Fantasy Baseball: 3 Things We Learned in Week 21

Baseball fans love their stats. We devour them, dissect them, and build our fantasy rosters around them. Each week of the 2021 baseball season, we will be gifted with another statistical sample size of pitches, plate appearances, and playing time. Knowing it often takes hundreds or even thousands of pitches or batted-ball events for trends to normalize, how should fantasy managers adjust to the ebbs and flows of weekly player performance?

Each week during this season, this piece will look at trends that have emerged over the past week and determine if it is signal or noise moving forward. What is prescriptive in helping build winning fantasy teams and what can be ignored as small sample size noise? Hopefully, we can make sense of what has just happened to help us make smarter roster and free agent budget decisions.

Let's take a look at some of the data from the 21st scoring period of the fantasy baseball season.

Do You Dare Roster Nicky Lopez?

I believe it was Thursday of last week that I got an alert on my phone, one of those regular player news alerts, and this one read: " Nicky Lopez finally hit his first homer of the year against the Astros." I had to chuckle. Normally, you don't get that kind of editorializing in the headline of these alerts, but for the collective fantasy baseball community, we understand the sentiment.

But Lopez has been making headlines for more than just that one home run recently. He moved up to number two in the batting order and has hit there in 15 of his last 16 games, with some extraordinary success. Over the last 14 days, Lopez is the 13th best hitter in traditional rotisserie formats, with a .313 average, eight runs, the one home run, seven RBI, and an astounding nine steals. On the season, Lopez has just 18 total steals, so anyone with the foresight to put him in a starting lineup in this hot streak likely got a major bump up in the standings in that category.

It won't come as a surprise that Lopez is near the bottom of almost all power categories we have at our disposal. Below are his metrics, courtesy of Baseball Savant.

But you can tell from his Statcast metrics that he almost never strikes out, meaning more contact, which grants Lopez the ability to use his speed to get on base. And that's where he has been doing most of his damage.

Only Starling Marte, teammate Whit Merrifield, and Lopez have at least five steals in the past 14 days. It looks like the Kansas City Royals are going to give the green light to the two top guys in the order the rest of the season, because they enjoy the havoc that Lopez and Merrifield create on the bases. If you need help in runs or steals for the season-long stretch run, Lopez may be your man. As of Monday afternoon, he is only 31% rostered in Yahoo leagues.

Triston McKenzie Has Finally Figured It Out

You could probably win a bar bet tonight with the trivia question: "Who has been the number one player in rotisserie baseball for the past 14 days?" Surely you already knew it was Cleveland Indians pitcher Triston McKenzie.

In his last three starts -- all complete masterpieces -- McKenzie has thrown 21 innings with 2 wins, 24 strikeouts, a 1.24 ERA, and a 0.43 WHIP. And while one of those games came against the Detroit Tigers, the other two were against the Los Angeles Angels, and the Oakland Athletics, offenses that don't provide an easy path through the lineup. As a matter of fact, if you sat McKenzie against the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros, you would have a pitcher who has only given up eight total runs since the beginning of July (nine starts).

What changed since the calendar flipped to August? What has given McKenzie the command and control that brought him within four outs of a perfect game last week?

First, there has been a noticeable increase in his fastball velocity in the second half, according to Fangraphs.

But accompanying that increased velocity has also been increased usage in the second half.

In the August 15th game, for example, McKenzie threw 70 fastballs, good for 66% of his pitches that night. His called strikes plus swinging-strike rate (CSW%) was 33% on his fastball that night, an excellent number, and was similar to the 31% CSW from his prior start on August 10th.

As of Monday McKenzie is rostered in 68% of Yahoo leagues, but the first league of mine I checked he was available. Not anymore. The Indians start a series soon with the Texas Rangers and then will have plenty of matchups against the Tigers and Royals left on their schedule.

Add Jake Meyers

Jake Meyers (14% rostered in Yahoo Leagues) - With Kyle Tucker on the COVID IL, Michael Brantley battling some nagging injuries, and Chas McCormick frequently going through slumps in his first full-time role, the Astros have turned to an unlikely source to be an everyday outfielder: Jake Meyers.

Ranked as the Astros' ninth-best prospect by MLB.com, it was time to give the 25-year-old his shot anyway after tearing up AAA with a .274 average, 16 home runs, and 51 RBIs in just 68 games. All he has done since he came up is smash the ball. Since his call-up, he has hit .341 with 3 home runs, 7 runs, 11 RBI, and 1 steal for good measure. The steal is interesting, however, as he was graded as having 60 speed, which is considerably higher than his 50 power grade.

With that type of pedigree, we could be looking at a Kyle Tucker-lite if he can increase his contact rate (73.9%) and his walk rate (4.2%) slightly. Since his arrival in the majors, he is at an unsustainable 30% HR/FB rate, so when that starts to regress, he must be making more quality contact to compensate.

The question will be playing time once the Houston Astros have all of their outfield pieces at their disposal. Two of the outfield spots and the DH position are spoken for with Yordan Alvarez, Brantley, and Tucker. So that leaves Meyers and McCormick battling it out for the centerfield job. Meyers is younger and does have a higher draft pedigree and better hit tools than McCormick. Considering McCormick can play any outfield position, and Meyers has played centerfield in nine of his 14 outfield starts so far, my guess is McCormick becomes the backup outfielder and the Astros give Meyers an everyday role.

If your team needs a power/speed combo in the outfield, I would seriously consider adding Meyers.