Taking a break from football, Ray Flowers takes a look at some interesting info we’ve gathered in the playoffs. Ray also takes a look back at the 2024 regular season. What do guys like Maikel Garcia, Spencer Steer, Andrew Vaughn and Nolan Arenado have in common? Read on to find out.
THE DAILY SHOW
Don’t forget about FREE show, Fantasy Sports Daily, M-F, 12pm EST.
You’re really missing out if you don’t tune in to the show either on the website, on YouTube, or at your favorite podcast service.
Find the show in podcast form on Pandora, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts.
SIGN UP FOR THE FOOTBALL PRODUCT NOW AT FG.COM!
PLAYOFF NOTES
Holy youth Batman!
Jon Berti made history… which is disturbing if you are a Yankees fan.
Go on with your bad self Kerry Carpenter.
Emmauel Clase had a 0.61 ERA this season, so of course he gets hammered for three runs and the loss in the playoffs as he allowed a homer to Carpenter.
Tarik Skubal is the bee’s knees, continuing his regular season dominance.
He is up to 205 innings pitched. He threw 80.1 innings in 2023 and 117.2 in 2022. He has thrown more innings this season than the last two – combined.
Cade Smith got off to a hell of a hot start.
SEASONAL NOTES
Here’s a review of the top-50 players from the preseason in 2024.
Nolan Arenado had his worst full season in 2023 (.266-26-93). He got worse in 2024 (.272-16-71). He’s still just 33 years old, but he got “old” really quickly. Guess that back issue truly is something.
Alec Bohm started out great this year, but where are we now? After going .274-20-97 last season he finished this season at .280-15-97. He slowed down so much of late, he hit .170 in September, that he hasn’t even been in the starting lineup each game for the Phils in the playoffs.
Maikel Garcia was sixth in baseball with 37 steals. His wRC+ mark was 69. Amongst the 129 qualifiers for the batting title, that was the worst mark in all of baseball. Ceddanne Rafaela, who went 15-75-70-19, he finished 126th in wRC+. Zack Gelof, who went 17/25 for the A’s, he was 124th. As you can tell, having solid fantasy value in a 5×5 setting does not mean you actually had a good overall offensive season.
More on the greatness of Shohei Ohtani.
By the way, Ohtani led baseball with 25 homers in the second half. Did you know he also led baseball with 36 steals? Yep, he went 25/36 in a mere 65 games in the second half. Jaren Duran was special this year, and he went 21/34… in 160 games.
Salvador Perez was great this year at .271-27-104. Remarkably, he scored 58 runs despite the 27 bombs. That’s 31 non homer homers for a guy who played 158 games. Pretty wild.
Spencer Steer went 20/25 with 92 RBI while qualifying all over the field. However, he lost ninety-nine points in OPS and .014 points in ISO from his rookie year. He also saw his .333 xwOBA from his rookie season drop to .317 in 2024. Another example of a strong fantasy performer who wasn’t really that good (he was 107th out of 129 qualifiers in wRC+).
Andrew Vaughn hasn’t improved. Four seasons in to his career, he continues to be the definition of being – just a guy. In fact, if you look at his OPS he’s gotten slightly worse. Here are the numbers the last three years: .750, .743 and .699. He also saw his wRC+ go from 113 to 103 to 97. Just no growth which makes it seem unlikely that there ever will be barring a drastic change. The can’t miss kid, drafted third overall in 2019, has missed.
Alex Verdugo averaged .278-12-64-81-4 from 2021-23. This year he hit 13 homers with 61 RBI, 74 runs and two steals, a near carbon copy to the previous three years. However, after hitting .278 the last three years his average fell off the proverbial cliff at .233. He lost fifty-seven points in BABIP which hurt, despite a 0.53 BB/K ratio (previous three years – 0.50). The exit velocity was down a mph while he lost just 0.4 percent in barrel rate.
Sign up to participate in on-going leagues with RTSports.com! By clicking on the link you can find out the promo code for a 20 percent discount when you sign up. There is also a 50 percent deposit match code up to $100. A couple of great ways to continue your fantasy baseball journey with RT an FG!
