Lamonte Wade Jr. (1B/OF - SF) - Wade homered for the 5th time in the past 10 games on Monday, pushing his slash line up to 260/443/575 through 98 PAs this year. This may seem crazy, but I'm not totally skeptical of this. The 29 year old has always shown elite plate discipline and superior contact ability, and he has also shown average-plus power at times. The low LD and high FB rates have kept the AVG down, but in OBP-based leagues I believe that he'll continue to be an asset....possibly a major one. He's taken his normally patient approach (career MLB swing% - 42.7%) and dropped about 8.5% from it to this point this season, and pitchers have not yet adjusted as his zone% is still under 40%. His contact skills are such that he can foul off plenty of close pitches and his batting eye enables him to not chase bad balls....when you can combine that skill set with average to plus power it's a potent combo. I'm not going to suggest that he could hit 30 HR or anything, but he's leading off for an average offense, gets on base very well, and has at least average power. It's no stretch to say that he could post a .350 OBP (career AAA OBP .373), score 75 R (81 in 186 G with SF entering 2023), and hit 20 HR (18 in 109 G 2 yrs ago). That's pretty clearly a top-60, possibly a top-50 OF. That's what I see as essentially a floor right now barring injury. This is a player that should be owned universally right now.
Jason Heyward (OF - LAD) - Heyward is regressing to the mean quickly, as a 7-10 stretch with 3 doubles and a HR over the past 4 games has him hitting 259/359/556 just a few days after he was trailing his Statcast expected data by a great deal. If you had told me a decade ago that Heyward would have only one more 20-HR season, that he'd only hit over .271 once, that he would never again have either 80 R or RBI....I'd have said you were absolutely insane, and any of you that were watching baseball back then know what I'm talking about. Heyward made some contact gains the year after his breakout year in 2012 (at age 22), then the power sort of disappeared at age 24-25, and then he became the poster child for weak contact and lack of production in his time with the Cubs. Now here we are at age 33, with the infamous "swing change" coming as a non-roster invitee with the Dodgers, and he's hitting again. Not just hitting again, but hitting with more authority than we've seen in a decade, and with the contact gains remaining intact. Sure, he's only playing against RHP and this has just been a few games worth of production, but as Phil highlighted the other day he's been hitting the ball hard all year: he just wasn't being rewarded for it until recently. The chase rate and swinging strike rate look more like the Heyward that I once knew, but the power looks like what we thought might happen quite a while ago. It's hard not to root for him, and I have to think he's ahead of David Peralta for playing time once JDM returns in a week or so. I do believe in deeper leagues he's worth an add already, but those in standard formats should probably be a bit more patient as this is only 66 PAs after a long stretch of futility.
Drew Smyly (SP - CUB) - Smyly made it 5 straight solid outings on Monday, holding the Mats to 6 hits and a run over 7 innings, striking out 2 without walking a man. His outing was, in fact, almost the mirror image of his inefficient counterpart Mackenzie Gore. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors here outside of the excellent control though, as Smyly is generating a ton of soft contact with chase and swinging strike rates that are average at best. We don't think of Wrigley Field as a pitcher's park because of the games we see where the wind is blowing out, but it certainly can be much of the time, and in fact Smyly's ERA has been 2 runs better at home during his 28-start tenure with the Cubs than it has been on the road. Unfortunately for Smyly, after a home start later this week against the Marlins (obviously that's a plus) he is scheduled to visit Minnesota and Houston before returning home for the Mets and Rays. That is not a schedule that fills me with a whole lot of optimism for Smyly past this week. I'm not sure he'll suddenly be horrible, as he controlled quality of contact rather well last year too and the walk rate is fantastic, but I wouldn't be surprised if his value on Sunday is as good as you'll see all season. He looks like a back-end starter that's been performing a few steps ahead of that since his opening start of the year.
Mackenzie Gore (SP - WAS) - Gore had his second poor start of the season on Monday, giving up 7 hits and 4 runs to the Cubs over 4 innings, walking 2 while striking out 4. Gore has really been quite good to start the year, showing swinging strike and GB rates much more indicative of his minor league time. The control issues persist, however, and that means you're going to have to suffer through some outings like Monday's where he continually gets behind in the count and eventually gets burned. Even on Monday Gore still generated 7 GB outs versus 1 FB out, but the 4 XBH allowed are indicative of what happens when you're constantly behind in the count and have to throw strikes to major league hitters that know they're coming. I remain cautiously optimistic here, with some pretty favorable starts coming up in Miami, Arizona, and KC sandwiched around home starts against the Mets and Padres. Control-challenged pitchers are tough to stream since they will literally walk anyone, but the K and GB aspects of his game have progressed enough to have me wanting to trust him for this upcoming stretch in almost all formats.
Domingo German (SP - NYY) - The enigmatic German allowed just 2 singles and a walk over 8 1/3 innings to the Guardians on Monday, but despite being completely in control and at just 88 pitches, Aaron Boone removed him so he could watch as Clay Holmes and Wandy Peralta blew what would have been his 3rd win of the year. I'm slowly coming around to the idea that German has simply been unlucky so far this year: the GB rate and exit velo have been in his normal range, he's just allowed twice as many homers as usual. Everything else looks pretty darn good, especially the bat-missing ability with a chase rate above his career average and a swinging strike rate that would be a career-best by a large margin. German is a streamer for me due to the fairly high LD/FB nature of balls hit against him, but a good one if the increase in swinging strike rate is to be believed. The upcoming schedule is fairly difficult with TBx2, TOR, and BAL on tap, so he's a low priority for me just now, but the post-Memorial Day schedule of SD, @LAD, BOS, @BOS, SEA, @OAK is a stretch where I can see using him at least half of the time. He should be a back-end option in deeper leagues regardless.
