Rest of Season Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Hot Like Summer

This week marked the official beginning of the summer season. And as the mercury rises, several Major League players are doing the same in my rest-of-season rankings. Some of them are due to injury, while others are based more on recent performance. I want to focus on the latter this week by discussing two players who are heating up of late – Anthony Santander of the Baltimore Orioles and Tanner Bibee of the Cleveland Guardians. What has fueled their recent hot streaks, and can they keep it up going forward?

Bats as Hot as Summer

Anthony Santander

There was a point not too long ago when I was starting Anthony Santander in a league almost by default. As of Memorial Day, he was hitting .201 with nine home runs and 29 RBI. He was also seemingly beginning to lose his grip on a starting role. Manager Brandon Hyde benched Santander on Memorial Day, which was the third time Santander sat over a nine-game period. Upon returning to the lineup the next day, Santander raised his batting average to .211 by month’s end but did not increase his home run or RBI totals. Then the calendar flipped to June, and Santander turned into “Tony Taters”. So far in June, he is hitting .286 with 11 homers and 22 runs batted in. Suddenly he is a top-20 year-to-date fantasy baseball outfielder and at a season-long pace for 43 home runs and 109 RBI.

So, what does this mean going forward? Well, I have bumped Santander up this week. However, I do not think what he has done over the past three weeks is sustainable over the long haul. If that sounds obvious, tell that to the people who were complaining about my ROS ranking of Jared Jones for weeks on end. One great month does not a season make. And yes, I know Jones pitched well on Saturday. Congrats. Anywho, back to Santander. I think fantasy managers should enjoy the ride, as I plan on doing where I have him. Baltimore is the highest-scoring team in the Majors and is showing no signs of slowing down offensively. The Orioles have hit 44 home runs this month. Meanwhile, the Miami Marlins have scored 48 runs this month. Read that again.

Santander should at the very least be a solid compiler, even if the batting average is less than ideal. I am not sure he gets to 43-109, but new career highs in the counting categories (sans stolen bases) are well within reach. Santander would need 39 runs, 14 home runs, and 45 RBI to set career-highs in each category. That is roughly an 80-30-90 pace, and very close to his numbers (81-28-95) from last season. He finished as the OF22 overall last year, and that is more or less where I have him in this week’s ROS rankings. I consider Santander a borderline OF2 in 12-team leagues, and a fringe top-100 player overall.

Tanner Bibee

In his first 38 Major League starts dating back to last season, Tanner Bibee had failed to record double-digit strikeouts. He then struck out 11 Cincinnati Reds in a 4-2 loss on June 12. Bibee one-upped himself in his next start, fanning 12 Seattle Mariners in an 8-0 victory. Bibee has now struck out 30 hitters in three June starts. That is good for a 44.8-percent strikeout rate. His last two games have been against teams prone to striking out, but those are eye-popping numbers, nonetheless. The question is whether or not we can take away anything else from these past few starts.

Bibee threw more changeups than normal against Cincinnati and more curveballs against Seattle. In the start prior against Kansas City, Bibee went almost exclusively with a four-seam fastball and slider combination. So, it appears he is attacking opponents based on their weaknesses. Bibee is scheduled for a two-start week, including a meeting with the aforementioned Orioles on Monday. Baltimore has been a top-five offense against both fastballs and curveballs this month but ranks slightly lower against changeups and sliders. Bibee’s expected batting average against is .182 on changeups and .177 on sliders this year, so he may have more success than most pitchers have recently against Baltimore. This game and this week could go a long way in determining how we view Bibee going forward. For now, I am treating Bibee as a high-end SP3 in 12-team leagues, but he could approach top-20 status with a pair of gems.

Fantasy Baseball Rest of Season Rankings