Overvalued, Undervalued Trade Targets - Buy/Sell for Fantasy Baseball (Week 10)

Making the right trades can be crucial to championship success in fantasy baseball. Almost as much as the draft, if not more. While most trades can have a significant impact on your fantasy team, it’s the deals where you acquire undervalued players and then see their production improve that can really tip the scales in your favor where the standings are concerned.

The same can certainly be said about trading away players at the right time when they have the most fantasy trade value. Those deals could happen in the second week of April or the last week of August, but they’re impactful all the same.

Here are some undervalued candidates to pursue in trades and some overvalued ones who you should consider dealing for if they presently occupy a spot on your roster.

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Undervalued Players To Trade For

Julio Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners

Let’s start with some blind resumes based on batted ball data and underlying metrics.

• Player A: .337 xwOBA, .428 xwOBAcon, 13.1% barrel rate, 50.7% hard-hit rate, 25.9 K%, 7.1 BB%, .345 BABIP
• Player B: .346 xwOBA, .448 xwOBAcon, 11.7% barrel rate, 52.6% hard-hit rate, 27.5 K%, 7.1 BB%, .299 BABIP

You’d probably want both players on your fantasy team, though Player B’s batted ball data – despite slightly fewer barrels and strikeouts happening at a bit of a higher rate – might have the slight upper hand. At worst, it’s a tremendously close call.

Player A is Julio Rodriguez last season, during his excellent rookie campaign when the outfielder hit .284 with a .345 on-base percentage, 28 home runs, and 25 stolen bases in 560 plate appearances. Establishing himself as both a real-life and fantasy superstar in the sport. Player B is Julio Rodriguez this season.

So far, Rodriguez’s surface-level production hasn’t quite been the same this season – a season in which the 22-year-old is batting .241 with a .304 on-base percentage, 10 home runs, and nine stolen bases in 240 plate appearances. Better production is on the way for the outfielder, and he’s already starting to break out of the slow start, with seven multi-hit games in his past nine starts prior to Wednesday.

Still, while the window to try and acquire Rodriguez might be closing fast, it still might be open to a degree given his surface-level numbers this season. The 22-year-old has the potential to be a top 10 overall player the rest of the season, and his underlying stats are pretty much in line, if not better than when he was an elite fantasy option last season.

Overvalued Players To Trade Away

Trea Turner, Philadelphia Phillies

Trea Turner’s first season in Philadelphia has not gone to plan so far from a production-at-the-plate standpoint.

The 30-year-old shortstop – who is coming off successive 6.0 or better fWAR seasons in each of the last two seasons and has accumulated 128 home runs and 235 stolen bases to go along with a .299 average, a .351 on-base percentage and a 122 wRC+ since the start of the 2016 campaign – is off to a decidedly cold start at the plate in Philadelphia.

The infielder is batting just .240 with a .285 on-base percentage, five home runs, and seven stolen bases in 239 plate appearances for the Phillies. His 75 wRC+ is nearly 50 points below his career 121 wRC+. That he’s still stealing bases is good for fantasy purposes, with seven so far entering play Wednesday.

However, Turner owns a .286 wOBA, and while that’s decidedly low, especially for a player with his track record, his xwOBA is actually lower, checking in at .284. The veteran’s current .355 xwOBAcon would be his lowest in a full season, while his 24.7% strikeout rate would be his highest in a full season. Elsewhere, his barrel rate (6.0%) and hard-hit rate (37.3%) would be the lowest metrics in those categories that the shortstop has posted since the 2018 campaign. This is all to say that the underlying metrics just aren’t there to point to an immediate turnaround, or even an eventual turnaround down the line if he keeps hitting like this.

That all brings us to the prospect of trading Trea Turner in fantasy leagues. It’s possible that if you’re reading this you used an early first-round pick to select the 29-year-old in drafts earlier this year.

And while now isn’t the time to trade Turner simply to trade him – or to move him for players multiple players with less fantasy upside – it might be the time to explore a deal. A deal if someone in your league is willing to part with a player who was ranked similarly heading into the season, or that has top 10 or 15 rest of season overall upside. A deal that could be helped and facilitated by the fact that someone might see Turner’s five home runs and seven stolen bases and think a turnaround is on the cards.

A player like Trea Turner with his track record in the Majors is better than this type of production, but if his underlying metrics continue at the rate they have been, it might just be a down year for the two-time All-Star. If that continues to be the case, it might be the right time to move him in redraft leagues.

Isaac Paredes, Tampa Bay Rays

Let’s start with the good. Isaac Paredes is making a ton of contact this year. Emphasis on the word, ton. He’s sporting an 18.4% strikeout rate (which sits in the 73^rd percentile) and a 15.8% whiff rate (which sits in the 93^rd percentile).

Overall, the infielder is batting .269 with a .339 on-base percentage and eight home runs in 189 plate appearances for the Tampa Bay Rays. He’s not sporting an extreme BABIP, more one close to the league average at .304. In fact, it’s just percentage points higher than the .297 league average BABIP.

Still, there are some notable signs of regression coming for the 24-year-old. While he’s not striking out or swinging and missing all that much, he isn’t making all that much in the way of loud contact when he’s hitting the ball. In 133 batted ball events this year, Paredes is the owner of just a .305 xwOBAcon and a 28.6% hard-hit rate.

And while he’s added eight home runs this year in addition to the solid contact skills, the former Tiger has done so on just four barrels and a 3.0% barrel rate. In short, the type of power production just doesn’t seem sustainable if his barrel rate stays that low. Case in point, Paredes’ .339 xSLG is markedly lower than his actual .468 slugging percentage.

Paredes, who has routinely registered double-digit walk rates as a minor league and Major League player, has also seen his walk rate drop from 11.5% in 381 plate appearances last year to 5.9% so far in 2023. That, combined with a chase rate that has actually gotten worse, are two key things to watch as the season progresses, especially if his quality of contact metrics stay in the same ballpark.

• Isaac Paredes’ Chase Rate In 2022: 20.5% (94^th percentile)
• Isaac Paredes’ Chase Rate In 2023: 27.9% (43^rd percentile)

Either way now is the time to trade Paredes if he’s on your roster.

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