Oak's Corner: The Dog Days Begin

And just like that, it's June. With June, the real summer months begin, as does the start of the dog days of the fantasy baseball season. The excitement of the draft, the start of the season and seeing the first box scores has worn off, and fantasy sites, talk shows and general conversation slowly starts to shift to fantasy football, as drafts begin and training camps approach. It definitely sucks within each league as teams quit, but as they fall farther away from the top of the standings, it's human nature to let the time you do have to commit to this stuff shift to fantasy football.

I find the start of June is when that affect really takes place, which is why I consider the next six weeks to be the best time to try to make a run if you find yourself not at the top of the standings. In the final two months of the season you'll have some dead teams, but anyone with a chance at grabbing some cash will be very active in setting lineups and making free agent bids. These two months right now are the best chance to really attack your league and the categories you need to make that run to put yourself in a spot where those final two months matter.

Look at these dog days as a fun challenge to extend your lead, make a run at the leader or claw your way back into the mix if the first two months have treated you poorly. The cliché of, "it's a long season" is a cliché for a reason. I have seen many teams come from way, way back in June to winning a league in September. Heck, ask my friend Rob Silver who was in last place in his NFBC Main Event league on June 1 two years ago and ended up winning the $125,000 overall prize.

The Week That Was

Carlos Correa moved up draft boards as March progressed and ended up a first rounder with a 14.2 ADP in 34 NFBC Main Event drafts. While his counting stats have been strong with 32 runs and 36 RBI, he is only hitting .261 and has been especially poor lately. Through 25 May games entering Thursday, Correa was hitting a mere .188 with four homers. Correa's strikeout rate so far is 25 percent, a sizeable increase from his 19.1 percent K Rate in 2017. With the increased strikeouts, he's also not hitting the ball as hard as past seasons.

After a 37.2 percent hard hit rate in 2016 and 39.5 percent in 2017, Correa's hard hit rate is only at 30.1 percent through his first 54 games, but his line drive rate is still strong at 23.3 percent. Correa is crazy talented and in a great lineup. I strongly believe he'll bounce back this season (hell, he just hit his ninth homer as I typed this), but the strikeouts and batted ball profile are worth watching over the next couple of months. I'm not looking to sell where I own him, but if I were to get a full scale, legit offer for him, I'd consider it a lot more than I would have right after draft day.

After back to back years in 2014 and 2015 in which Michael Brantley had at least 15 homers and 15 steals to go with a batting average over .300, he followed with two injured marred seasons. He only played 11 games due to a shoulder injury in 2016 and then only played 90 games in 2017, but he did manage to hit nine homers and steal 11 bases. Brantley's value has always been in his across the board skills, including an utterly elite contact rate, but he has never been a huge home run guy, with a career-high of 20 in 2014. Well, he's looking to fly by that number this season with nine homers already through his first 44 games.

His strikeout rate elevated in the time he did play in the last two seasons (well, for him) to more than 13 percent, but he has returned to the absurd 8.2 percent strikeout rate this season. While Brantley has always had that elite contact rate, his hard hit rate hasn't been above 34 percent until this season, as it now sits at 37.1 percent through the first two months, sparking an ISO at .227 that is nearly 50 points higher than his career high in 2014. Hitting that ball hard that often while never striking out is a pretty damn good formula for batting average, and he has cashed in so far in 2018 with a sweet .343 average.

While he still doesn't hit a lot of fly balls (only 30.5 percent), the increase in the number of hard hit balls has helped his HR/FB rate to a career high 17.6 percent. While that number, way above his career number of 8.2 percent, may not fully stick, as long as he keeps hitting the ball as hard as ever, I think he'll end up with a career high in that rate. Brantley settled into the two hole in the Indians batting order in May, a truly fantastic spot between Francisco Lindor and Jose Ramirez that figures to be an excellent spot for runs and RBI. (On a side note, Jose Ramirez is just awesome.) The issue coming into 2018 with Brantley was injuries, as the last two years were fresh in everyone's minds and an ankle injury caused him to miss the first weekend of the season. As a result, his ADP was only 229.7, which puts him in the running for the best draft value of 2018. I'm a full hold on Brantley and love what I see in his profile. If he can manage his health, I think a career power year is in store.

FAAB Feelings

• Nathan Eovaldi – Eovaldi has always been tough for me to figure out and I was high on him after his 2013 season in Miami where he posted a 3.39 ERA in 106.1 innings. The low strikeouts were an issue, but with his velocity, I assumed they'd come as he learned to hone his stuff and pitch wisely in the big leagues. Well, I was wrong, and he hurt my teams as he posted a 4.37 ERA the following season as the strikeouts actually dropped off. He continued to be frustrating for another couple years. Eovaldi missed 2017 with Tommy John Surgery and made his first start back on Wednesday and was spectacular, tossing six no-hit innings against the A's while only walking one and punching out four. The velocity is still there postsurgery, as his fastball averaged 97 mph in the outing.

  Eovaldi gets two starts this week, the first at the Nationals and then a home start against Seattle, two offenses that haven't been great so far but are still above average in runs scored and OPS. The lack of strikeouts with no history of any sort of strong swinging strike rate will keep me from bidding in 12 teamers, but in a 15 teamer where pitching has gotten thin on the waiver wire (a lot of pitching injuries has not helped that), I'll probably throw a small bid on him in the hopes that he can be serviceable due to his velocity and his history of good walk numbers.

• Jon Jay – Jay is owned in only five percent of NFBC 12-team leagues and 56 percent of NFBC 15-team leagues, but he's quietly putting together a nice season in a couple of categories. With zero homers this year and only two last year in 141 games, he's not going to help any team who needs power. However, if you have a squad that has a lot of power but could use some runs and batting average, Jay could be a valuable little piece to slide in as your fifth outfielder. Jay is leading off almost every day, and while the Royals offense isn't a juggernaut, he does have Mike Moustakas and Salvador Perez to drive him in when he gets on base. He has scored 25 runs in 2018, and, while not a huge number, he has scored 17 of those runs in only 28 games in May as the Royals offense has woken up a little bit.

  In an era in which batting averages have fallen, Jay's consistency in that category is where he can really provide value to a fantasy team. He hit .296 in 2017 in 141 games with the Cubs and is hitting .307 so far this year through his first 218 at-bats. Jay is more of a play in deeper leagues but can also be a specialty play in a 12-team league based on your team makeup and needs. As we get deeper into the season and category management becomes more important, a guy who can help you in two categories and who's tough to find on the waiver wire (especially the batting average!) becomes quite valuable. I have a couple of squads that are dragging in average, and the fourth and fifth outfielders on those teams have only exacerbated that issue. I'll bid on Jay this week to try to start moving that category the opposite direction.
  

After a crazy weekend of closer bidding with a few injuries, the Alex Colome trade and the Blue Jays changing their situation again, this week looks a bit calmer in the closer market. I wrote about the Jays a few weeks ago after Roberto Osuna was suspended. Tyler Clippard got the first shot but struggled soon after, and it looks like Ryan Tepera has taken over, but he has been a bit shaky of late, allowing runs in three of his last five outings.

I may have written off Seung-Hwan Oh a bit too early, initially as he has been fantastic over the past month and could be coming on in the race for the Jays closer gig. Oh only allowed three runs in 14 innings in May, good for a 1.93 ERA. He also bumped up his strikeout rate to 10.3 K/9 in May, although he did issue five walks in those 14 innings. The three runs all came in one outing when he allowed a home run to Matt Olson, but he was clean across all his other outings. More importantly for fantasy purposes, he has moved deeper in games and was the primary setup guy, pitching right before Tepera in his last two outings. I watched Tepera's last few outings and wasn't impressed with him. While he seems to be the guy, currently, I think Oh is now next in line and will get a shot if and when Tepera hiccups again. Oh is still available in a lot of leagues and is someone I looking to grab as a speculative play where I need saves and think he could pay off sooner rather than later.

Mark Melancon is scheduled to be activated by the Giants on Friday, but manager Bruce Bochy has said he won't be inserted into the back end of the bullpen right away. Hunter Strickland has held down the Giants closer job for the first two months of the season and has succeeded with 11 saves and a 2.63 ERA in 24 innings. Melancon was acquired to be the closer and got a lot of money to do so, signing a four year deal worth $62 million dollars prior to the 2017 season. Usually that money talks, but Melancon only managed to pitch 30 innings for the Giants in 2017 and posted a 4.50 ERA, although his strikeout and walk numbers were solid.

Melancon was hurt by a .374 BABIP despite suppressing hard contact well at 23.4 percent, a skill he has displayed throughout his career. I tend to think that Strickland will keep the job as long as he continues to pitch well, but the leash is certainly shorter, as the guy behind him who had back to back 45-plus save seasons in 2015 and 2016, and makes $20 million is now in the mix. If Melancon is still available in your league and you need saves, I think you have to try and stash him in case Strickland hits a rough spot and the Giants go back to their high-dollar reliever.

Series of the Weekend

Rays at Mariners – This isn't a series I expected to talk about in June, and while the Red Sox and Astros is a sexier series, I feel it's time to highlight a couple of surprising teams. The Mariners have lost three of the top four hitters in their order to the DL already this year, and one of those, Robinson Cano, also is serving an 80-game drug suspension. However, in the face of all that, they find themselves sitting at 34-22 on June 1, only one game behind the defending champion Astros.

They have done this by being the best team in baseball in one-run games with 16 one-run wins, four more than any other team, and the M's are also 5-0 in extra-inning games. Their success in one-run games has been significantly aided by the ridiculous season that Edwin Diaz is putting up. Diaz leads all of baseball with 19 saves and also has an exceptional 0.84 whip. He has also beasted in the strikeout category with a massive 48 already in 28.2 innings, as he has stood toe to toe so far this year with Craig Kimbrel in the race for the best closer in fantasy baseball.

The Mariners will send veterans Mike Leake and Felix Hernandez to the mound this weekend, and while neither has posted good numbers this year, their other starter this weekend, Marco Gonzales, has been really strong as of late. After a rough first month of the season where he sported a 5.02 ERA despite intriguing strikeout and walk numbers, he has a 2.30 ERA in 31.1 innings. The strikeouts have dropped off in May, but he also has significantly dropped his hard hit rate from 41.2 percent to 25.3 percent. Gonzales hasn't allowed a run in his last three starts, and I look forward to watching his start this weekend to see how real the recent run is. He was giving up a ton of hits early but has remedied that recently as the BABIP has dropped to more normal levels.

The Rays got off to a horrible start and stood 3-12 after the first two weeks of the season and looked to be buried in regard to any shot at a run at the Wild Card in 2018. They have played really good baseball since that point and have clawed back to over .500, standing at 28-27 as we enter June. Their offense has been led by Wilson Ramos, who got hot at about the same time as the Rays as he was hitting .171 on April 14th. Since April 15th, Ramos has hit .360 (good for third in MLB in that stretch) with seven homers and 27 RBI. In a season when even the top power catchers have hit for a poor average (for example, Gary Sanchez .211, Sal Perez .247, Mike Zunino .202), Ramos's .313 has provided a massive amount of value at a very tough position for where he was drafted in fantasy leagues.

The Rays send Blake Snell to the mound on Sunday and all of Snell's starts have become must see TV, as he has taken the Rays ace role away from Chris Archer and is in the midst of a full breakout. Through his first seven starts, Snell has a 2.56 ERA, good for sixth in the American League. He has bumped up his strikeout rate to 9.73 K/9, but most importantly he has managed to get his walk rate under 3.00 BB/9, when it was a big issue in 2017, finishing at 4.11 BB/9. He has allowed eight homers already, and while the .228 BABIP has helped, the steps he has taken make him a very exciting watch over the rest of the season.

Snell has actually increased his velocity to 95.3, and coming with that has been a nice bump up in his swinging strike to 12.8 percent. More than anything, he's really fun to watch, and if he can maintain the current walk rate, which was his clear issue coming into 2018, the sky's the limit for this young lefty. Luckily this series is in Safeco, which is way prettier than the Trop and should be a good test for these two teams as they both try and buck the preseason odds and stay in the playoff mix this summer.