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Dave Swan's fantasy baseball buy low and sell high candidates for Week 4 of the 2021 season. He recommends MLB risers and fallers to target or deal away in trades.
Sometimes fantasy baseball can resemble the stock market. You want the best portfolio of players without having to pay too much for them. Sometimes to achieve the optimal team, you need to make trades. The best way to gain added value is to trade away an over-performing player for one in a rut. This way, you reap the benefits of a stud player hitting their stride as you get to watch the other person look for answers. The tricky part is assessing which players are trending which way.
We don't have a ton of data to reference on the 2021 season, as many of the underlying metrics still need more time to stabilize before we can make exact assumptions. However, we can look at a player's track record and performance in this early season.
This will be a weekly piece that drops every Thursday for your assistance. If you like it, follow me on Twitter @davithius to send me a note, suggest other players you're not sure about, or if you just want to chat about baseball. I am always happy and willing to answer questions.
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Trade Targets to Acquire
C.J. Cron, Colorado Rockies
On paper, C.J. Cron looks like a wasted draft pick. Good! We want another fantasy manager to feel this agony. A stat line that consists of a .192/.300/.327 slash line with one HR in 52 at-bat screams hide me on the bench. There is not a better time than now to try and snatch him away from another team.
Diving right into the statcast metrics, the biggest takeaway is that Cron is still making quality contact with the ball. A 12.5% barrel rate, 112.1-mph maximum exit velocity(top-8 in MLB) and .413 xwOBAcon is a great sign to see. The next question is, why is the production being stifled? He has a 46% ground ball rate, which is slightly more elevated than his career marks. The good news is that Cron is shaking off that early-season rust and hitting more fly balls. There could be a power explosion soon, and you want to get in on the ground floor of that investment.
Eugenio Suarez, Cincinnati Reds
In 159 games in 2019, Eugenio Suarez put 49 baseballs into the bleachers. After last year's shortened 2020 season, Suarez had 15 HRs in 57 games. It is safe to say the now-shortstop has plenty of power in his swing. This is evident by his robust .211 ISO over a 3500 plate appearance sample size.
Eugenio has always had an above-league average K%(25.4%). Currently, he is striking out at a 35% clip, which is the highest mark of his career. There is an odd anomaly developing about his plate discipline. His chase rate continues to go down, but the zone contact rate is also dropping. Also, he is swinging less than ever before. However, when he puts the bat to the ball, quality contact is still made, as shown by his 9.7% barrel rate. Overall, I think he needs to forget about moving to shortstop and swing at more pitches because when he makes contact, good things happen. Grab him up before this power-hitting veteran adjusts.
Lucas Giolito, Chicago White Sox
Regardless of the current stat line, Lucas Giolito is still one of the premier studs of the MLB. But this is the perfect time to start making offers for the White Sox ace. After allowing seven earned runs in only one inning pitched, we could be finding a manager who thinks the wheels are falling off.
Scale back that dreadful start and examine the body of work leading up to it. Giolito tossed 17.2 innings with a WHIP south of 1.00 with 26 strikeouts. That is exactly what someone would expect after seeing his performances from 2019 until now.
Let's steer our focus towards Giolito's pitches. The fastball velocity sits just a tick below where it was in 2020, but it's early in the season and the weather is a touch on the cold side. This is entirely forgivable and we will let it slide. In his last outing, it wasn't the fastball with slightly less velocity that let him down. It was his changeup that got tattooed for a pair of home runs. His changeup has nearly struck out more batters than allowed balls in play. That's an elite pitch. That one bad start needs to be chalked up to bad luck and an out-of-the-ordinary early start time. Stranger things have happened on Patriot's Day in Boston. Aces are impossible to find, so grabbing Giolito after that horrendous start would be a massive bump.
Trade Targets to Move
Tyler Naquin, Cincinnati Reds
In 50 at-bats, Naquin has bashed six home runs with 26 runs+RBI. The advanced metrics are off the chart impressive(.380 ISO, .985 OPS, and 165 wRC+). The problem, however, is Naquin's advanced metrics(.181 ISO, .776 OPS, and 103 wRC+) don't back up the newfound success. It's safe to say that Naquin is just playing way over his head to begin the season. These metrics don't support continued success. To put it bluntly, he's been incredibly lucky.
This may be your last chance to get full value for how Naquin's performance to start the season. Nick Castellanos is set to return from a tw0-game suspension and the Cincinnati Reds outfield is already crowded with outfielders like Nick Senzel and Jesse Winker. It is safe to assume that Naquin will not be in the outfield every day like he has been. Move him along to another team while the stats look great and the value is at its peak.
Yermin Mercedes, Chicago White Sox
Mercedes has taken the MLB by storm since he popped on everyone's radar. In 16 games, he is currently slashing .390/.429/.661 with four HRs. It's a tremendous start for the rookie. However, he is not your prototypical rookie. Not often does a 28-year-old rookie that's been down in the minor leagues for nearly a decade come up and hit like this. While player development is not linear, Yermin's is borderline unprecedented.
I want to point out something interesting in Yermin's batted ball profile. Nearly half of his batted balls are hit into the dirt, which is not a good thing because ground balls produce a meager batting average. In 2021 the MLB average on HR/FB is 13.3%. Yermin's is nearly double that at 25%. Lastly, he has a massively inflated BABIP hovering around .422. That is quite a bit higher than any stop we have seen in the minors as well. My suggestion is to move him to a team looking for power or doesn't already carry a utility-only player before his metrics stabilize and fall off.
Jon Gray, Colorado Rockies
Jon Gray has flashed some decent years in regards to Colorado Rockies pitchers. That is a good place to begin the reason to trade Gray off. As much as we want to believe a pitcher can defeat Coors Field, the dry, light air makes Coors a hitter haven and a pitcher's worst nightmare. So let's state the obvious: half of Jon Gray's starts will likely be in one of the worst places to pitch. There, that is out of the way.
There are also a few anomalies that don't add up either. One thing in particular is Gray's walk rate has spiked to a career-high 12.1%. Walks haven't been Gray's biggest problem; the main reason he struggles is batters tee off on his pitches. He has a career 14.1% HR/FB rate, but in 2021 it's at 5.3%. Part of the low HR/FB rate is that batters have not hit as many barrels as they usually do.
There is just too long of a track record in the same bad ballpark for pitchers to consider pressing your luck. The best thing to do is get anything you can for Gray and watch him implode on someone else's team.
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