CRITERIA: All players in this column are owned in less than half (50%) of all ESPN fantasy baseball leagues at the time of posting. Ownership rates listed next to each player correspond to ESPN leagues. ALSO NOTE that this column has a stern focus on 12-16 team standard fantasy leagues, specifically those with a 5×5 Rotisserie/Head-to-Head format.

ADD OF THE WEEK:

Few teams in baseball this season have endured as many injuries to their 25-man roster as the Milwaukee Brewers. The crowd of reliable frontline hitters and pitchers flooding DL shelves has turned this team into a fantasy carousel, where value is passed around between whoever’s hitting at the top of the lineup, or whoever’s (actually) closing out the ninth inning.

Jesus Aguilar is the latest of bench bats in the Brewers starting nine to run with his increased playing time, as injuries to both Eric Thames and Ryan Braun (who actually returned yesterday) gave him the opportunity to prove himself worthy of internal preferment. Currently owning a .324 batting average and slugging over .570 with a .252 ISO, he’s made his stickiness in the starting lineup more of a certainty than a question.

With anything that suddenly looks good in fantasy, it’s important to view players from all the angles, because you just might be negligent of something important. This is Jesus Aguilar’s “something important”

This is some really, REALLY encouraging data here, considering his wOBA has gone up 12% and his contact rate (despite chasing about 3% more than a season ago) has gone up 8% between now and last season, where he slashed .265/.311/.505 in just over 300 at-bats. Let’s assume that I missed out on picking up Aguilar in my fantasy league (I did), and I needed to go another direction to satisfy my newfound pessimism. Petty Me arrives at BrooksBaseball and sees this to my disappointment:

2017 Slugging Percentages (from the catcher’s perspective) 2018 Slugging Percentages (from the catcher’s perspective)

Improvement! Across the board improvement! And he’s done it by absolutely absorbing the entire middle half of the strikezone – inside and out – with plenty of power. You could still easily find outs against him way upstairs, and he’s still no Adrian Beltre below the knees, but, considering a higher contact rate from a power hitter usually suggests better, more consistent contact, this is a very promising thing to see.

Aguilar’s power will no doubt remain the driving force that determines where his wOBA is headed, because for as well as he’s slugging the ball he’s not walking enough (9.1% BB rate) to be much of a threat elsewhere. At 27 years of age, I’m very bullish on Aguilar’s gains from last season, as well as manager Craig Counsell‘s confidence in keeping him in the three-hole even after Braun’s return from the DL. Dude is currently batting .318 with and .839 OPS with men on base; figures that are only going up with his performance in May. Couple that in with the advantageous ballpark factors of Miller Park, and we have a waiver wire add who’s dying to pad someone’s fantasy stats. Get him before he’s gone.

Tyler O’Neill, OF, St. Louis Cardinals (38.3%)

Since last season, Tyler O’Neill has had my attention, but you can only like a potential impact call-up so much when Mike Matheny is managing the team he’s on. Somehow, someway (and rest assured, days and months after this post, I’ll still be absolutely dumbfounded that I’m saying this) O’Neill has hit his way past hot-hitting Dexter Fowler in the lineup, garnering everyday playing time at least until he cools off from his 3-homer, 6-RBI barrage over the last six games.

Everyone should be eyeing how this guy moves, because he can do sexy stuff like this:

O’Neill’s power has always been his calling card, as it helped him win the Southern League MVP back in 2016 before blasting 44 more longballs heading into his call-up this season. In fact, it’s his only reliable source of fantasy relevance, because unlike Aguilar who draws walks sometimes and carries an above average contact rate, O’Neill doesn’t come close to doing either of those things and strikes out way too much.

Here’s a combination of data that’s even uglier than the table above.

If he qualified, O’Neill’s O-Swing rate would rank 10th highest in all of baseball. If he qualified, O’Neill’s Contact rate would rank dead last in all of baseball. If he qualified, O’Neill’s Swinging Strike rate would be the highest in the Majors by a boatload. That’s a terrible, no good, very bad trio of categories to be flat out suck-y at.

Luckily, his upside is enticing enough to dig a little deeper. BaseballSavant has his expected batting average at .292, his expected slugging percentage at .611, and his expected weighted on-base average just below .400. He’s also doing considerable damage against fastballs, with a vast majority of his current .704 slugging percentage being aided by his 1.077 clip off the pitch. He can’t hit breaking balls at all (63.6% whiff rate and .080 wOBA), and pitchers have clearly taken notice of that (42.3% usage rate against O’Neill), but so long as he could keep his average exit velocity (91.6) and launch angle (13.9 degrees) above average, he could provide a healthy jolt to standard league teams over the next few weeks.

Considering how poor his plate discipline is, owners should do everything in their power to ship him to the highest bidder if he’s truly catching fire.

Austin Meadows, OF (33.5) & Josh Harrison, 2B/3B, Pittsburgh Pirates (44.9%)

Austin Meadows has Starling Marte and his injured oblique to thank for the increased playing time that has coincided with his call-up earlier this month, and it’s clear the intention was to hit the ground running. With a .440 batting average and OPS over 1.300 through his first six games, Meadows has been demanding our attention. He’s flashed great power so far with his first couple of Major League homers being backed by an overall 92.9 average exit velocity and a 13.7 degree launch angle, but I think his contact skills (91.7% Contact rate, 4.3 Swinging Strike rate) are going to prevail going forward. Meadows has to complement that with his speed, and the jury’s still out on that considering he’s only swiped 27 bags in the Minors since 2016. Ride him while he’s hot, though, because he’ll definitely continue to put a ton of balls in play and (maybe, hopefully) create chaos on the basepaths. Any kind of power you get from him (.359 and .397 slugging percentages in AAA last season and this season, respectively) is an added bonus.

Josh Harrison is flying off the shelves at a pace as rapid as his new teammate, and that’s to be expected from a leadoff hitter with a penchant for keeping his batting average above the norm. Like Meadows, Harrison needs to steal bases in order to remain fantasy relevant, and the potential for double-digit swipes is apparent with him constantly hovering around 10 bags a year. The increased power he displayed last season is exciting, and his recent trend of hitting more flyballs and creating more hard-hit contact has to be a welcoming sight for owners and potential buyers. He still profiles as one of those “just outside the top-50 for outfielders” types because most of his greatest assets are being superseded by a bunch of other hitters, but I see valuable bench depth in standard leagues, while those desperate owners in deeper 12-16 team mixers and NL-Only’s are advised to scoop him up at their earliest convenience.

Brandon Nimmo, OF, New York Mets (3.5%)

I LOVE Brandon Nimmo’s profile! A high launch angle (18.6 degrees), line drives (24.1%) and flyballs (46.6%) spread all over the field, and a hard-hit rate over 40%!? This is stud-like stuff from a guy who’s pretty much been flip-flopped into and out of the Mets starting lineup all season. Easy 20-homer pop is to be expected from the style of contact he’s producing, but his plate approach is what could potentially make him a fantasy stalwart. Compared to the rest of this week’s free agent list, Nimmo is practically Joey Votto at the dish.

If it qualified, Nimmo’s Swinging Strike rate would tie Whit Merrifield and Kyle Seager for the 39th lowest mark in all of baseball, while his Chase rate (or O-Swing according to the table above) would barely trail that of Matt Carpenter, Mookie Betts, and Mike Trout (!). For the sake of brevity, I’m going to restrain myself from hyperbole and reassure you his emergence is no fluke: last season, he walked 15.7% of the time, and was on the verge of something special last September/October where he slashed .260/.387/.479 on a .368 wOBA. I’m picking him up everywhere – standard leagues and deep – with the hopes that I’ve stumbled upon a pot of gold.