Hitter List 5/16: Ranking the Top 150 Hitters To Own ROS

[hitter_list list_id=”19883″ include_stats=”1″ season=”2018″]

Welcome back to Hitter List. Every Wednesday during the regular season, I’ll rank the current value of the top 150 hitters for the remainder of the year. Use these rankings to help get a sense of both a player’s expected performance and his trade value in your fantasy leagues moving forward.  They’re constructed with 12-teamer, H2H, 5×5 leagues in mind; adjust as needed for your specific setup. Position eligibility does factor in to a degree.

As a reminder: There’s a ton of baseball left to be played, and these are rest of season rankings. We’re interested in the long view ’round these parts. That said, adjustments to the List were more aggressive this week and you can expect that to hold in the weeks to come. With that should come the acknowledgment that small shifts are often as much a consequence of other players’ more drastic movements as anything else. Put another way, please do not @ me if a guy moved up like two spots even if he’s failed to get a hit in the last couple games. I do, however, welcome more substantive grievances in the comments.

On to the highlights!

• Injury roundup: The hits just keep on coming, with multiple marquee names facing lengthy absences. A.J. Pollock was off to an incredible start, rewarding those who invested an early pick despite the injury history. He broke his thumb on Monday night and will miss the remainder of the first half. Also likely out until July is Adam Eaton; the Nationals’ outfielder underwent ankle surgery after a lengthy diagnostic process that frustrated fantasy owners. Adrian Beltre and DJ LeMahieu had both only recently returned from injury before having to go back on the DL this week. Beltre re-aggravated his prior hamstring strain, while LeMahieu suffered a sprained thumb. Yoenis Cespedes is healthy enough to pinch-hit, but the Mets placed him on the DL Tuesday morning as his sore hip has not improved. Miguel Cabrera remains out after experiencing soreness in his back and hip during rehab of an injury to neither of those parts of his body, which is just great. The big story, of course, is Robinson Cano. Owners had already braced for a lengthy absence after an errant pitch broke the veteran’s hand, but they’ll be waiting even longer than anticipated. Cano was handed an 80-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance.
• New to or back on the List this week:  Mitch Moreland, Ryon Healy, Nick Markakis, and Gleyber Torres. Moreland and Healy are both riding hot streaks that likely won’t last, though Moreland’s plum spot in a dangerous Boston lineup could continue boosting his counting stats even after he cools off. I still can’t wrap my mind around what’s happening with Markakis, but the results have been there and the peripherals pass the smell test.
• Willson Contreras has logged on. The Cubs catcher entered play last Wednesday hitting .230/.315/.354 with just one home run. Three games later, he’d quadrupled his homer total, more than doubled his RBI, and brought his triple-slash right in line with expectations at .281/.352/.516.
• Christian Villanueva to slump at some point, but this cold streak was particularly brutal. Villanueva was definitely on the chopping block this week as he entered Tuesday’s game hitless in his last 36 at-bats. He finally snapped that skid, going 2-for-3 with his 10th homer of the year. That’s just enough to earn a reprieve, though his place on the List remains in jeopardy.