Fantasy Baseball Week 10: Buy Melky Cabrera, Sell Andrew McCutchen
By Ryan Cook
It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve spoken about buying/selling Melky Cabrera and Andrew McCutchen now, would it? Which outfielder should you own as the season marches forward?
When you go into a fantasy baseball draft, you’ve normally got three things on your mind. Even the most bright-eyed amateur knows you need power, speed, and stolen bases if you want to succeed, but there is one category only seasoned veterans will value over everything else, and that’s consistency.
If you’ve dedicated a quarter of your life plus your savings account on this game, you’ll know nothing beats what I like to call, the “guaranteed goodies”. If you too spend the offseason analyzing why certain players can swing a bat at a ball real good, you probably would have realized there’s a small group of players who will guarantee you happy numbers every season if you show them some lovin’ on draft day.
For a while, Melky Cabrera and Andrew McCutchen were members of that secret service. If you’ll adjust your TV sets to 2011 and 2012, you’ll see both players in their mashing prime, paving their way for a very bright future. Now if you’ll fast forward six years, here we are still talking about two 30-plus-year-old outfielders, who God bless them, remain determined to stay fantasy relevant.
To be quite honest, the fact that we’re actually talking about this right now is remarkable. Cabrera and Cutch entered the season in opposite-ville, one coming off his third consecutive 70+ RBI season, while the other posted his lowest career AVG (.224) in 11 years.
Since we are in June, though, there’s no time to stop and reflect. It’s finally trade-bonanza season, or in other words, the month where you should be buying or selling before it’s too late.
Buy: Melky Cabrera
If I was to recommend buying Cabrera in years past, I would’ve included a bold choking hazard on the box. His 12-year career has been a lot of things, but streaky is definitely one of the top adjectives to describe the 32-year old.
Basically, you want Cabrera for two reasons: a) he’s stopped swinging at the bad stuff, and b) he’s making a ton of sweet contact on the good stuff.
Ever since Cabrera joined the Majors, he’s been known as somewhat (okay a whole lot) of an emotional hitter. While his final stats always come full circle and paint a pretty picture, his BABIP numbers have fluctuated from as high as .313 to as low as .297 over the past few seasons.
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Okay, you got me, that’s not really a big deal, but when you look at Cabrera’s career stats, it’s really hard to find a glaring difference from year to year. His 86.7% contact rate is only one percent lower than it was a season ago, and even Cabrera’s walk rate looks to stay on pace with the 7.3% he posted in 2016.
So what gives?
Unlike a lot of sudden surprises, Cabrera hasn’t changed his swing at all. In fact, it’s as silky smooth as ever, only now he’s swinging at less hardball pitching than he was to start the season, and a lot more offspeed pitching.
To be exact, Cabrera is swinging at 60% of offspeed pitches, a number he hasn’t posted since September 2014, but the good news is he’s whiffing on only 11% of them. What makes this even better is the fact that Cabrera has turned his high swing rate into bombs, just like the three-run HR he crushed last week against the Red Sox.
All of this is the perfect segue into the final money number you need to pay attention to: Cabrera’s Pull%. Throughout his career, Cabrera has hit only 18 HR’s to left field, but already this season he’s hit four deep to left. His current pull rate of 44.7% is a career high for the switch-hitter, and if it keeps up, we may be talking about a 20 HR season as opposed to a streaky hitter from month to month.
Sell: Andrew McCutchen
Here’s what’s wrong with McCutchen:
- 19.5% K-rate
- Career low .245 BABIP
- Career low 10% walk rate
- .191 AVG vs. Righties
- .399 SLG (Below league average)
- .307 OBP (Below league average)
- 87.4 MPH Average Exit Velocity
- 6.6% Barrell/BBE
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, the reason you should sell McCutchen is due to the very few positives he’s currently coughing up. You may actually get some decent return based on the small spurts of mediocrity he’s had, and let’s not forget, he’s only 30, so we’re not talking about an ancient outfielder here.
McCutchen’s three SBs this month are obviously the driving force. I don’t think anyone expected him to steal as much as an All-Star appearance let alone a handful of bases this year, but here we are talking about McCutchen swiping bags and not Starling Marte, go figure.
Steals aside, the only other part of McCutchen’s game that might garner some trade interest is his 78.3% contact rate, which is the highest its been since 2013. McCutchen hit three HRs in May and still showed he has some form of power, and it’s also shown in his 47.1% medium contact rate so far this year.
And then of course, if none of that works, play the bad luck card. McCutchen has a .219 BABIP vs. righties and 36 strikeouts. Those are numbers that seem way too high, especially for a player who finished with a .262 AVG against them last season.
Selling McCutchen by himself won’t be easy, instead wrap him up in a neat little package. The great thing is, McCutchen still holds name value, and even though some people (a lot) will be done with him, try to trade him to a Pirates fan naive enough to think he can hit 30 HRs again.
Next: What are the Mets doing with Robert Gsellman?
The great thing about fantasy baseball is her unpredictable nature. We’re talking about second-tier outfielders here, and for speculation’s sake, Cabrera could wind up being a reliable starter in your lineup rather than just a bench option. There’s still plenty more ball to be played, but June is the perfect time to buy what you need and cut what you don’t before it’s too late.