, it's hard to imagine what a jump to 95 could mean for his outlook, provided it continues. For now, it's just a one-off, but you can come away from this outing with the assurance he's healthy and worth activating again even with a not-so-favorable matchup against the Dodgers next time out.
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If Gerrit Cole's first two outings were cause for concern, then this latest one Sunday should at least give you a small sigh of relief. He averaged 95.8 mph on his fastball, which is still down a tick from last year but better than in those first two starts. More importantly, he kept the Blue Jays lineup in check after serving up four home runs to the Mets last time out. "It was a good day," he said. "There was a pretty conscious effort to hone in the command a little bit, making sure we're giving ourselves a chance over the plate. That's part of the buildup process." Cole has more than once referred to his time back with the Yankees as being part of a "buildup," which suggests he wasn't totally game-ready at the time he was activated. But he has maintained that he feels good after missing nearly three months with an elbow injury and is probably back to being usable in Fantasy.
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After looking more comfortable at the plate throughout June, Wyatt Langford finally had his breakthrough game Sunday, hitting for the cycle in five at-bats at Baltimore. It wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing cycle in that the single and double were both just well-placed ground balls, but all four of his batted balls were hit at least 102.5 mph. For the month, he ended up batting .309 (30 for 97) with three homers, three triples, six doubles and six stolen bases, striking out at just a 16 percent rate. He's still learning to maximize his power, but the takeaway is that the most-hyped prospect coming into the season is finally beginning to pay dividends. As painful as it was to have him in your lineup earlier this season, he's earned the benefit of the doubt again.
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It's fair to say the production hasn't measured up to the hype for Vinnie Pasquantino in parts of three big-league seasons, and at some point, that will need to change. But I would sum up his struggles to this point as being mostly a result of bad timing. You may remember that he completely delivered on the hype as a rookie in 2022 and was off to a strong start in 2023 as well before a shoulder injury dragged down his numbers and ended his season early. So far, this year's numbers look much like those 2023 numbers -- which is to say underwhelming -- but you may have heard that offense has suffered across the league. Pasquantino still has good exit velocity readings and a low strikeout rate, a 74th percentile xwOBA and a 77th percent xSLG. As offense picks up this summer, he stands to be a prime beneficiary. It may have already started with his 7-for-12 performance this weekend, which included two home runs.
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A couple turns ago, Pablo Lopez had a 5.63 ERA and was looking like the biggest miss among pitchers drafted as aces. But through the struggles, his strikeout and walk rates remained elite, and his ERA estimators (namely xERA and xFIP) were more or less in line with 2023, which is to say quite good. He was giving up too many home runs, sure, but apart from that, he seemed like fundamentally the same pitcher. And now he's performing like it again. His latest gem at the Mariners this weekend followed a scoreless eight-inning effort with 14 strikeouts at the Athletics last weekend. If you're invested in Lopez, that panic that was beginning to set in should have mostly dissipated by now.
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Stock Down
Pablo Lopez may at one point have looked like the biggest miss among pitchers drafted as aces, but that dubious distinction now clearly belongs to Kevin Gausman, who would have been my choice all along. Unlike Lopez, his stuff has clearly diminished, with every pitch being down nearly a mile per hour from a year ago, which is especially concerning for a 33-year-old who missed much of spring training with a shoulder issue. He's not getting as much drop on his bread-and-butter splitter either. He has had a couple of fakeout starts, such as his complete game shutout with 10 strikeouts at the Athletics on June 8, but Sunday's start was the latest and most painful reminder that he's just not right. Play the matchups with him or don't play him at all.
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It was easy to keep the faith in Nolan Jones in April, when the season was still fresh and so many hitters were struggling anyway, and that faith probably convinced you to stash him for all six weeks of his back injury. But there needed to be a quick payoff for that faith to hold, and there just hasn't been. He's hit .214 (9 for 42) in his 14 games back with the Rockies, and the strikeouts have begun to spike in a way that's all too familiar. His five strikeouts Sunday upped his total number in his past 23 plate appearances to 14. We know Jones is capable of more, but he doesn't have nearly the track record as a big-leaguer to trust that he'll deliver on it in due time. And the wait is proving to be particularly damaging. You can probably move on in three-outfielder leagues, understanding that you'll want to act quickly if he shows signs of heating up.
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I knew not to trust Tyler Anderson's 2.48 ERA coming into last week and didn't want to get caught holding the bag when he regressed to what at that point was a 4.49 xERA, 4.55 FIP, and 5.09 xFIP. But I recommended him as a two-start streamer anyway, figuring that if he came back down to earth with matchups as favorable as the Athletics and Tigers, it would be extraordinarily bad timing. Well, between the two starts, he allowed nine runs on 12 hits with six walks and four strikeouts over 9 2/3 innings, which was extraordinarily bad timing. Let's just move on and never speak of him again.
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