Daniel Vogelbach started at first base and Luis Urias was at shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday night, both ending the evening with a .208 batting average. That wasn't exactly so exciting for either the Brewers or fantasy managers. On Monday night, against the San Diego Padres, the Brewers figure to feature Keston Hiura and Willy Adames in those two spots. Yeah, that seems like quite the upgrade.
Until Monday morning, when the Brewers decided to call up Hiura from Triple-A Nashville, the big story surrounding the team was the surprising weekend acquisition of Adames from the Tampa Bay Rays. In fact, the bigger story in the fantasy baseball world was that the Rays dealt away their shortstop and did not promote uber-prospect Wander Franco to replace him. Be patient. Still, May trades in real baseball are rare and it seemed as if people were misjudging what Adames is.
Acquired for relief pitchers Drew Rasmussen and J.P. Feyereisen (more on them on Tuesday), Adames is not having a good season but he does offer power and stability, having swatted 33 home runs since the start of the 2019 campaign -- five of them coming this season. OK, so he is not Fernando Tatis Jr., but he has hit more home runs in that span than Carlos Correa, Didi Gregorius, and quite a few other shortstops rostered in more fantasy leagues.
Adames, 25, debuted for the Brewers in Cincinnati on Saturday and singled in his four plate appearances, also drawing a walk. He walked again Sunday, contributing a two-run single. The pair of walks caught my eye, and he does have power. Let's check out some home/road splits for Adames and whoa! Adames is a career .217 hitter at Tampa's Tropicana Field, with a .616 OPS. In road games, he hits .293 with far more power and plate discipline. American Family Field in Milwaukee is a nice place to hit. Tropicana Field is not. This is relevant information!
Should this fact make Adames more attractive to fantasy managers? Well yeah, I think that alone makes Adames, perhaps simply in need of a change of scenery, intriguing. Still, Walls, a defense-first prospect with little on his minor-league ledger to suggest he will help fantasy teams (and perhaps merely a place-holder until the organization believes Franco is ready) jumped to ESPN's most-added list right away. Adames is rostered in 8.7% of ESPN standard leagues. Walls is at 5.8%. What's going on here?
Shiny new toy syndrome
The lure of the unknown tends to win the day in any fantasy sport, where players who have yet to fail at the highest level earn blind, unwarranted trust simply based on the fact they are not hitting .203 this season, as Adames is. To be fair, Walls might be fine. He may hit for average, steal enough bases to intrigue us, and stick around for the final four months of 2021. Sure, Adames may well make Brewers fans yearn again for the likes of Luis Urias, Orlando Arcia and J.J. Hardy. However, that seems unlikely to me. Adames should be far more popular than Walls in fantasy.
Ultimately, Adames can hit .270 with 20-plus home runs this season, which may not make him a top-10 shortstop in fantasy, but he should be rostered in many more leagues than his current rate. The home/road splits bear watching and, if he can just chop down that strikeout rate a bit and make more contact (perhaps a lot more), a career-best season may loom. Time will tell if the Brewers needed the relief pitchers they traded away, but Adames is a clear upgrade over Urias, who is a career .192 hitter versus right-handed pitching and is clearly not a shortstop.
Adames hit sixth in his Milwaukee debut and seventh on Sunday, but there is a pathway to a more important lineup spot. Center fielder Lorenzo Cain continues to bat second on most days, but is hitting just .210 with a .670 OPS. The Brewers are being loyal here. Avisail Garcia is the only other right-handed hitter in this lineup! If Adames hits, he will move up in the lineup. That would mean more run-producing opportunities. Think optimistically.
That brings us to Hiura, a top-75 selection in most preseason average live drafts. He (predictably) mashed at Triple-A, hitting .438 with nine extra-base hits in nine games. Strikeouts were his problem in April, when he hit .152 with a 36% K-rate, and there is no guarantee he will improve much on that latter figure now that he is back. Remember, Hiura struggled in 2020 as well, and his career K-rate in the majors sits at 32%. It is tough to hit for a high average striking out nearly one-third of the time.
However, his power is not in question, and the Brewers face Blake Snell on Monday followed by a slate of other left-handers in the next week -- and Hiura should thrive against lefties. Even in a potential platoon with Vogelbach (which seems unlikely), he warrants more attention than Adames in standard mixed leagues. The concern remains his batting average. Many of us predicted 30 home runs. We hope he is not the NL version of slugging Minnesota Twins 1B Miguel Sano while he shows off his power.
Back in Tampa Bay there is Franco. Only 20, he has all of 17 games and 79 plate appearances at Triple-A Durham, and he skipped Double-A. Be patient here. He has power and, with him, strikeouts are not a problem. However, I think it is also noteworthy that he is playing both second and third base, in addition to shortstop. God bless Joey Wendle, but it's far from certain that upon getting the promotion to Tampa Bay the organization will actually use Franco at shortstop. I predict third base. Walls is defensively responsible and, if he hits enough, he may stay. Even so, he may not ever help fantasy managers. I think Franco debuts in the majors in July.
Other shortstops in the news
Brandon Crawford, San Francisco Giants: What's happening here? Crawford, 34, has 11 home runs. The last time he hit more than 14 in a season was 2015. He is older than nearly every other shortstop and struggles mightily versus left-handed pitching (.139 batting average). Plus, San Francisco's Oracle Park is a tough one for left-handed hitters -- and still, Crawford is on pace for 40-plus blasts. This tends to happen when one tries to hit everything in the air and, frankly, a good portion of this looks sustainable if we ignore his past five seasons. Crawford probably will not slug .606 on the road for long, but I do think he can eclipse 25 home runs. Crawford or Adames? I'll take Crawford, but both are underrated.
Gleyber Torres, New York Yankees: He knocked in eight runs on his eight hits in the three weekend games with the Chicago White Sox, one of them a Friday night home run, so things are clearly trending nicely. The talented Torres figures to raise his 20.2% hard-hit percentage, which is one of the 10 lowest among qualifiers in the sport. That's in the neighborhood of Elvis Andrus, Myles Straw and the "king of hitting baseballs softly" David Fletcher (12.7%), but he still looks nothing like the fellow who raked 38 home runs in 2019. He has just two home runs! Do we get to double-digits? I remain leery of trading for Torres as a top-100 fantasy option.
Josh Rojas, Arizona Diamondbacks: Ketel Marte is back from injury but Rojas, who has now doubled in four consecutive games, was not playing center field to start with, so losing time here is a false narrative. Rojas has to keep playing somewhere on the diamond. Shortstop Nick Ahmed cannot hit. Veteran Josh Reddick is an emergency addition with Kole Calhoun hurt. Daulton Varsho is destined for the minors when Carson Kelly returns. Rojas bats left-handed but, so far, he boasts an OPS better than .828 versus both lefties and right-handers. He has some pop. The team should play him regularly and see what they have here. Rojas or Adames? Rojas makes more contact and can steal a base. Plus, he's eligible at both middle-infield spots and in the outfield. He could be a top-150 fantasy option.