r/fantasybaseball

ESPN Fantasy Thursday News:

• The Yankees may also be short an outfielder after Trent Grisham left last night's affair due to a sore left knee. Spencer Jones replaced him, but with lefty Eric Lauer handling bulk relief for the Blue Jays, Max Schuemann could start in left field if Grisham is sidelined. Cody Bellinger would cover center field.

Eric Lauer will not be handling bulk relief for the Jays because he does not play for them anymore. He's expected to be a starter for the Dodgers and will draw his first start on Tuesday, May 26 vs the Colorado Rockies.

ETA: It's been updated to the following,

• The Yankees may also be short an outfielder after Trent Grisham left last night's affair due to a sore left knee. Spencer Jones replaced him. With the Blue Jays opening with RHP Braydon Fisher, followed by RHP Spencer Miles for bulk relief, the lefty-swinging Jones would play left field with Cody Bellinger handling center field if Grisham can't play.

Opener to Bulk

COL - OP: Zach Agnos to Tanner Gordon

TOR - OP: Braydon Fisher to Spencer Miles

YESTERDAY'S RP RECAP (May 20, 2026)

Jason Adam (SD) — DNP

Cal Quantrill (TEX) — DNP

Hogan Harris (ATH) — 1.0 IP, 0 ER, 1 K, 2 BB, 0 H, SV

Bryan Abreu (HOU) — DNP

Andrew Alvarez (WSH) — 4.0 IP, 2 ER, 5 K, 1 BB, 2 H, SV

Albert Suárez (BAL) — DNP

Jose Franco (CIN) — DNP

Eduard Bazardo (SEA) — 1.0 IP, 0 ER, 1 K, 1 BB, 2 H, HLD

Zach Agnos (COL) — DNP

Eric Lauer (LAD) — DNP

Hi All,

If you've seen my previous posts, the current luck model uses seven layers of full-season Statcast data to identify mispriced players (Article link here). It’s done well, with a 91.4% pooled accuracy across four years.  However, with the way that model works, it looks at early season performance and sees if the player returns a value (or a discount) throughout the summer months of baseball (since it takes larger sample sizes to validate these impacts). 

As the current signaling works, after the first 6-8 weeks of a season, there won’t be a ton of material changes to the players. So, rather than measuring where a player has been all season, a recency layer adds another component looking at current trends --more details can be found here if you want to deep dive. I currently only have this done for hitters--next week I'll include pitchers.

With that, here are some callouts for this week!

Buy Low -- Geraldo Perdomo – SS, AZ (SS27, Overall 302)

Look, his barrel rate isn’t exciting, but his profile didn’t have a high barrel rate when he was a ~top 60 ADP.  Also, when you combine his expected stats delta with some of the underlying metrics below, the performance could turn a corner closer to what people drafted him to produce. 

Improvement over past 3 weeks 

• EV, 79mph --> 86mph
• Hard Hite Rate, 19% --> 25%
• Barrel. 0.4% --> 2.4%

His Hard Hit Rate is also up above baseline, and even 3% up over last year where he had his best fantasy season.  His Launch Angle is down, and he’s been hitting more ground balls than his baseline, but hit pull/center rates are up, so if he can address the launch angle, I think it’s a recipe for some solid ROS value.

Sell High -- Otto Lopez – 2B-SS, MIA (SS4, Overall 30)

Lopez is an interesting profile for ROTO, but the truth of the matter is he is outperforming nearly every expected metric.  And this is where the recency layer is compelling.  Again, I get small sample sizes are tough to work around in baseball (the whole purpose of this tool! 😊), but here’s his trends over the past few weeks:

Decline over past 3 weeks

• EV: 94mph --> 86.5mph
• Hard Hit Rate: 55.4% --> 34.6%
• Barrel Rate: 10.7% --> 7.0%

Lastly, yes, you’re not dropping Otto Lopez—I see this as a cash-out opportunity if you do look to sell.  Package to get an upgrade or look to get a ROS Top 35 player in return

Buy, but with a caveat--

Jackson Merrill – OF, SD (OF36, Overall 181)

Merrill has a .261 BABIP that's well below career baseline, and the recency layer confirms the contact quality trend has been actively improving over the last three weeks.  CBS projects him ROS at OF20, and I think that’s easily passable with his talent . However, here's the caveat.  He’s getting torched right now by cutters (and splitters/sliders to a lesser degree).  His cutter’s runs above average per 100 pitches (I know that’s a mouthful) is -7.2 vs. previous seasons of 1.2 and 2.6.  It’s not a holistic breaking ball issue too, as he’s doing fine against sinkers/curves.  It’s possible pitchers have adjusted better to him as he’s entering year 3.  I’ll be monitoring this closely (especially since I have him on a fantasy roster!).

Thanks all for reading!

Dustin