Josh Smith (SS/3B - TEX) - Smith homered twice on Sunday against Houston, giving him 10 on the year to go along with a slash line of 293/392/469. That OBP is augmented by a whopping 15 HBP, but the plate discipline is very good nonetheless, and Smith has even chipped in 5 steals to make a 20/10 year a possibility. His eligibility will probably be limited to SS and 3B, but Smith has shown me enough, when combined with his minor league track record, to think that he can maintain standard-league value. The contact ability is solid and while the power and speed are likely only average to average-minus, the Rangers are hitting him in the upper part of the order so the counting stats have been quite good. The Statcast expected data is poor enough to give me some pause, but Smith never had a minor league AVG under .290, so I'm inclined to believe that there is some legitimacy to the solid AVG this year after two very poor years in that area.
Zach Neto (SS - LAA) - Neto continued to hit on Sunday with another double and a walk against Seattle, and he enters the break fresh off of an 8-19 week with 3 2B and a HR. He still looks like a below-average contact/average power bat to me, but he's just 23 and is well on his way toward a 20/20 season with 12 HR and 14 SB already. I believe that he's going to grow into above-average power, as the EV is skewed downward a bit with a very high 13.6% pop-up rate. We all get used to top prospects coming into the league almost fully-formed, but it doesn't happen for everyone, and Neto only had 217 minor league PAs before jumping to the majors. That puts him at less than 900 professional PAs, so there's likely a decent amount of development still to come here.
Yusei Kikuchi (SP - TOR) - Kikuchi rolled through the first 4 innings against Arizona on Sunday before allowing 7 runs in the 5th as he completely lost control. He walked 3 and hit a batter in the inning, and of course allowed a grand slam to lefty-masher Ketel Marte. The 33 year old has made great strides in his control over the past few years, but these outings still occur from time to time and Arizona is a tough matchup for a guy that at this best still allows an awful lot of hard contact. Kikuchi is close to an "all-start" for me, and I don't have any reservations using him out of the break for his projected matchups against the Rays and Rangers. I still have him comfortably in SP3 range in 12-team leagues, and I'm hoping that the last two outings of slightly diminished velocity don't mean a thing (he fanned 13 Giants in his last start...).
Juan Yepez (1B - WAS) - Yepez has stepped right into the Nationals lineup and hit in 10 straight, including a pair of singles and a SB on Sunday against the Brewers. He hasn't homered yet, but he has 6 doubles already, and the contact improvements that he's made in the minors the past two seasons appear to be sticking a bit at the top level. Yepez has a career minor league AVG of .270 in over 600 games, so we shouldn't get too carried away here, but I'm on board with an add here in deeper leagues. Despite being in his 10th professional seasons, Yepez is still just 26 and might be able to give you average production in both contact and power. Nothing too exciting, but there's the "ride the hot hand" theory at play as well.
Ben Lively (SP - CLE) - I think we all thought the wheels were going to come off for Lively after just his 2nd poor start of the year last time out against Detroit, but Lively bounced back nicely on Sunday against the Rays, holding them to a couple of solo HRs and little else over 5 1/3, walking 2 and fanning 7. There is still plenty of reason to be cautious here, as the control is really the only positive: he doesn't miss bats very much at all, and he allows quite a bit of hard contact with a low GB rate. Still, the control is good enough that I don't mind streaming him against the less power-laden offenses. That's more than I would have expected to say regarding Lively a month or two ago. An ERA around league average the rest of the way would be a reasonable thing to assume.
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