[hitter_list list_id=”24028″ 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.
We’re officially in the back half of the season, which means that adjustments to the List will be more aggressive than they’ve been previously. In particular, injuries will take on added importance as even a minimum DL stint will cost a player a decent chunk of their remaining games. Rest assured that any rankings you vehemently disagree with were explicitly an attempt to insult you and/or your favorite player(s) personally. Seriously, before you work yourself into a rage in the comment section, understand that this is only one person’s opinion. I’m wrong a lot! Comes with the territory of doing this sort of thing.
On to the highlights!
- What can you say about Matt Carpenter? Dude is outside his mind right now and making me sorely regret writing him off after that slow start. Speaking of the Cardinals, poor Jose Martinez may never start a game again. Too bad for fantasy owners who were enjoying his performance at the plate.
- Injury roundup: Gary Sanchez re-aggravated the groin injury he returned from earlier this month and is expected to miss at least a couple of weeks. The similarly snakebitten Justin Turner and D.J. LeMahieu both landed on the disabled list for the third time this year. But perhaps the worst news came for Yoenis Cespedes, who is reportedly considering surgery that will knock him out for the rest of 2018 and a chunk of next season as well.
- New to or back on the List this week: Avisail Garcia, Starlin Castro, and Kole Calhoun. I’ve fought it as long as I could, but I have to give credit to Garcia at this point. He’s been hurt most of the year and has two walks against 38 strikeouts, but since the start of last season he’s hit over .300 with 28 HR, 97 R, and 100 RBI in a little over a full year’s worth of plate appearances. Castro has hit for average all year and has hit five of his eight home runs in the last month. Calhoun, meanwhile, barely looked like a professional baseball player for most of the first half but has gone deep seven times in July.
- Honorable Mentions: Gerardo Parra has cooled off of late but remains underowned (14% on Yahoo currently). Brian Anderson doesn’t offer much pop or speed, but hits for average and puts up run production that’s pretty commendable given how terrible the Marlins are. Mark Canha struggled in June but has hit around .300 with decent pop in all other months thus far. Meanwhile, Jason Heyward is having his by far best offensive season since joining the Cubs. The pop remains modest and he’s stopped stealing bases, but he’s an asset in the other standard cats.
Kyle,
Glad to see Ozuna take a major drop, rightfully deserved. He’s been putting up similar anemic power numbers for several weeks now, what did you see this past week to finally take him down so far?
I had been about to drop him substantially before his June surge, which inspired some hope that he was rebounding. As July has demonstrated, that optimism was misplaced.
I assume the lack of love for Ohtani is purely playing time-based? Even with the lack of ABs, he’s the #31 hitter in ESPN standard scoring and ~50th in my league that tends more sabermetric.
Ohtani is hitting .234 with three homers over the last month (47 AB). He has to be better than that to make the list if he’s still only going to play a few days a week. That ESPN rank makes no sense to me.
When Cano is back playing again, where do you see him ranked on this list?
Probably ~100 or so, just off the top of my head. Plenty of elasticity there depending on how he looks when he returns.
Sure, Jose Martinez is below average defensively. And yeah, the Cards are perhaps the worst defensive team in MLB. But making your second-best hitter the scapegoat doesn’t seem like a recipe for success. https://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/cardinal-beat/games-in-and-we-re-questioning-shildt-s-lineups/article_3d0515a5-5546-577d-9b43-10ff0fec0651.html
Yeah, I think it’s dumb but Shildt pretty clearly has decided to staple JoMart to the bench, so it was hard to justify keeping him where I believe his talent merits he should be on the list. Can’t produce if you don’t play.
True that.