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Making the right trades can be crucial to championship success in fantasy baseball, almost as much as the draft, if not more. While most trades can have a significant impact on your fantasy team, it’s the deals where you acquire undervalued players and then see their production improve that can really tip the scales in your favor where the standings are concerned.
The same can certainly be said about trading away players at the right time when they have the most fantasy trade value. Those deals could happen in the second week of April or the last week of August, but they’re impactful all the same.
Here are some undervalued candidates to pursue in trades and some overvalued ones who you should consider dealing for if they presently occupy a spot on your roster.
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Undervalued Players To Trade For
Marcus Semien, Texas Rangers
Semien was hitting just .206 with a .222 on-base percentage, a minuscule 2.8% walk rate, and just one home run and a stolen base in his first 36 plate appearances, but he’s stepped it up recently after that relatively small sample size.
In his last 41 plate appearances entering play Wednesday, the infielder is hitting .333 with a .415 on-base percentage, three home runs, and three doubles while walking more (five walks, 12.2% walk rate) than he’s striking out (four strikeouts, 9.8% strikeout rate).
Given his slow start, his batting average and on-base numbers look good, but not great with a .271 average and a .325 on-base percentage. With that in mind, now might be the last time or opportunity to try and acquire Semien in a trade before his fantasy value skyrockets even more so.
In addition to the four home runs and a stolen base, Semien is logging strong counting stats in other categories. He’s registered 16 RBI and 16 runs scored. Both rank in the top five in the league. While those metrics can sometimes be fickle, the runs scored are particularly of note as Semien has registered half of his runs scored without Corey Seager in the lineup since the shortstop was placed on the injured list.
Once Seager, who has hit second behind Semien in each game he’s played when healthy this season, returns, Semien’s run-scoring chances should only improve.
Juan Soto, San Diego Padres
Soto isn’t quite as undervalued in leagues where on-base percentage is part of the scoring as he still is drawing walks at an extremely high rate and getting on base via free passes more than he is striking out. Entering play on Wednesday, the slugger owned a 23.2% walk rate compared to a 20.7% strikeout rate in 82 plate appearances. That, in part, has helped his on-base percentage sit at .366.
And while the uptick in strikeouts, albeit in a small sample size, might look concerning when paired with a .175 batting average, especially after Soto hit just .242 last season, it shouldn’t be concerning. None of it should, really. If anything, it represents an opportunity to try and acquire Soto because all the 24-year-old has continued to do is make elite contact, he just doesn’t have the quality batting average to show for it. Yet.
The outfielder is sporting an xwOBA north of .400 – it’s .411 to be exact – that isn’t far off from being .100 points higher than his wOBA (.330). Elsewhere, Soto has logged a 54.3% hard-hit rate to go along with a 17.4% barrel rate. All three of those metrics, the xwOBA, the hard-hit rate, and the barrel rate, are in the 88th percentile league-wide. Or, to put it quite plainly, are elite.
What else is elite about Soto’s metrics this season you might ask? That’d be his chase rate. The former National’s chase rate currently sits at 18.4%, just a smidgen higher than his 17.2% metric from 2022 and his career 17.0% chase rate.
Despite the slight uptick in strikeouts, which have come in a small sample size, Soto for the most part is still not offering at bad pitches and making contact with ones he can do damage with. Case in point, his .454 xwOBAcon is higher than it was in either 2022 or 2021.
No one is going to trade Juan Soto simply just to trade him, but if the manager in your league has any trepidation about Soto's start, now's the time to float an offer in their direction.
Overvalued Players To Trade Away
Patrick Wisdom, Chicago Cubs
Beware the strikeouts with Wisdom.
That, in short, is the moral of the story here for the Cubs infielder, who – while providing quality power production – owns a 36.7% strikeout rate in the Majors. And while he’s lowered that strikeout rate so far this season, it’s still something to watch and be wary of moving forward.
Patrick Wisdom Strikeout Rate By Season Since 2021
- 2021: 375 PA, 40.8 K%
- 2022: 534 PA, 34.3 K%
- 2023: 62 PA, 30.6 K%
A deeper delve into the strikeout metrics shows Wisdom is chasing pitches out of the zone at pretty much the same rate, with his chase rate rising from 26.4% to 26.6% this season. What’s more, his zone contact rate is nearly identical to what it was last season as well, rising from 73.7% in 2022 to 73.8% this season in 2023.
While Wisdom’s overall whiff rate is down from 36.4% to 30.5% he’s making way more contact on pitches he’s chasing, seeing his chase rate rise from 38.1% to 56.8% this year. In seasons in which Wisdom has at least 300 Major League plate appearances, his chase contact rate has never finished above the 40% mark. It’s still a reasonably small sample size, but it’s worth wondering if the chase contact will continue for Wisdom.
While his power certainly looks sustainable – the Cubs slugger has mashed eight home runs in 62 plate appearances to go along with a .454 wOBA, a .391 xwOBA, a .549 xwOBAcon, and a 62.2% hard-hit rate – any increase in strikeouts could significantly hinder his .281 average and .270 xBA.
Kyle Freeland, Colorado Rockies
Freeland surrendered just two earned runs in his first three starts, spanning 18.2 innings, this season for the Colorado Rockies, getting off to what can only be described as a strong start statistically – at least where his ERA was concerned. The Rockies starter logged a 0.96 ERA, but his 4.33 FIP told a much different story, as did just 11 strikeouts in those 18.2 innings.
Generally speaking, low strikeout starters aren’t the most ideal in fantasy, even if they’re providing quality production in a few other categories. Stepping outside of fantasy and looking at real-life baseball for just a moment, low strikeout starters certainly aren’t ideal when half their starts come at Coors Field.
What’s more, Rockies starters are generally tricky to roster in fantasy given the nature of Coors Field, but it doesn’t help when they’re logging lower strikeout totals. That’s the case, on all accounts, for Freeland, who had a jarring fourth start. A fourth start that came on the mound at Coors Field.
The former first-round pick allowed eight hits, nine runs, seven earned runs, a home run, and a walk in 2.2 innings while striking out one batter. He saw his ERA rise to 3.80 and his FIP spike to 4.86 for the season. While the window to acquire someone like Semien before his fantasy value skyrockets even further is closing, the window to try and move someone like Freeland, before his fantasy value diminishes even more so, might be close to shut.
While Freeland has been reasonably successful at limiting hard contact so far, holding batters to a 4.2% barrel rate, a .329 xwOBAcon, and a 35.2% hard-hit rate, his 13.5% strikeout rate (which sits in the ninth percentile league-wide) and Coors Field are just an unideal match for fantasy purposes. It also doesn’t help that the left-hander has been markedly better away from home than on the road in his career.
Kyle Freeland Career Splits:
- Home: 428.2 IP, 4.79 ERA, 4.68 FIP .350 wOBA against, 64 home runs allowed
- Away: 421.1 IP, 3.72 ERA, 4.27 FIP, .319 wOBA against, 46 home runs allowed
He might have fantasy utility as a streaming option in the right road matchups at times during the season, but fantasy managers are probably best off trying to trade the left-hander at this point in time.
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