Risers and Fallers: Volume 23
I’m back for another week of reviewing the most interesting players from the past seven days, pairing advanced metrics and insights from my DFS projection system, THE BAT, with my scouting background to try to figure out what to make of some the week’s most active lot of ballplayers.
Guys whose stock is going up, guys whose stock is going down, guys who are perpetually underpriced or overpriced, guys who are worth paying a premium for, or guys who are just interesting and warrant some analysis on.
RISING…AND UNDERPRICED
Robert Gsellman, SP, New York Mets
Gsellman was THE BAT’s top overall pitcher on Sunday, and boy did he have day: W, 7 IP, 0 ER, 8 K, 2 BB, 3 H. I realized that, while I’ve played Gsellman three times now, I’ve yet to actually write about him. He was never considered a top prospect by scouts, more polish than stuff with a number-four-or-five starter ceiling (but a ceiling he was close to.) Gsellman has been that and more since being forced into duty with the Mets given all their injuries. He’s struggled at times but overall has been quite effective, entering Sunday’s game with a 3.13 ERA and 3.88 xFIP in 5 starts. He’s bound to regress some—after all, his 8.4 K/9 following Sunday’s start is the highest it’s even been at any level, only cracking 7.0 twice and 8.0 once back in 2013 at Low-A—although maybe less than we might otherwise expect. Gsellman, you see, has become a bit of a different pitcher this year than he was in the past.
This spring Gsellman added a hard slider to his repertoire, which has long been a hallmark of Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen, with players such as Matt Harvey, Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom, and Jeurys Familia all finding success with it. This has been added to a plus curveball that Gsellman already possessed, and that combination appears to have been the key. Dan Warthen once told this to Eno Sarris in regard to Jacob deGrom and his slider: “He was trying to make it break, and we don’t want to make it break, we want to think about getting our fingers to the front of the ball and spinning the baseball… Then you take another breaking ball and you separate the speeds, and it doesn’t have to be a great breaking ball, it just has to be a different speed.”
So if we look at Gsellman, this is exactly what we’ve seen. His slider spins a lot —22% more than the average slider, in fact. It also comes in at a ridiculous 88 mph—3.5 mph faster than average. That plus curveball he already had? 81-mph, for a 7-mph gap, just like Warthen wants and just like deGrom, Syndergaard, and co. have found success with.
This has had the apparent effect of adding a few more strikeouts to the resume of a pitcher who already had solid control and a penchant for groundballs given a good sinker (which sits at an excellent-by-sinker-standards 94-mph—significantly higher than reports out of the minors ever indicated, which means he has likely also improved in this regard also). That he’s a sinkerballer means he’ll never get a ton of strikeouts, but having these two good breaking balls to play off of the sinker means that he could easily stay around a 7.5 K/9. Even before accounting for the change in repertoire (something I hope to incorporate over the off-season), THE BAT views Gsellman as a firmly league average pitcher. Pitching in the National League, in Citi Field, and throwing to a great pitch-framer in Travis d’Arnaud sets his baseline even higher than that. And when he’s routinely costing $5,200 on DraftKings, even in a great matchup at home against the Phillies on Sunday, he makes for a strong and sneaky SP2 option. He’ll make one more start this year, once again getting to face the Phillies on Saturday. You can be sure he’ll be on my radar and probably on my team.
Manuel Margot, OF, San Diego Padres
When Roman Quinn was called up by the Phillies a couple weeks ago, he was all the rage. One of the fastest players in the minors getting to bat second and costing close to the minimum? Why wouldn’t he be popular? There’s just a week left in the season, but in the final round of call-ups, the Padres have recalled a guy who is in the exact same mold. Margot is the Padres top prospect, and he’s already been given a key spot in the order. Against righties he’s been hitting second, and against lefties he’s been leading off. If this sticks through the final week, Margot is a guy I could frequently be going to as a punt.
He doesn’t have quite the same speed as Quinn, who is one of the fastest players in baseball, but he does have plus-plus speed and a willingness to use it on the basepaths. He has better plate discipline than Quinn and doesn’t strike out as much, but he also doesn’t turn contacted balls into hits quite as often, so he projects to get on base at about the same clip (.310 OBP or so). That’s below-average, but it’s enough to be useful when you’ll be stealing 15% or 20% of the time you get on. As with most speedsters, he has very little power, and what he does have is of the gap variety.
Essentially, Margot is a slightly lesser version of Quinn. The leg up that he has on Quinn, though, is that he plays for a better team. The Padres are below-average, sure, but the Phillies (despite their recent, unexpected bursts) may well be the worst offense in baseball. Not only that, but Margot’s platoon split is a bit smaller, making him a bit more useful against right-handed pitching. Quinn is a switch-hitter, but he was one of the largest platoon splits of any switch-hitter in baseball, so essentially he’s a right-handed bat. And Margot won’t cost you quite as much. Quinn’s price has risen to the $2,600/$2,700 level on DraftKings, while Margot was sitting at $2,300 this weekend.
Both are, of course, going to be great punts over the final week, but all of this is to say that if you’re looking for that cheap speedster to punt with, don’t automatically go Quinn over Margot, especially since the Padres will be in Chase Field for the final series of the year.
RISING…BUT I’LL LIKELY PASS
Hunter Renfroe, OF, San Diego Padres
Along with Margot, the Padres number three prospect was also recalled this week. I have less interest in Renfroe, though, despite the same price point and position. Renfroe lacks polish, holding a plus power tool but questions about whether it’s ready to translate to the major league level yet; after all, it only truly started coming out in games this season at Triple-A, and El Paso plays in the notoriously hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. THE BAT doesn’t see Renfroe with much better than above-average power right now, which grades out to a below-average bat overall given his lack of plate discipline. We’ve seen a number of intriguing raw-power prospects come along this year that THE BAT really liked — Gary Sanchez, Tommy Joseph, Ryan Schimpf, even guys who didn’t work out due to really bad plate discipline like Peter O’Brien or Byung-Ho Park—but it’s just not big on Renfroe. From a scouting standpoint he doesn’t have quite the same raw power as most of these guys (almost all of them have at least plus-plus, 70-grade power, while Renfroe is single-plus, 60-grade), and most had shown more of that power in-game than Renfroe has. The long-term upside is certainly here, but for now, I’ll probably pass on Renfroe over the final week of the season. If he happens to stay this cheap when they go to Chase Field and gets to hit in the middle of the lineup I may be tempted, but that’s about it.
RISING…AND COULD BE VIABLE IN THE RIGHT SPOT
Carlos Asuaje, OF, San Diego Padres
Asuaje has the least luster and upside of the three Padres prospects recalled this week, but he may have the best bat at present. The problem is that his skills are the least useful for DFS purposes. He’s a better pure hitter than Renfroe, but he doesn’t have anywhere near the same level of power. He has a bit more power than Margot, but he doesn’t limit strikeouts as well and has below-average speed. He’s a tweener, a guy who can hit a lick but who you never really want to roster. Think a poor man’s Nick Markakis. Of course, Markakis usually costs $3,000 on FanDuel and $4,000 on DraftKings, while you can get Asuaje for close to the minimum on DraftKings (he’s not in FanDuel’s player pool yet). And you can play him at shortstop, which is a big plus. He’s drawn one start so far and did so out of the two-hole, so he could certainly be in play—as $2,100, top-of-the-order shortstops ought to be. Just don’t expect much upside out of him when you play him. A couple hits and a run is what you’ll be looking for.
FORGOTTEN…BUT NOW VIABLE AGAIN
Michael Conforto, OF, New York Mets
Early in the season, Conforto was the golden child of DFS. He had the highest hard-hit rate against righties in baseball, 15 home runs in the month of April, and the adoration of everyone who didn’t understand sample sizes. Try to suggest that Conforto wasn’t actually this good and wasn’t actually a must play against ‘ole righty and you were called a donkey who didn’t understand the difference between evaluating baseball players and evaluating baseball players for DFS (pro tip: there isn’t actually a difference).
Fast-forward five months, and any suggestion to play Conforto is met with groans and similar donkey-calls. It’s amazing how short-sighted the DFS world can be, but it’s what creates edges like these. Conforto, despite his struggles this year, is a talented hitter. Pitchers began to find and exploit his weaknesses mid-year, and his lack of experience showed, but the talent remained. This September, we’re beginning to see it again. His 17% strikeout matches his April figure and is well below the roughly 25% from May through August. He has five extra-base hits in 41 plate appearances. His wOBA sits at .383. And his FanDuel price tag is $2,100. You’ll never get anyone who gets bogged down in emotion to admit it, given the bad taste Conforto put in everyone’s mouth earlier this year, but this is still a well above-average hitter… the same above-average hitter he was when everyone thought he was an early MVP candidate. The tools are there, he absolutely destroyed Triple-A (.519 wOBA in 143 PA), and he’s begun to make adjustments.
Since you can basically get him for free on FanDuel, it’s ironic that now Conforto actually is a viable option against any ‘ole righty. Maybe he won’t be ideal in Marlins Park at the start of this week, but he’ll be a must play in the final series in Philadelphia over the weekend.