Tuesday night was a great one for the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. fantasy baseball investors, as the rejuvenated slugger slugged a trio of home runs, including a grand slam, and those that passed him up in the early rounds of drafts would certainly love another shot. Guerrero is among the league leaders in myriad offensive categories and sure looks like a real-life MVP candidate, even today in his age-22 season.
Of course, entering Tuesday the news in Blue Jays land was about injured center fielder George Springer, the notable offseason acquisition, and whether he would make his long-awaited season debut after recovering from an oblique strain and then, during that recovery, a strained quad. The Blue Jays said Monday that Springer was ready to play Tuesday. Then he was not ready but could be ready any day. Whatevs!
Springer's pending return will affect other Blue Jays, starting with new 3B Cavan Biggio, who led off again Tuesday and raised his batting average 51 points with his three singles in the 9-5 win over Max Scherzer and the Washington Nationals.
Springer is likely to lead off, since he established himself as one of the best in the sport with the Houston Astros. Biggio hitting seventh in the lineup is not so appealing. Frankly, hitting .210 with a .679 OPS and with six errors at third base is not appealing and Biggio may lose playing time to Joe Panik. Panik time!
There is more! Teoscar Hernandez can come off the COVID-19 injured list any day and since he slugged 16 home runs with a .919 OPS last season, he will join the lineup as well. That affects struggling OF Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and DH Rowdy Tellez, neither of whom is hitting .200 or slugging .300. Hernandez was hardly off to a great start himself before missing time, but still, not everyone can play at the same time on this club. Gurriel shows on the ESPN most added list, for good reason. I would say patience is worth it here, for he is better than this, but Hernandez - and perhaps Biggio - will play corner outfield over him.
Hey, things could always be worse, right? Starting C Danny Jansen doubled at Texas on April 7. That was his last base hit, a miserable 30 at-bats ago. Alejandro Kirk is a better hitter and he could take the starting role this week. There is certainly a path to Kirk pushing his way into relevance in multi-catcher leagues and even in the one-catcher ESPN standard ones.
Anyway, the current Blue Jays look like one of those fantasy teams constructed via the stars and scrubs strategy, with Guerrero among the overall points leaders, OF Randal Grichuk, SS Bo Bichette, 2B Marcus Semien and LHPs Steven Matz and Hyun Jin Ryu providing strong value, and that is about it. Guerrero lost considerable weight this offseason and told everyone so, and now his OPS is up 300 points and he may be a legit Triple Crown threat. If drafting from scratch today, Round 2 would not be too early to invest. Oh, if we could only do it all again!
Here are some other Blue Jays thoughts. Yep, lots going on down in Dunedin, Fla.!
--Some will say now is the ideal time to test the trade waters on Matz, who showed occasional promise in his first five seasons with the New York Mets, and then was awful last season. Well, plenty of pitchers never got on track last season. The current version of Matz is back to inducing ground balls, but he is also a bit fortunate with a .214 BABIP and 84% LOB. I think this version of Matz could pitch to an ERA in the 3.75-4.25 range, so I would expect that ERA the rest of the way, not his current one.
--Ryu left his weekend outing after 3 2/3 innings with a glute strain and I think we expected an injured list stint. The Blue Jays claim he will start this weekend against Atlanta. Whatever the case, Ryu is special. I thought leaving the Los Angeles Dodgers would really hurt his stats, but that was clearly misguided. Ryu places his cutter and changeup wherever he wants, and he is now throwing his average fastball barely a quarter of the time. Hitters are always guessing. Ryu is a top 20 starting pitcher in fantasy.
--RHP Rafael Dolis is clearly the closer today, and perhaps he keeps the role even if Jordan Romano gets back to his 2020 performance and Julian Merryweather returns to health from his oblique injury. Dolis, a 33-year-old journeyman with 79 2/3 career big league innings, is tough to hit but rather easy to draw walks against, and these type of pitchers tend to run into rough stretches and blow up their numbers. Romano and Merryweather have the upside. Add Dolis today, but expect Merryweather to get another shot at closing in mere weeks.
--Semien, eligible at each middle infield spot in ESPN leagues, was the second player to reach both five home runs and five stolen bases, following Javier Baez and since joined by Trea Turner. We love players on a 30/30 pace, obviously, but Semien is also hitting .216 with a .672 OPS, nearly matching his disappointing 2020 figures. His strikeout rate keeps rising, the contact rate falling and the exit velocity numbers tell us nothing special is happening here. Frankly, Semien looks nothing like the fellow that hit .285 and nearly won the AL MVP award. Now would be a wise time to see if someone in your fantasy league disagrees.