Post a for-sale sign
PLAYING fantasy baseball is like playing the stock market. The players are the commodities and it is up to you to buy them at their lowest price and sell them at their highest value. One of the biggest problems many owners face, however, is the inability to let go.
When you watch a player surge for months, you want to believe they can continue. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work that way, which is why the time is now to sell both Max Muncy and Nick Markakis.
Muncy was a mid-May waiver claim and has since produced like a firstround talent. A mammoth June now has him batting .280 with 20 home runs and 38 RBIs entering Friday. What has made him even more appealing has been his multi-position eligibility.
But what are we really looking at here with Muncy? He’s a 27-year-old who worked his way up through the Athletics’ organization beginning in 2012, but has never earned a full-time job at the big league level.
His batting average and on-base percentages have fluctuated from blah to really good at times, and his strikeout rates have done the same. This recent surge is nice, but nothing in his profile indicates he can sustain this level of play. His value has never been higher, and every day you don’t deal him, his numbers start to normalize and his trade value diminishes.
The Braves’ Markakis is in the same boat. Faced with a contract year, Markakis suddenly is hitting like it’s 2008. If a player hasn’t hit this well in almost a decade, what makes you think he is going to sustain this level of production?
A strong power indicator, ISO (isolated power), tracks a player’s extrabase hits. Right now, Markakis is batting .319 with a .168 ISO. Over the previous five seasons, he has batted .277 and has never posted an ISO over .129 in a given year over that time frame. He is, most definitely, due for a letdown.
Timing is everythin. Get strong return value now and dance your way to the winner’s circle.
Howard Bender is the VP of operations and head of content at FantasyAlarm.com. Follow him on Twitter @rotobuzzguy and catch him on the award-winning “Fantasy Alarm Radio Show” on the SiriusXM fantasy sports channel weekdays from 4-6 p.m.