James Paxton, New York Yankees - James Paxton turned in 12 strikeouts over 7 innings to pick up his 12th win of the season. The 12 strikeouts tie his 2019 high that he hit in back-to-back starts back in April. Wins are something that we can't necessarily predict, but Paxton now has a win in seven straight decisions. Paxton has a strong August with the 6-0 record and he struck out nearly 30% of the batters he's faced with a sub-10% walk rate and had a .189 average against. Paxton is basically the same guy he's always been as he can have runs where he'll dominate but is still almost guaranteed to spend time on the IL every season.
Rio Ruiz, Baltimore Orioles - Rio Ruiz homered for the 9th time of the year while going 2-for-6 at the plate. Ruiz is starting to receive some steady playing time and could end up making his way onto some rosters in AL leagues down the stretch. Ruiz was once a top prospect in the Astros system so there's some prospect pedigree here. Ruiz has still hit just .200 since August 10th, but he's finally starting to hit with some power with a .275 ISO compared to his .127 ISO for the entire year.
Gary Sanchez, New York Yankees - Gary Sanchez hit a pair of homers on Tuesday to bring his season total up to $34. While his average is still sitting at .237 the 34 homers and 74 RBI still combine to make him the most valuable fantasy catcher, and it's not particularly close. He's barreling up 18.8% of his batted balls for the season which is good for the top 2% of the league, and he's upped his launch angle for the third straight season as it sits at 19.4 degrees.
Victor Reyes, Detroit Tigers - Victor Reyes picked up four hits on Tuesday and his average continues to climb and is now up to .315, but it's fairly empty with just a .116 ISO and four stolen bases to go along with him. Reyes has absolutely no power potential in his arsenal, so the best case for him in fantasy is that he'll be able to continue to chip in stolen bases. Players with averages over .300 definitely need to be rostered, but just know not to expect much more.
Jorge Soler, Kansas City Royals - Jorge Soler sits just one homer shy of the 40 homers plateau after he hit #39 on Tuesday. He also drove in three runs on Tuesday to get him up to 100 for the season. He ranks in the top 2% of the league in barrel% and his average launch angle has also jumped to 15% to help fuel the power breakout. The .255 average will help hold him back in drafts but the runs production is going to be hard to top in the middle rounds.
This is just a small sample of our daily analysis, join our member area for over 80 daily player updates sent to your inbox every morning and track your team online. Follow for details: https://www.insiderbaseball.com/baseballsample.htm Follow to register: http://www.fantistics.com/salesbaseball.php3
