Back-Door Sliders: Week 13 Buy Low Trade Targets
By: Mike Price
Tags: Fantasy Sports App, Fantasy Advice, Fantasy Sports, Baseball, Fantasy Baseball

Happy Fourth of July! As we celebrate America’s birthday, the opportunities to improve your team are getting smaller and smaller. This is the time of year where people begin to check out. About a third of your league is already out of real contention. Unless you’re in a dynasty, or keeper league, those owners are probably about to check out and the likelihood of finding a trade partner in them has diminished. Factor in that teams at the top of the standings may be reluctant to shake things up too much and you’re left with about half of your league mates to work out a trade with.

Most trade deadlines are about six weeks away and in most fantasy leagues I play in, it is far less action packed than the MLB trade deadline. Remember, negotiating trades is an art and usually involves some discussion. In some ways, it’s no different than negotiating anything else in life. As you enter into a negotiation, it’s important to remember one thing. Be reasonable.

Sounds simple enough, but many people struggle with it. Here’s an example. My wife and I took our kids overnight to a ski resort to go snow tubing. Temperatures plummeted and they closed the course due to ice. People were outraged. We’re standing in line at the front desk and people are yelling at employees, threatening them with power they didn’t have, asking for managers. It was a mess. As I’m taking this in, a couple things are apparent to me, even if the people around me are unaware. First, they’re not going to open the mountain today. It doesn’t matter what you say. The course is frozen and Mother Nature doesn’t care how far you drove to be here. Second, they’re not giving us our money back. If they give in and refund one loud mouth in the crowd, they’re refunding EVERYONE’s money in the crowd. That’s not happening.

So when I get to the desk, I tell the girl I am disappointed to hear the mountain is closed. I explain we are checking out in the morning and have two young kids to entertain. And then I ask what else she recommends we do with kids in their age range at the resort to pass the time. She explains to me that they have a large arcade and a pretty involved scavenger hunt game on site. I asked her if she would be willing to comp us passes for the scavenger hunt and some credits for the arcade. She agreed. I didn’t yell. I didn’t storm off angry or even have to talk with a manager. It may not have been exactly what I wanted, but it was a reasonable request which made it an easy yes for her. And in the end, there was value in it for both of us. I wanted to entertain my kids. She wanted to make a customer’s stay enjoyable. We played video games and spent about 3 hours doing a scavenger hunt for free. She spent 10 minutes talking to a customer who didn’t think he could make a frozen mountain thaw by yelling at a teenager in the lobby of a ski resort. Win-Win

Making trades in fantasy baseball is the same. You need to make reasonable offers that are an easy yes for your trade partner. They have needs and want to improve their team too. If you go in and ask for the world for nothing, or think your position in the standings justifies firing off low-ball offers, overvalue your individual players because your team as a whole is performing well, or worst of all, ask for someone’s best players while stating that your best players are unavailable, no deal is going to get done.

If you want to get sneaky value from someone in a trade, you need to target players that they undervalue and in return give them talented players who can help their team. There is risk involved, but that is the proper and most effective way to get great value in a trade.

Here are a few players I see on the move right now across several leagues and would absolutely love to acquire at their current price points.

2021 is Matt Chapman’s floor, but is his floor that bad?

Matt Chapman- 3B- Oakland A’s

Coming off hip surgery, it has been tough sledding for Matt Chapman. He is drastically under-performing his expected output and having what is undoubtedly a down season. His hard contact is down and his strikeouts are up (though down five percent from last season while playing hurt). What’s worse, his BABIP is in line with his career norms, so he isn’t exactly a victim of bad luck. And while he’s hitting five percent more flyballs than his career norm, his homerun to flyball rate is also down five percent.

Flat out, Chapman is having a down season. It’s legitimate and even if he’s still having lingering effects of the hip injury, it’s unlikely that magically disappears while playing baseball everyday, even with the All Star Break mixed in. However, Matt Chapman’s worst case scenario, and this is his worst case scenario still has him on pace for a 78–23–84–2-.223 batting average. That still makes him a top 150ish overall player. But, I think his owners who expected him to be closer to top 90ish are frustrated and selling too low on him.

Over the last couple weeks, I have seen him traded for Mike Foltynewicz, Gleyber Torres and Jeff McNeil to name a few. None of which I rank anywhere near the top 150. I would gladly take Chapman at that price point and I would even offer guys like Nate Lowe, Ryan McMahon or Carlos Santana if that’s what it takes to get the deal done.

The Keston Hiura roller-coaster campaign just added another loop

Keston Hiura- 1B,2B- Milwaukee Brewers

You might still be able to get Hiura on the free agency market. He is only owned in about 60 percent of leagues. I’m buying back in on Hiura. I wrote about him much earlier in the season. I thought he was grossly overrated in the preseason. But, I think the pendulum has swung drastically in the opposite direction at this point.

He strikes out a ton and I believe he is a .250 hitter at best. So, if you need batting average, or OBP, he is not going to help you there. But, he makes so much hard contact (41%), you kind of need to live with that to get the homeruns and RBI. He’s hitting much lower in the order, mostly seventh, so I don’t expect him to score a staggering number of runs. But, his .241 BABIP is about 90 points below his career mark and with the amount of hard contact he makes, that is bound to regress in a good way eventually. He’s hit two bombs and has 10 RBI over the last week. While that is a small sample size, it is an indication of what he can do when he’s dialed in.

Players with Hiura’s contact skill tend to be streaky, so he may disappear on you for stretches, even if he is on the rebound. Recently, I am seeing him get traded for Gleyber Torres, Jonathan India and Kendall Graveman. I would probably deal a player who falls around the top 200 as a price point for Hiura and considering he has eligibility at second base, which is a dreadful position to try and fill right now, I might overpay slightly.

Willy Adames- SS- Milwaukee Brewers

Willy Adames is a different type of buy-low. Typically, a buy low is an under-performing player who you project to turn their season around. Adames is a player who has been on a tear of late. Over the last month, as a member of the Brewers, Adames has hit six homers, driven in 20 runs, hit .300 and chipped in two steals. I consider him a buy low because I don’t know that his owners believe this is anything more than a heater. I think they view him as a player on a hot streak they should sell high on. I disagree. I believe this is a legit break-out

Adames has improved his launch angle to 18.3 degrees, has a barrel rate of 12.4 percent and a hard contact rate of 48.1 percent. In addition to that though, his homerun to flyball rate is actually slightly below his career norm (17.3 percent for ’21, compared to an 18 percent career rate). That’s the nerdy stat way of saying this. Adames is hitting the ball in the air more than he ever has before. He’s hitting the ball harder than he ever has before. But the ball isn’t leaving the yard at an abnormally high, fluky rate compared to his baseline metrics. That, my friends screams sustainability. Remember when Christian Yelich came to Milwaulkee and tweaked his swing to hit more balls in the air?

Now to be clear, Adames is not Yelich. But he suddenly appears to have legitimate top 50 overall player upside. Remember that is upside and if I only ever teach you one thing, it is we don’t pay for upside when we make trades. We pay market value. And right now, his market value has him being traded for the likes of Wade LeBlanc, Eugenio Suarez, Raimel Tapia and Gio Urshela. I would give any of those players away in a heartbeat for Adames. In fact, I would give away players right around the top 100ish area like Sonny Gray, Ramon Laureano, Zac Gallen or Alex Verdugo for him and still feel like I have potential for huge profits.

We may not see Bauer on the diamond again this year. But adversity creates buying opportunities

Trevor Bauer- SP- Los Angeles Dodgers

I won’t spend a ton of time on this one, as Bauer’s buy-low opportunity is not grounded in his numbers. If you’re not aware of his current legal circumstances, give it a Google. Maybe don’t do it at work though, as the details read like an excerpt from Fifty Shades of Gray. Bauer is currently on administrative leave from MLB, which means he is out at least seven days. He’s all but guaranteed to miss more time. He currently has a court hearing scheduled for July 23rd and I can’t imagine him pitching again before that.

Again, I won’t get into the specifics of the allegations. The fact remains however this is a buy-low fantasy baseball trade column and Bauer’s value will NEVER be lower. He’s probably out for at least a month. The risk here is that he’s out for the remainder of the season. This is calculated advice based on where you are in the standings. If I’m a team sitting at the top of the standings, I’m rolling the dice on it. If I am stuck in the middle or trying to rebound from the bottom though, I am steering clear.

Bauer is a top five pitcher. And he has some serious short-term downside with some long-term risk, but this is a move that may put your team over the top in September. People are hitting the panic button quickly, with Rich Hill, Zack Greinke, Ross Stripling, DJ LeMahieu, Pablo Lopez and Ian Anderson being names I have seen swapped for Bauer straight-up. Again, tread carefully. It’s entirely possible we don’t see Bauer again this year. But it’s also possible that he’s back in a few weeks.

Aaron Nola has caught some poor luck recently. He’s much better than this

Aaron Nola- SP- Philadelphia Phillies

They call Nola the big easy, but baseball has been anything but that recently for Nola. One win, a 6.12 ERA and a 1.36 WHIP for Nola over the last month. Yikes. You want a little more consistency from a guy you drafted as your ace and a top 10 pitcher. Lump in that the Phillies can’t score runs on anyone right now and it makes for a disaster waiting to play out.

Nola has been on the wrong side of luck though. For one, his FIP is almost a full run below his ERA (3.47 compared to 4.44) and his .331 BABIP is well above his slightly better than league average .296 mark. He’s giving up noticeably more flyballs than usual and a hair more hard contact, which explains why he’s getting bit by the homerun bug. He’s also been working deeper counts, which has forced him to use his fastball a lot more than normal and leaving his curveball (his best pitch) on the shelf. The good news is his fastball also grades really well, so while not ideal and I believe is part of the struggles, it’s not a Patrick Corbin type disaster when he needs to fall back on it.

I think over time, Nola will find his curve again and his numbers will come back to reflect how well he has truly pitched. He’s also got a bit of a German Marquez thing going on, where he has really only had a few really bad games that went so poorly, it tanked his numbers for the season. I’m seeing Nola get moved for talented and valuable pieces, but nowhere near his true value. Blake Snell, Jared Walsh, an injured Jack Flaherty and packaged with another player for DJ LeMahieu. That is a strong buy to me. Nola is still a top 10 pitcher and those players do not at all reflect that.

Well, that’s all for this week. Good luck in your trade talks and remember, I am always reachable on the Fantasy Life app @mikeprice to talk any trades you want!

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