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Gavin Sheets is a fantasy baseball waiver wire pickup for Week 18 of the 2021 MLB season. Consider adding the 1B if he's free agent in your leagues.
BALLER MOVE: Add in leagues of 14+ teams
ROSTERED IN: 8% of leagues
ANALYSIS: Sheets hit the ground running with two homers and eight RBI in his first four major league games. He cooled off considerably afterwards, reaching a point by the All-Star break where he was dropped in most leagues where he was picked up. The break did Sheets some good. He has three hits since the break. Two of them are home runs and he has driven in five.
Sheets was hitting .292 at AAA Charlotte before his promotion this year and hit .281 in 342 minor league games. We saw Sheets hit 16 homers for AA Birmingham in 2019, his last full minor league season. His minor league career was marked with a high walk rate (11.4%) and low strikeout rate (19.7%). Those have mostly held so far in the majors with a 11.5% walk rate and 23% strikeout rate. It's uncommon for a rookie to have that high of a walk rate in his first 17 career games.
The only problem that shows so far is that he doesn't have a hit against a breaking pitch so far in those 17 games. If pitchers keep attacking him with breaking pitches, that could become a problem. It's also why his xBA is low at .241 despite a 50% hard hit percentage and 15% barrel percentage.
The main thing that Sheets has going for him is plate discipline. He's not chasing bad pitches and is hitting the good ones well. His minor league track record suggests that Sheets should be able to hit around a dozen homers and drive in 40-50 runs the rest of the way. If he can do that with a .280 average, he's a solid fantasy asset. He is even more important in leagues that count OBP with his above-average walk rate.
The xBA suggests that Sheets has been a bit unlucky. The .200 BABIP is unsustainably low. Once that number normalizes, we are going to have a guy who shouldn't hit any worse than .250 with serious power upside. We can use that, right?
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