The waiver wire isn’t the only place to improve your roster. Buying slow-starting players can be a way to take advantage of others’ impatience. So, here are four players to try to buy low on – and one to buy high on after a hot start that might be viewed with skepticism.
Four buy-low targets
Fernando Tatis Jr., OF, Padres
Tatis’ slow start isn’t a fluke. At least, not totally. He’s still hitting the ball extremely hard – he has the highest hard-hit rate in baseball and his 94.6 mph average exit velocity in the 96th percentile among all hitters – but there are flaws in his game right now. His strikeout rate and whiff rate have both moved in the wrong direction, which explains part of the problem. But the bigger problem is that he’s hitting the ball to the wrong parts of the park – his pulled-air rate is down to 5.1%, which means he’s hitting the ball hard, but primarily to the deepest parts of the park. He has the raw power to still produce despite that, as we’ve seen in past seasons, but he’s taken his approach to an illogical extreme, and it’s holding him back.
I’m not qualified to speak on hitting mechanics, but I’d guess there’s something wrong with his swing right now. Tatis has never been a huge lift-and-pull guy outside of the 2021 season, but he’s been trending in the wrong direction for a few years before bottoming out so far. He’s gotta fix this if he wants to live up to his potential.
I just have faith that he will. Tatis remains one of the most physically gifted players in baseball, and he has a long track record of success. Sure, maybe the hopes that he’ll return to being a 40-homer hitter are dashed, despite there being plenty of upside for that with how hard he hits the ball. But I still have faith that he’ll be at least a 25-homer kind of hitter in the long run, because that’s what he’s been for years. As bad as he’s been, he’s probably just a few tweaks away from being a second-round caliber player again – even if he might be a bigger overhaul away from being a first-round hitter, and that might be asking too much.
Ronald Acuna Jr., OF, Braves
We’re getting the speed we hoped for from Acuna, who has already attempted as many steals in 29 games as he had in 95 games last season. The 60% success rate so far doesn’t bother me, given Acuna’s historic success on the bases, so I don’t expect that to slow down. And yet, he’s been a clear disappointment so far, hitting just .239/.356/.358.
And I have no concerns. Acuna doesn’t quite look like himself at the plate, but it’s not like there’s much to be concerned about. His average exit velocity is down a few mph, but I imagine that might just be because he’s seeing fewer pitches in the strike zone – down to 41.5%, from his previous career average of 48.3%. Maybe pitchers are fundamentally changing how they approach Acun nearly a decade into his career, but given that he’s responding by both swinging at pitches in the zone more often and making more contact when he does swing at those pitches, I can’t imagine that tradeoff is one pitchers are going to be happy to make once he starts to heat up.
And even with the decline in quality of contact, it’s not like Acuna is a slap hitter suddenly. His 12.8% barrel rate is slightly down from his career rate, but it’s still a borderline elite mark, and the whole picture points to a .388 xwOBA compared to his actual .326 mark. Acuna is still doing a whole lot more right than wrong right now, and it’s going to show up in his batting line soon. Maybe he won’t get to the 40-40 ceiling outcome, at this point, but I’m still expecting 30-40, at least.
Logan Webb, SP, Giants
At the risk of oversimplifying, I just think Webb isn’t pitching well right now. You see it in his 4.87 ERA, obviously, but even the 4.45 xERA indicates that it’s not just bad luck. His walk rate has ticked up to 8.1% while his strikeout rate is down to 19.9% – both of which are the worst marks we’ve seen from Webb since 2020. It’s been bad!
But the thing is, I’m not sure there’s a good explanation for why he’s been so bad. Maybe there’s been a slight downturn in the quality of his stuff? According to FanGraphs’ Stuff+ model, he’s down from 106 to 102 in that particular metric; the PitchingBot stuff model (also on FanGraphs) has him taking a slight tick down as well, though with his model projected ERA still at 3.43, compared to last year’s 3.35 mark. That’s not nothing, but with his velocity holding steady across the entire arsenal, I’m not sure it tells us much beyond what we already know: He isn’t pitching well.
When we don’t have a good, tangible explanation for why a pitcher is struggling like this, it usually just comes down to execution. The sweeper appears to be the primary issue, as his whiff rate has collapsed and he has been throwing it less often in putaway counts as a result. Webb has struggled to find consistency with the feel for his arsenal over the years, but he almost always figures it out on the fly and ends up being an impact pitcher for Fantasy – he hasn’t had an ERA below 3.47 since that 2020 season. Given the track record here and the lack of true red flags in the profile, I’m going to bet on Webb just pitching better moving forward.
Ivan Herrera, C, Cardinals
Herrera got catcher eligibility quicker than I think most expected, but it hasn’t been the boon to his value we were hoping for. I mean, sure, a .240/.403/.417 line plays better at catcher than at DH, but given the depth of the position, it’s hard to argue he’s been the difference maker we all expected him to be.
But it’s coming. This is one of the more straightforward and obvious buy-low opportunities in the game right now. We have a solid track record of Herrera being a well-above-average hitter, with both power and plus contact skills, and everything looks as good as ever right now. His expected batting average is .285; his expected slugging percentage is .487. He’s hitting barrels 10.1% of the time, right in line with his career marks, and he’s doing it all while putting up the best plate discipline numbers of his career.
At the risk of some hyperbole, Herrera just looks like one of the best hitters in baseball right now. He’s been at least a .370 xwOBA in three straight seasons, and that’s up to .402 right now. I don’t expect him to sustain quite that level of excellence, but I do think he’ll hit around .280 and give us 25-ish homers. If you’ve been disappointed with Herrera so far, I don’t blame you. But I still fully expect him to be a standout moving forward, and I think his ceiling is higher than any non-Cal Raleigh catcher in the game.
One buy-high target
Michael Harris, OF, Braves
Admittedly, this one makes me feel a bit queasy. Harris’ career has been defined by inconsistency, and the fundamental issues that have tripped him up in the past haven’t exactly disappeared. He is still one of the most chase-prone hitters in baseball, though he has at least cut his swing rate on pitches out of the zone from 43.1% to 40.5%. But 40.5% is still a very poor mark, and it means there are going to be a lot of at-bats that end with him swinging at some junk he has no real chance to do anything with. And when he strings together too many at-bats like that, you end up with the poor results we’ve seen for long stretches from him.
But I just believe in Harris. That’s what it comes down to. Even when things were bad over the past couple of years, I always expected him to bounce back. He’s too young and too talented to not be an impact player, and we’re seeing that play out in the early going. He’s absurdly locked in right now, and while I don’t expect him to be a .458 xwOBA true-talent hitter moving forward, I also don’t expect him to struggle moving forward the way he did last season.
And the good news is, whoever has Harris might just be looking to sell before the bottom drops out. He probably wasn’t someone who was drafted with a lot of conviction, and so they might be looking to cash in now. But if nothing else, I expect Harris to hit to his .281 career expected batting average (if not a little better), and I expect to get 25 homers and 20 steals out of him, too. And there’s room for even better if he keeps hitting this way and moves up in the Braves lineup.
