MLB

5 Sell-High Options for Season-Long Fantasy Baseball Leagues

Austan Kas  —  @AustanKas Jul 18th, 2017
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Aaron Judge, OF, New York Yankees

OK, hear me out.

Let's acknowledge how great Aaron Judge has been this year. He's launched 30 jacks with a .445 wOBA in 391 plate appearances while cutting his strikeout rate from 2016's cup of coffee by roughly 15 percentage points.

He can hit a bomb to any part of any stadium.


I'm not saying Judge won't be great the rest of the way; I'm just saying he won't be this great.

The reasons for that are his .398 BABIP, the third-highest mark in the game, and 37.5% home-run-per-fly-ball ratio, the highest rate by just over seven percentage points. Of course, when you own a 47.1% hard-hit rate and 38.8% fly-ball rate, you're going to post above-average numbers in BABIP and homer-per-fly rate, but the clips he is sporting now are a little crazy.

Just to put it in context, the league leader in BABIP last year was DJ LeMahieu at .388, and only three players since 2000 have finished with a full-season BABIP of .398 or better. As for home-run-per-fly-ball rate, only one player (Ryan Howard in 2006) has finished a full season with a rate above Judge's 37.5%.

And it's worth mentioning that while Judge has dropped his strikeout rate by around 15 percentage points, it still sits at 29.7%, the 11th-highest strikeout rate in baseball.

Again, Judge is a monster and isn't about to fall off a cliff, but dealing the guy who is fantasy's top-rated hitter, per ESPN's Player Rater, could allow you to sell high now and address multiple areas on your roster.

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