Fantasy Baseball Week 11: Buy Tom Murphy, Sell Starlin Castro
By Ryan Cook
Week 11 is all about the waiver wire. Some players are heating up, others have been quietly achieving big things with little notice. So who should you buy and sell while June marches on?
A grand total of 181 HRs left Major League ballparks over the past week.
Scooter Gennett, Ryon Healy, and Matt Adams accounted for 12 of them. Paul Goldschmidt, Mookie Betts, and Bryce Harper accounted for none.
The point I’m trying to make here is, we never know what baseball is going to cough up. Just when you think you’ve got your roster figured out, some guy named Yonder Alonso decides it’s a good idea to start hitting, and all of a sudden, you find yourself cutting players that have suddenly become unproductive.
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Fantasy relevance is wishy-washy. It changes by the hour, and the latest addition is Colorado Rockies catcher, Tom Murphy.
Murphy looked to enter the season as one of the top breakout candidates. Possibly even hit 30 HRs and develop into a Top 5 catcher.In a perfect world, you would’ve drafted him late and smiled while everyone else trusted Jonathan Lucroy (yikes), but instead, Murphy broke a bone in his forearm and missed the entire start of the season.
In a perfect world, you would’ve drafted him late and smiled while everyone else trusted Jonathan Lucroy (yikes), but instead, Murphy broke a bone in his forearm and missed the entire start of the season.
As of Saturday, though, it appears Murphy might finally mean something to us. He’s likely to rejoin the Rockies this week or next, and even though Tony Wolters has done an A+ job playing fill-in man, there’s no denying the fact that his offensive moves are pretty weak.
For a team that seems so focused on putting up crooked box score numbers, it’s surprising that the Rockies have come this far with a bunch of injuries and Wolters’ grand total of zero HRs. He’s always been known as a defensive catcher, but no dingers? Surely Murphy steps into the starting role, or at the very least sees semi-daily action as he eases back into the lineup.
As far as numbers go, there’s plenty to like about Murphy and there’s plenty that sucks. In 21 games last season he walked only 8.2% of the time, and even though Coors Field will inflate his BABIP by a lot, his 38.8% strikeout rate is the number one concern.
The one thing that makes Murphy so enticing however, is his contact. He finished with a hard hit rate of 48% last season, and although it was a small sample size, this is still a potential Top 10 catcher that could rival the numbers of Gary Sanchez when he’s healthy.
If Murphy hits 20 HRs between now and September, it wouldn’t surprise me. His power is legitimate, batting a .386 ISO last season, and the best part is, he’s owned in only 4.8% of leagues. This is a waiver wire add you’ll want to make in the next fortnight, but in the meantime, here are some other players worth buying in Week 11.
Dans-be something, alright.
I’m surprised it took this long, but Swanson is finally somewhat of a thing. For those that stuck by him through the bad times, good for you. As for the rest of us fair weather folk, Swanson’s 2 HRs and 8 RBI’s this month make him completely ownable again in any league format.
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Prior to Friday’s walk-off double against the Mets, Swanson was batting for a terribad .100 AVG with 7 strikeouts in the 9th inning. I’m not sure if kicking the Mets when they were down helped regain his confidence, but this is the side of Swanson we were promised for so long during the offseason.
Swanson is owned in only 31% of leagues, but act fast, his six-game hitting streak is starting to catch on.
The rookie can rake. Against the Cubs last week Riddle put up 3 RBIs and a run scored at Wrigley Field, and now looks like a player that could comfortably bat .280 for the rest of the season in a dangerous Marlins lineup.
Riddle’s whiffs aren’t pretty, and neither is his 23.2% strikeout rate. The silver lining to that cloud, though, is his 41.3% hard contact rate through 38 games, and better yet, his .436 SLG.
Riddle is likely to stay in the Marlins’ lineup even when Adeiny Hechavarria returns, and even though he may only give you production in two scoring categories, he’s worth stashing thanks to his age alone.
Matt Adams
So that Braves trade actually panned out okay, how bout’ that.
Adams’ June has looked like this: 3 HRs, 9 RBIs and only 8 strikeouts. In a way, these are the exact kind of numbers Freddie Freeman might be dishing out, and the fact that Adams’ HR/FB rate has skyrocketed to 18.4% (the highest it’s been since 2013) makes you think this might be a sustainable pace going forward.
With Justin Bour and Mike Napoli hitting the DL last week, this is all perfect timing. Adams is still god awful against lefties (.167 AVG), but when the Braves are facing righties, you’re in for some numbers.
Whenever someone throws a lucky no-no they’re probably worth a speculation add. I will say however, it was surprising to see Volquez back that up with a 7-inning, three-hit shutout in his very next start, and all of a sudden, his stuff looks pretty good.
Volquez’s four-seam fastball is generating a whiff of 12.50% this month, and his changeup has been razor-sharp as well. Volquez’s velocity isn’t up, but his 18 strikeouts in his last two games are simply too good to pass up.
At 33, expecting these kind of numbers to keep up is probably a stretch. We definitely overlooked Volquez’s potential for a productive fantasy season, though, because he’s always had a decent arsenal of pitches to light hitters up on occasion.
Don’t bother looking at Pham’s numbers, because they aren’t anything special. In fact, the same could be said for the entire Cardinals’ lineup, but what Pham is doing this season is pacing himself for another consistent year at the plate and continuing to hit for a really high AVG.
Pham hit 7 HRs, 12 RBIs and struck out 42 times in his first 100 ABs last season. In his first 100 ABs this season, Pham has hit 5 HRs, 15 RBIs and struck out only 28 times – so there’s certainly some progress in plate discipline being shown.
It could definitely be said that if the rest of the Cardinals’ lineup was, y’know, actually hitting, Pham’s numbers would be a lot easier on the eye. He never projects to be a big HR hitter, but he’s the kind of player that will consistently get on base and even gift you a handful of steals in the process.
I’d nearly given up on finding steals on the waiver wire, until I watched Cameron Maybin steal four (yes, four!) bases on Thursday night against the Astros. That raises his total to 17 SBs on the season, and even though Maybin may not play every single night, he’s a nice replacement for the likes of Rajai Davis, who seems to have abandoned us this year.
The good thing about Maybin is he’s a daring baserunner that hardly gets caught. He’s been picked off only once back in May, and the Angels sound like they want to feature him daily now that he’s healthy from an oblique strain.
Easily Mr. Underrated.
Why does nobody talk about the Mous? Twelve months on the back of an ACL tear, he’s hit 16 HRs and 34 RBI’s and is easily in the running for low-key fantasy baseball MVP.
What concerns me the most here is the fact that Moustakas is still owned in under 80% of leagues. If there’s something that we should be worried about, I haven’t found it, because his 16.8% strikeout rate and .267 BABIP are all realistic numbers that have him on pace for another big season.
We’re now looking at a potential 30 HR hitter who to my surprise, is only 28 years old. I know knee injuries are scary, but if you didn’t take a chance on Mous in the later rounds of your draft, now is the time to buy in and enjoy the ride.
Sell: Starlin Castro
Sell high, and fast, fast, fast.
It’s not that I don’t love Starlin Castro 2.0, I really do. It’s great to see him break out like this, and considering he was drafted with a 237 ADP, this kind of production is almost too good to be true.
What scares me with Castro is his unusually high .361 BABIP and his typically high ground ball rate of 48.5%. This might all seem like nonsense given the fact he’s hit 2 HRs this past week, but Castro is Castro, and his batted ball profile still seems scarily similar to last year.
The final point on Castro is his strikeouts. He’s struck out six times this week alone and is swinging at over 50% of the pitches he faces. He’s definitely a sell high candidate that should warrant a good return but do so before the sink really starts to sink.
Next: Mike Zunino worth a pick up?
Pickings are becoming slimmer and slimmer on the waiver wire, so owners are likely to become more reluctant to trade this month. There are still a handful of valuable assets out there, though, especially across multiple scoring categories. With so many injuries, it’s all about riding the hot hand week to week.