MLB

Fantasy Baseball: 3 Things We Learned in Week 19

Abraham Toro has raked since his trade to the Seattle Mariners. Can he maintain a strong pace for the remainder of the season?

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 19th scoring period of the fantasy baseball season.

Abraham Toro is Charging

I'm not exactly sure what Abraham Toro started doing differently upon his trade to the Seattle Mariners two weeks ago, but I'll certainly have some of what he's having. It started with a pinch-hit two-run home run against the Houston Astros -- the team that traded him for Kendall Graveman -- back on July 27th and he hasn't slowed down since. In the past two weeks, Toro is torching the baseball with a .343 average, 11 runs, 4 home runs, 11 RBI and even chipping in a steal to make sure he is contributing in all categories.

Those numbers place him in the top 15 hitters in all of MLB over the past two weeks. Eligible at both second base and third base in Yahoo and rostered in only 41% of leagues, what are the prospects Toro continues a strong pace for the balance of the season?

The playing time certainly seems secure. He immediately started nine straight games, hitting in the fifth spot in each one. But with the hot streak, the Mariners moved him into the leadoff spot the last two contests. Will that continue and lead to more plate appearances? Time will tell, but with Seattle fading out of the Wild Card Spot, the playing time will be there.

What about the underlying skills? As a 24-year old former fifth-round draft pick, he has always had an intriguing on-base/power combo, putting up career minor league numbers of .370 on base percentage and .466 slugging percentage, according to Baseball America. But this breakout could be something as simple as he is just starting to hit the ball really, really hard.

This shows Toro's Hard Hit% from his 50th batted ball event until today, courtesy of Baseball Savant. While he spent some significant time this season under the MLB average, he has started rocking the ball in his last 30 or so batted ball events and it hasn't slowed down. If this trend can continue, Toro has enough patience and contact ability (89.3% Zone Contact rate) to remain very relevant down the stretch.

Cal Quantrill: Real Deal or Mirage?

In standard rotisserie leagues, here are your top three starting pitchers over the last 15 days:

Innings Wins Strikeouts ERA WHIP
Pitcher A 19.1 1 21 0.47 0.84
Pitcher B 19 2 21 0.95 1.11
Pitcher C 19 2 21 1.42 1.05

Pitcher B is Walker Buehler, who has been absolutely outstanding lately. Pitcher C is Max Fried, who similarly has been lights out. But both technically rank behind Pitcher A, who is Cal Quantrill, rotisserie's most valuable hurler over the past 15 days despite only one win. Is this a mirage? Surely this is a lucky streak similar to what Matt Harvey had a couple weeks ago, right? Let's find out.

Drafted in the first round of the same draft as Toro, Quantrill has developed into a four-pitch pitcher (but actually has a fifth he throws 5% of the time) but none have actually evolved into elite pitches. According to FanGraphs' pitch value rankings, Quantrill's fastball ranks 57th among starters with at least 90 innings pitched, his slider ranks 31st, his changeup ranks 25th, and his curveball ranks 37th. None of those are devastating numbers, but they aren't blow-you-away type numbers either.

Quantrill was forced into a starting role around the end of June due to all of the injuries and poor performance from the Cleveland Indians staff, and he gave up 16 runs in his first 19 innings in that role before settling down and only allowing three runs in his last 30 innings pitched. The positive momentum could be that he has almost completely abandoned the slider as a starter, according to FanGraphs.

For now, this is a player to use as a streaming option, and not a set-it-and-forget-it rotational piece. Don't blow the free agent budget wallet all in one place here until we see him do it against all levels of competition.

Add Sam Hilliard

Sam Hilliard (7% rostered in Yahoo Leagues) - If you sort through the Yahoo rotisserie ranks from the last 14 days, you will find that 6 of the top 25 hitters are from the Colorado Rockies. This happens from time to time during a season, after the Rockies have had a long home stretch where they haven't faced the greatest pitching. But we are used to seeing names like Charlie Blackmon, Trevor Story, and Nolan Arenado atop these lists in years past. Not right now, my friend.

Hilliard joins a list that includes C.J. Cron, Brendan Rodgers, Connor Joe, and Elias Diaz as the anonymous Rockies who probably won you your head-to-head matchups if you had the foresight to roster them the last couple of weeks. But Sam Hilliard stands out as a player who is receiving regular playing time (started 9 of the last 11 games) and is providing quite a bit of pop and speed in the back half of the Colorado lineup.

Baseball Savant tracks both maximum exit velocity and spring speed for each player and Hilliard ranks in the top 10% in both categories since his call-up on July 16. He also has a .520 expected slugging percentage on the season and a 19% barrel rate. And while July was a slow kickstart back into facing major league pitching, the light switch has clicked on in August. Hilliard has a .435/.480/1.087 slash line for the month, which is sure to guarantee him playing time in the next six weeks.

Maybe your league-mates are avoiding him this week as the Rockies go on the road for just about the toughest of matchups against the Astros and San Francisco Giants. But then Colorado has a six-game homestand, plus 16 of their 27 games in September are at home. Hilliard is certainly worth a stash for those weeks when he can be a boost to your lineup in the fantasy playoffs.