Fantasy Baseball: 3 Things We Learned in Week 14

Baseball fans love their stats. We devour them, dissect them, and build our fantasy rosters around them. Each week of the 2021 baseball season, we will be gifted with another statistical sample size of pitches, plate appearances, and playing time. Knowing it often takes hundreds or even thousands of pitches or batted-ball events for trends to normalize, how should fantasy managers adjust to the ebbs and flows of weekly player performance?

Each week during this season, this piece will look at trends that have emerged over the past week and determine if it is signal or noise moving forward. What is prescriptive in helping build winning fantasy teams and what can be ignored as small sample size noise? Hopefully, we can make sense of what has just happened to help us make smarter roster and free agent budget decisions.

Let's take a look at some of the data from the 14th scoring period of the fantasy baseball season.

Peeking Under the (Gavin) Sheets

The Chicago White Sox have been hit hard by the injury bug in 2021. We all know about Eloy Jimenez being lost for most, if not all, of the season. They also lost Luis Robert to a hip injury until at least August. Lately, Adam Engel, Nick Madrigal, Adam Eaton, and Jake Lamb have all spent time on the injured list as well. But it was that last name -- Lamb -- that forced the call-up of a very intriguing power prospect by the name of Gavin Sheets.

All Sheets has done in the 22 at-bats since being called up is slash .318/.360/.682 with two home runs and eight RBI, good enough to be a top-20 batter in traditional roto formats over the last seven days. But beyond the obvious question of "does Sheets stick with the big club when they get healthier?" we should evaluate whether this can even be a short-term rental for fantasy managers in need of power stats.

Sheets is ranked by MLB.com as Chicago's ninth-best prospect, and at age 25 is the oldest in their top-ten. In that regard, the time was right to see if the power potential would translate to the majors. This was a player who had slugged seven home runs in just 41 games in his first stop in AAA this year, after hitting 16 round-trippers in AA in 2019. But more importantly than the natural power is his plate discipline and how it could potentially aid him in the big leagues. He has a walk rate above 10% in the minors and has never struck out more than 19% at any level of his professional career.

The sample size is laughably small at this point, and we can't reasonably expect Sheets to keep up his first week pace, especially after pitchers get film on him, but so-far, so-good from a batted ball perspective

What this shows, from Baseball Savant, is that 10 of Sheets' 20 batted ball events have been hit at more than 90 miles per hour. Hard contact will get you some base knocks, which should get you playing time, which can then keep you out of the minors. Sheets, (only 8% rostered as of Monday), deserves a look to see if there is a legitimate breakout happening here.

Ranger Suarez: Last Man Standing

If you have been paying attention this year, you know that the Philadelphia Phillies bullpen is an outright disaster. Hector Neris started the season on a high note but has now allowed 12 earned runs in his last 4.1 innings, ballooning his ERA to 5.17 and out of the closer role. It was handed out over to Jose Alvarado, he of the blazing fastball, but Alvarado has allowed seven runs in his last 4.1 innings after replacing Neris. Archie Bradley has been off-and-on hurt all year and carries a 4.26 ERA and 1.63 WHIP into July so he's not an option for saves.

What does manager Joe Girardi decide to do this week? Turn the high-leverage innings over to Ranger Suarez, a 25-year old who last meaningfully pitched in 2019. But whether in the pressure innings or any other spot, he has been called on, Suarez has been simply masterful this season. In 31.2 innings he has a 0.85 ERA and a 0.69 WHIP, complemented by a 24.4% strikeout rate. He earned his first save of his career last week, which got the free agent budget machines running overtime in almost every league. Maybe he is still available in yours, and if you are in desperate need of saves, this might be Girardi's best option the rest of the year.

Suarez ranks in the top-30 among all relievers with at least 30 innings pitched in walk rate, home runs per nine innings, and WHIP (where he is second only to Craig Kimbrel). His 24% strikeout rate may not stand out like a traditional closer (who tend to be more in the 30% range), but he makes up for it with a 20% soft contact rate (also top-30) and an elite 65.4% groundball rate. That number ranks fifth among all relievers through the first half of this season.

If somehow Suarez slipped through the FAB or waiver cracks, he is a strong add for the second half of the season.

Add Adam Duvall

Adam Duvall (57% rostered in Yahoo leagues) - I already know what will be my greatest regret of the 2021 fantasy season will be. We may only be halfway done, but I am feeling the intense pain of missing out on a great opportunity to roster Adam Duvall on a team that desperately needed it. In one of my ultra-competitive leagues that includes a few industry people, I had a comfortable lead in saves. I was offered Adam Duvall for one of my second-tier closers, and even though that team was desperate for home runs and RBI, I wasn't sure of Duvall's role and potential to be traded. Fast forward three weeks later and Duvall has been one of the hottest hitters on the planet the last month.

In fact, over the last 30 days, Duvall has been the ninth-most valuable player in traditional rotisserie leagues on Yahoo with a .301 average, 17 runs, 10 home runs, 27 RBI, while chipping in 3 stolen bases. Solidified (for now) in the cleanup spot in Miami's order, Duvall has been simply mashing. In fact, according to Baseball Savant, he is in the top 10 of non-injured players for the highest rise in xwOBA over his last 50 plate appearances.

He may just be a boring corner outfielder playing in his age 32 season but he has tapped into some power and barrel potential that was unseen or underdeveloped before this 2021 campaign. His barrel rate (16.1%), average exit velocity (91.1 mph), and Hard Hit% (48.3%) are all career highs. While his strikeout rate is also the highest of his career (30.9%), his 2021 contact rate (74%) is right in line with his career average (74.5%).

Duvall seems to be seeing the ball better this year, as his first-pitch strike percentage is a career-low 59.4% while his contact rate on pitches in the zone is a career-high (86.5%). That increased selectivity is surely driving the better hard hit and barrel rates and with strong seasons from Jazz Chisholm, Starling Marte and Jesus Aguilar batting in front of him, the opportunities for run production should continue to be bountiful. This is a player who should not be available in 43% of leagues.

If he is available, pick him up and if he gets traded in a month to a part-time role, you can move on knowing he cost you nothing.