3 Players To Buy In Fantasy Baseball

Avery Chenier

Jun 29- 6 min read

3 Players To Buy In Fantasy Baseball

We are into July, meaning Fantasy Baseball teams are relatively locked in their respective leagues. However, there are still players fantasy owners should be looking to grab. Let’s take a look at my 3 players to buy right now.

Corey Seager Rangers SS

.227 AVG 15 HR 33 RBI 36 R 3 SB

Corey Seager’s .227 AVG does not tell the story of his season. Seager’s xBA is .287, he has a .422 SLG % but a .565 xSLG and his strikeout rate is lower than his career average. Seager is running the lowest wRC+ of his career at 104 but that still means he is better than the league average.

Seager is running a .230 BABIP, which is 95 points lower than his career average. His hard hit percentage is higher than his career average, his barrel rate is higher than his career average, and he’s hitting .260 with RISP. Corey Seager’s counting stats still don’t reflect how he’s been swinging the bat this season. Seager should have way more chances to drive runs in if this Rangers team improves at all in the second half.

Lucas Giolito White Sox SP

4-4 5.19 ERA 69.1 IP 82 SO 1.53 WHIP

Lucas Giolito isn’t as bad as he has looked at times this season. His 5.19 ERA is nearly two runs higher than the 3.53 number he pitched to over 178 2/3 innings in 2021 when he also happened to strike out 201 batters. His underlying numbers are somewhat split on just how much his numbers are expected to normalize.

Lucas Giolito is looking back to his old self.

71% whiff rate on the changeup. pic.twitter.com/WGdX6GHvqx

— Josh Nelson (@soxmachine_josh) June 28, 2022

His FIP (5.08) and xERA (5.23) seem to believe that his 5.19 ERA isn’t far off from what he has earned, while his xFIP (3.72) and SIERA (3.69) tell a different story. I’m inclined to side with SIERA and xFIP on this one, and I think his BABIP (.360) and inflated HR/FB (20.3% after four consecutive seasons somewhere around the 13% mark) will regress to something more closely resembling his career averages.

Adley Rutschman Orioles C

.234 AVG 3 HR 9 RBI 15 R

Before June 10 (62 PA)
.226 OBP/ .200 wOBA / 23 wRC+

After June 10 (59 PA)
.373 OBP/ .441 wOBA / 193 wRC+

Rutschman has clearly turned a corner but was talked about as being droppable on Twitter just a week ago. Adley is running a strikeout percentage of 18, which is four points lower than the league average. His xBA is 50 points higher than his actual batting average at .283 and his hard hit rate and barrel % are both higher than the league average by a decent amount.

His batted ball percentages seem to line up with most of his minor league numbers while going to opposite way a little bit less. Adley Rutschman is a super talented hitter and is a player I’m going to try and acquire before his big breakout here soon.