At this point in the year, full season lines are heavily influenced by how a player started. That first month-to-6 weeks can hold a player down or prop them up for quite a while. Here are 10 players who have surged or fallen from their early season work. And yes, I grant that some of y’all have probably noticed a few of these and if that’s the case, just exclude yourself from the headline and roast the dweebs who aren’t as cool as us.

Yes… that’s right. As cool as us.

I ran Volume 1 of this column a couple weeks ago.

HITTING

Avisaíl García has been a Top 20 OF on the year. You may recall that The BAT loved Garcia initially, but then had to drop his projection when the Brewers brought on Jackie Bradley Jr. since it was setting up to cut Garcia’s playing time with Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich being guaranteed two spots. JBJ has been a complete non-factor and both Cain and Yelich have missed time clearing the path for a full-time role for Garcia which he has taken full advantage of with a .270/.341/.493 line, 24 HR, 76 RBI, 59 R, and 7 SB in 449 PA. Only 17 qualified outfielders have topped his 120 wRC+.

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Cleveland has become something of a starting pitcher factory. It really started with the emergence of Corey Kluber and reclamation of Carlos Carrasco in 2014 and has continued through this year despite a bevy of injuries. Their best starters – Shane Bieber and Aaron Civale – have spent months on the IL and derailed Cleveland’s season, but there has been plenty of opportunity for the likes of Triston McKenzie, Cal Quantrill, and Eli Morgan, showing that Cleveland is likely to remain a pitching force for years to come. I want to focus on McKenzie today.

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At this point in the year, full season lines are heavily influenced by how a player started. That first month-to-6 weeks can hold a player down or prop them up for quite a while. Here are 10 players who have surged or fallen from their early season work. And yes, I grant that some of y’all have probably noticed a few of these and if that’s the case, just exclude yourself from the headline and roast the dweebs who aren’t as cool as us.

Yes… that’s right. As cool as us.

PITCHING

Kenta Maeda has a 2.98 ERA and 0.99 WHIP in his last eight starts since July 1st. In that time, he has a 31% K rate and 6% BB rate across 45.3 IP. In his first 12 starts, he had a 5.56 ERA, 1.55 WHIP, 21% K, and 8% BB in 56.7 IP.

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We are only a month into the “second half” but we are already seeing some pitchers turn their season around. I put it in quotes because it’s obviously not a pure 81/81 game split, but rather the halves are determined by the All-Star break. I’m sure some players use the time off to dig into their numbers and come up with a gameplan to improve while others likely just relax and enjoy the breather. These three arms have been markedly better since July and I wanted to investigate what changed to bring about these turnarounds.

Marco Gonzales, SEA

1H: 5.88 ERA/1.46 WHIP in 56.7 IP | 2H: 1.67 ERA/0.90 WHIP in 32.3 IP

While few fully believed Gonzales’s 2020 (3.10 ERA/0.95 WHIP) since it was just two months, he was still drafted for useful ratios over a good number of innings. At no point in the first half was his ERA below 5.00 and his 2.4 HR/9 was seeing him hit more waiver wires with each passing week. He opened the second half with a trip to Colorado which was sure to be a disaster given how his season was going to that point… so of course he put up a 5 IP/2 ER outing, notching his second win of the year.

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As we push through the dog days of the summer, the backend teams of the league are churning through their reinforcements, and it is not uncommon to come across someone you just don’t know that well. You might’ve forgotten about them if they were once notable, or they may be deep on prospects lists (if they are listed at all) and you are just wholly unfamiliar with them. Let’s take a closer look at 10 such hitters and see if there might be some fantasy value to uncover.

Jorge Mateo | BAL, OF – 71 wRC+, 2 HR, 8 SB in 129 PA

Mateo might fall under the Yankee Prospect Hype Machine wherein a prospect gets a bit more juice than they deserve simply by being in the Yankees org. He was traded over to Oakland in the Sonny Gray deal where he continued to generate interest but failed to get a chance (even with a rabbit ball-fueled 19 HR season at AAA in 2019). He was traded to a worse situation when the A’s flipped him to San Diego, though he finally debuted in 2020 with a meager 20 wRC+ in 22 PA. A 57 wRC+ in another 57 PA was all San Diego needed before he was selected off waiver by Baltimore.

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Over the course of the season, I have a lot of topics that pop into my head to either write about or discuss on the podcast and as such, they are incorporated into those mediums. Sometimes I think of things that just aren’t deep enough for their own article and maybe don’t even fit well on a particular pod.

This article, which I plan to run the rest of the year if it is met well, plans to address those topics. It’ll be a handful of smaller topics that I couldn’t fit into any other article or podcast during the week. Sometimes it might be 2-3 sentences, other times it will be 2-3 paragraphs and it can range from a particular player to an interesting stat that I think is worthy of at least some attention.

An Ascending Angel

Taylor Ward first got my attention way back in 2018 when he came up in mid-August as a non-catching catcher meaning he had catcher eligibility but wasn’t slated to play there in the majors. It was carryover from his 2017 minor league eligibility and some outlets left him there despite only playing 3B in 2018, even in the minors. I scooped him in a couple leagues and thought I struck gold when he had hits in four of his first five games.

Sick confirmation bias, Paul.

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Chances are if you picked up Trevor Larnach in a shallower league, you cut him after a couple of weeks due to poor performance. Two weeks in he was running a .186/.314/.326 with just a single homer. A week later he was at .228/.389/.456 so he was still hitting a lot of waiver wires despite some OPS improvement. The walks were great but there was little else in terms of production. Hell, even his .247/.389/.438 to date doesn’t scream “pick up!” And yet, that’s exactly what I’m doing because I see Larnach having a strong summer that will make him relevant across many formats.

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The Miami Marlins have become a starting pitcher haven as their three studs – Pablo López, Sandy Alcantara, and Sixto Sánchez – were heavily targeted during draft season while Trevor Rogers was a popular sleeper pick. Sanchez has been derailed by a shoulder injury, but Rogers has greatly exceeded expectations and ensured a trio of beasts atop their rotation.

And now, a new challenger has emerged!

Cody Poteet is making a case to be included with the others as all-formats studs, though we definitely need to take a closer look before anointing him to the level of Lopez-Alcantara-Rogers or even Sanchez (but he was shutdown for discomfort after a 20-pitch bullpen on May 28th). Even with a rough start last time out (4.3 IP/5 ER), Poteet still has a 2.95 ERA in 21.3 IP which tells you how insane he was in the first three starts – 1.06 ERA in 17 IP.

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Robbie Ray is having a huge season thus far. He has a 3.42 ERA and 1.10 WHIP in 47.3 innings and his 3.29 SIERA stands as a career best, even better than in 2017 when he posted a 2.89 ERA but a 3.53 SIERA. While being consistently maddening throughout his career – even in 2017 he had a 4.57 ERA through 8 starts and was likely on some waiver wires only to deliver a 2.24 ERA in his final 20 starts – he didn’t lose widespread fantasy appeal until last year’s 6.62 ERA in 51.7 innings. Let’s dive a bit deeper and see what Ray is doing to drive this success and how much of it is sustainable.

Arsenal is always the easiest place to start in a pitcher breakdown. Off the top we see a velo boost that has his fastball sitting at 95.3 mph, a career high. Looking at just four-seamers, his usage is also up 11 points to 58%. The results have been a bit neutered by the .238 ISO thanks to 7 HR in 125 PA. The .237/.280/.475 line is still much better than last year’s .292/.464/.689, but a bit worse than 2019’s .221/.322/.391 which is a little surprising given the improvements in not only the velocity, but also control.

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James McCann was a prototypical backup catcher with a strong arm that earned him the nickname “McCannon” but had little else going on during his tenure with the Detroit Tigers (2014-18). He moved to the White Sox in 2019 and made the All-Star game on the back of a BABIP-fueled run that saw him hitting .319/.376/.514 through June with 9 HR and 4 SB. No one thought the .403 BABIP would hold and they were right as it sank to .314 from July 1st on yielding a .231/.285/.410 line.

His stock rose heading into 2020 just because he was an afterthought coming into 2019, but he still didn’t generate that much attention. This time he used a .425 BABIP in his first 17 games to post a .351/.424/.544 line with 3 HR in 66 PA. Regression hit hard in September with a .182 BABIP that dragged his line down to .200/.267/.525, but the power held with 4 more homers. All told, he had a .355 BABIP in 2019-20, 2nd to only Jorge Alfaro (.359) among catchers with at least 500 PA. In fact, McCann was 9th in all of baseball among the 226 hitters with at least 500 PA.

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