Let’s focus on players who are winning championships right now for their managers and/or are primed for success in 2025 beyond their full-season stats.
I’m focusing on recent performance for largely unproven players. The finishing kick to a season is more important for them than it is for veterans, who are more likely to be randomly good or bad. One pitcher below is a veteran, but I highlight him because I think most people outside of Queens are oblivious to how good he’s become.
I’m using real game logs and also some Statcast split data.
Hitters
Jackson Merrill is a plus-25% adjusted OPS hitter for the year. That’s great, especially for a rookie. But he’s just unreal since August 1 — .951 OPS (.768 prior). Skeptics will point to his BABIP (we have to move beyond these stats that count every ball in play as the same hit probability). But Statcast says there has been really no luck of late as his expected average since August 1 is .338 (actual .309). When you combine the power and speed and the fact that this is an age 21 season, Merrill should be a first-round pick in 2025.
Lawrence Butler had an excellent .803 OPS in reality on August 1. But since then, it’s .924. His xBA is .322. Since June 29 — 60 games — his 162-game pace (hold on to your hats): .326-124-51-124-30.
Jake Burger has been around a while but lost so much of his career to Achilles injuries. He was hurt again with another injury early in 2024 and was limping at a .698 OPS clip on August 1. He’s .857 since in a terrible park. His expected average (park neutral) since August 1 is .322. His expected slugging is over .600 (11th, just behind Butler).
Jackson Chourio was one of the youngest opening day leadoff hitters ever and on June 1 his OPS was .581. Since then, it’s .903. Since August 1, his xBA is .322 and his expected isolated slugging of about .270 suggests 35-to-40 homer power.
Corbin Carroll was killing his managers — and maybe it was fatal given what he cost — with an OPS that sat at just .664 on August 1. Since then, he’s been everything anyone could have hoped for with a .936 OPS. There’s some luck here but his xBA/xSLG for the period is .286/.584. His full-season pace in reality since August 1 is 166 runs, 50 homers, 122 RBI and 32 steals.
Oneil Cruz has the best bat speed in baseball according to Statcast. On August 1, his average sat at .247. He’s hit .328 since. Amazingly, his K% has gone from 33% before to 24% since. And remember that sample of ABs for K% since August 1 is stable (for practical purposes, that means it’s at least half skill).
Heliot Ramos has been good all year, but he was under the radar given he was post-hype and plays on the West Coast where he’s really not tracked for the majority of his games by most of the country. He’s the poor man’s Marcell Ozuna with OF eligibility. Just super unlucky down the stretch with a .236 average and .425 slugging since August 1 — his expected stats in that span are .264/.542.
Pitchers
Osvaldo Bido has swung between starting and relieving. His ERA as a starter is not good, and people may focus on that. But old-schoolers know that WHIP is more predictive of ERA than ERA and his WHIP in that role is a sterling 1.07 WHIP. As a starter, his K% is 25.8% with an 8.6% BB%.
Bowden Francis will be passed on by the (out)smart(ed) people who will focus on his FIP ERA at 4.38 for the year. But his xERA, a better stat given it doesn’t normalize all balls in play and considers contract quality and trajectory, is 3.61. Huge difference. FIP ERA is really a crude tool. Lose it.
For the second-straight year, Sean Manaea has had a league-winning finishing kick. Since July 30, he’s 5-1 with a 2.81 ERA, .161 average allowed and an amazing 32% K%. Manaea is viewed as boring, but he’s anything but and is the perfect zeroSP ace for 2025 (when you draft hitters for the first seven rounds).
Bailey Ober was a Statcast darling who I promoted in March, and that looked bad in June when his ERA was in the 5.00s. But in 14 starts since June 9, his ERA is 2.75 with a .534 OPS allowed and 29% K%.
In his nine starts since July 23 (only 44 IP), DJ Herz has allowed a .177 average with a 29% K%. His ERA in the period is 2.86. Few have noticed.
Spencer Arrighetti has been one of the most dominant pitchers in the league since June 26. In 13 starts, his K% is 31%. The homers are a problem but this is a great back-end mixed-league starter now and probably in 2025, too, for a price I will wager that significantly discounts what we’ve seen from him of late.
(Top photo of Jackson Merrill: Kim Klement Neitzel-USA TODAY Sports)
