Leody Taveras: Champ or Chump for Fantasy Baseball?

With the All-Star Break upon us, now is a great time to look at your league's standings page and formulate a plan of attack for the rest of the season. If you're in first, try to proactively identify and address any weaknesses that could be exploited by your rivals. If you're in contention, identify where you can make up the most ground and look to acquire appropriate players immediately. If you're in a keeper or dynasty format and this isn't your year, it might be time to retool.

While trades will likely be part of your attack plan, the waiver wire may also offer a few gems to get you where you want to go. One name to look into is Leody Taveras of the Texas Rangers who's slashing .341/.367/.553 with three homers and five steals over 90 PAs. The 23-year-old isn't a household name but has some pedigree, being named the top prospect in the Texas system in 2017 by Baseball America and emerging as a consensus top-100 prospect in 2019.

Taveras runs like the wind and has a developing power stroke, creating 20/20 potential over a full season that most fantasy rosters could use. He also offers improving plate discipline and raw footspeed that should help him post a solid BABIP, though his current mark of .426 is obviously unsustainable. There is some risk here, but Taveras should be rostered in more than 48% of Yahoo! leagues on upside alone.

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The MiLB Resume of Leody Taveras

Taveras always ran well, played strong defense, and put up reasonable batting averages as a prospect, but the knocks against him were a lack of power and plate discipline. With the modern game largely dominated by power and plate discipline, some scouts wondered whether Taveras would ever be more than a capable fourth outfielder.

The outfielder's first taste of the High Minors in 2019 provides an excellent example of what scouts were seeing. He hit .265/.320/.375 with three homers and 11 steals over 293 PAs for Double-A (Frisco), relying on a .327 BABIP to put up a serviceable batting line. The steals were interesting from a fantasy perspective, but his eight CS didn't scream big-time base thief at the highest level. His plate discipline was fine with a 7.8 BB% and 20.5 K%, but there wasn't a whole lot to get excited about.

Taveras should have received more seasoning in the minors in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic had other ideas. Texas decided to keep him on the MLB roster instead of the alternate training site and the results were disastrous: a .227/.308/.395 line with four homers, eight steals, and a 32.1 K% in 134 PAs. Just 21 at the time, many fantasy managers likely gave up on Taveras when he wasn't supposed to be in the Show yet.

Fortunately, 2021 did wonders to improve Taveras's stock as fantasy managers were busy watching anything but Texas Rangers baseball. He went bonkers for Triple-A (Round Rock), slashing .245/.343/.475 with 17 HR and 13 SB in 381 PAs. His success wasn't ballpark-aided either as Round Rock played as a pitcher's part from 2017 to 2019 with a 93 HR factor and 92 BABIP factor. His 12.9 BB% demonstrated more patience than he ever exhibited before, while his 24.9 K% plays just fine in modern baseball. If anything, his .287 BABIP suggested batting average upside.

His power increase was partially the result of his inflated 47.4 FB%, though his 15.6% HR/FB suggested that he had more oomph than scouts thought as well. His five CS represented an improvement in base stealing efficiency too, though the resulting 72% success rate still wasn't ideal. If you throw in the three homers and 10 steals Taveras compiled in 185 PAs for the Rangers last year, he went 20/20 with zero fanfare.

Taveras returned to Round Rock to begin the 2022 campaign and largely did more of the same, slashing .294/.335/.485 with seven homers and seven steals across 221 PAs. His FB% collapsed to 30.6%, but a lot of the lost flies turned into liners (24.8 LD% vs. 15.7% in 2021) that boosted his BABIP to .349. We should probably split the difference between the two extremes moving forward. His 14.6% HR/FB remained solid, while he traded some walks (6.3 BB%) for a lower strikeout rate of 21.7%. Four CS were too many, but Taveras has established himself as a power/speed combo on the farm.

Is Leody Taveras as Good as He's Looked?

While scouts didn't expect much pop from Taveras, his MiLB resume demands that we consider him at least a 20 HR threat. He's roughly average in terms of average airborne exit velocity with a mark of 91.2%, but his rate of Brls/BBE rates well below average at 3.1% despite a solid FB% of 39.7. Taveras makes the most of it with a 28 Pull% on flies though, allowing him to record more cheapies than most. Baseball Savant says that Taveras only deserves an xSLG of .381 thus far, but he should still pop the occasional long ball.

Nobody doubts Taveras's speed with a 29.5 ft./sec Statcast Sprint Speed, and he's only been caught stealing twice this season at the MLB level. His wheels also give him batting average upside on his xBA of .259 as the metric does not properly account for infield hits that speed merchants like Taveras can consistently beat out. He's also torched his grounders for an average EV of 93.9 mph this year.

Taveras has also flashed an improved hit tool with an 89.2 Z-Contact% after never previously eclipsing the 80% threshold. The result has been a 24.4 K% and a 10.2 SwStr% that's nearly two full ticks better than his career rate of 11.9%. He isn't walking much with a 4.4 BB%, but the aggressive approach is working so far.

The Verdict on Leody Taveras

Most projection systems peg Taveras for a .230 average, but this author sees his speed translating into something more in the .250-.260 range. Combined with upper-teens HR totals over a full season and the upside for 30 steals in the same time frame, Taveras is a Champ worth rolling the dice on. One thing to look for is where he hits in the Rangers lineup. He's currently hitting sixth, but his speed and recent hot stretch could lead to a look as a leadoff man.

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