Spinning Rafael Devers’ new home for fantasy baseball, June Statcast standouts and more

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Let’s start this Statcast overview with the big news of the week — the trade of Rafael Devers from the Red Sox to the Giants.

Last week, we looked at three-year Statcast park factors for homers by batter handedness as a way to assess players who are traded. While the expected homer deficit isn’t that big for Devers in his new home, it still hurts. He goes from a park that observes 90 homers for every 100 hit in a neutral park to one that has 80. This is estimated to cost him about three homers since 2024 — not a big deal.

His overall hitting, however, will be hampered, as will his counting stats in a depressed environment in San Francisco. For example, there is an approximately 18% decline in runs at Oracle Park compared to the league average. Since he will play half his games there, that represents a 9% overall deficit for Devers in expected runs and RBI (this is park-adjusted and doesn’t factor in the new lineup around him).

And to put a fine point on it in a way we all readily understand, he’s going from an overall hitting park that’s rated 105 for lefties (second best — 100 is exactly average) to 96 (second worst). Devers now projects for a .804 OPS at home and .820 overall. Oracle Park is so spacious that it doesn’t have too negative of an impact on batting average, but it’s still about 5% worse for a lefty than Fenway Park. However, since he only plays half his games there, it’s a 2.5% overall decrease. So, if he had played all his home games as a Giant, his expected average would be about .268 (he’s currently at .274).

On to other noteworthy news …

Here are the best expected hitters in June based on xwOBA (.330 is about average):

Freeman is only 3% rostered but is playing nearly every day now and has an .842 OPS. He should definitely be rostered in deep leagues. Remember, these xwOBA stats are not given a boost for home park other than whatever the increase in exit velocity is in Colorado versus elsewhere.

Another Rockies player, Goodman, is now 84% rostered, but I previously recommended him here based on his expected stats when he was widely available on waivers.

While Aranda is widely rostered (70%), he’s still under-rostered. Is he just a strong-side platoon player? The lefty-hitting Aranda has a .404 OBP this year when facing a southpaw.

On the xwOBA downside, we have:

*Just for fun, William Contreras’ brother Willson is at .425 this season. 

As for the supposed phenoms:

Caglianone is likely to be hurt by his home park, though that’s more of a headwind and not something that should significantly impact his overall expected value. I do think Caglianone has been fine so far, considering it’s his first exposure to the big leagues, despite the disappointing actual stats.

Regarding Anthony, I wouldn’t use his xwOBA to this point to fade him, and he should ultimately be helped by his park and surrounding team.

As for the pitchers, the June splits seem meager — about 20-25% of overall stats. But the best pitchers this month are who you’d expect. Let’s only focus on the surprising ones. We’re using xwOBA here, where average is again about .330, and note it’s a proxy for expected ERA (where lower is better). Rostered percentages are from Yahoo.

If any of these pitchers are available in your 12-team mixed league, they’re worth a flyer. Consider this a gentle push, given the small sample size. Fortune favors the bold in this game of ours.

Morton’s K% in the period is an outstanding 32.5%, though he’s still been wildly unlucky, and Baz is better than his June K% shows.

Do I hate backing Morton at his age (nearly 42), given his full-season stats (6.05 ERA and 1.66 WHIP)? Yes. But I have to respect the expected stats when making these calls. In June, his ERA is 2.57 with a still very unlucky 1.64 WHIP given his K% this month.

(Top photo of Rafael Devers: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)

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