BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues
ROSTERED IN: 44% of Leagues
ANALYSIS: Confession time: I have been playing fantasy baseball for the entirety of Javier Baez's career. Over the past five years, that's been five or six leagues per season. I do not recall ever having Baez on any of those teams. He strikes out way too much. He's too streaky. His cost was way too high during his heyday in Chicago when he was winning the World Series and going to All-Star games as a member of the Cubs.
Times have changed. Baez is in the middle of a huge contract with the Tigers. He hit .238 last season and is batting under .235 this season. As a result, he's available in over half of fantasy leagues, and now may be the time to enter The Javy Baez Experience.
Congratulations to Javier Báez on 1,000 career hits 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/yac5Tde0i0
— Cubs Zone ™️ (@CubsZone) June 21, 2023
If we look at his OPS by month, we see a sub-.600 OPS bat in April and May, but we also see a major turnaround in June (.755 OPS). What we also see is a K-Rate over 30%, whereas early in the season, he was making more contact:
Hear me out... are more strikeouts good for Baez? For context, he whiffed over 33% of the time in 2021 and still blasted 31 homers with a .265 batting average. We established earlier that Baez is a notoriously streaky hitter. If he's entering a hot streak, you'll be glad you added him now. I added him in an important league myself; let's see where this wild ride ends up.
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