This week offers up a clear case of opportunity knocking, especially when it comes to outfielders. A pair of longtime rivals, both of whom recently moved into his team’s cleanup spot, stand out among the most popular fantasy baseball pickups.
Alex Verdugo, OF, New York Yankees(34.9% rostered in ESPN leagues): In an unexpected development, especially looking at the big names that grace the Yankees roster, Verdugo earned starts out of the cleanup spot both Saturday and Sunday in Milwaukee. Coincidentally, the team scored 15 runs in each game. Verdugo chipped in with five hits and two homers over the three-game series. He is the only Yankee to have played in all 29 games (as well as all 263 innings) and is batting .333 (22-for-66) over his last 19 contests.
To be straightforward, I’m not traditionally a Verdugo believer. His skill set screams “platoon man” — see his .295 career wOBA against lefties compared to .345 against righties. Plus, he makes only modest contact (never a better than 38th percentile Statcast Barrel rate and only twice greater than 39th percentile hard-hit rate), which might mean he’s still a situational, matchups-type fantasy play. That said, Verdugo has shown much better selectivity against lefties (15.9% walk and 21.2% chase rates compared to his 16.9% and 24.5% career numbers against that side). He’s also showing a hint of elevation in his swing, which is a good thing for a lefty who calls Yankee Stadium his home.
Perhaps Verdugo is a short-term add, best traded at the peak of an upcoming hot streak. However, as his skill set is well-suited for points-based leagues (currently OF8 in fantasy points), perhaps he’s ready to deliver something more.
Wilyer Abreu, OF, Boston Red Sox(17.0% rostered): The most disappointing of Boston’s many outfield combatants this spring, Abreu was fortunate to make the Opening Day roster after hitting just .127/.286/.270 with a 33.8% strikeout rate over 77 Grapefruit League plate appearances. Trevor Story‘s season-ending injury, however, coaxed the team to shift Ceddanne Rafaela to shortstop to compensate, allowing Abreu to sneak into regular corner outfield duty.
Abreu, thus far, has given the team plus-defense and similar power metrics to his brief 2023 stint, and his patience at the plate is another positive. Abreu brings much more power to the table than either Rafaela or Jarren Duran, having posted a .216 ISO while averaging one home run per 19 at-bats between the majors and minors from 2021-23. That’s probably why he has become attractive enough to the Red Sox to earn cleanup-spot starts in six of their past seven games. He’s another “universal add” thanks to his expanded opportunity.
Pay attention: One more “outfielder,” or at least an OF-eligible player to consider is Houston Astros prospect Joey Loperfido (5.6%), reportedly set to join the team for the start of their series against the Cleveland Guardians. Eric Karabell will have much more to say about Loperfido’s fantasy potential on Tuesday.
How are they still available?!
Mason Miller, SP/RP, Oakland Athletics(56.6%): A sensation during the past week’s series against the Yankees, Miller has quickly emerged as a top-shelf closer, armed with a 100.7-mph fastball and slider, each of which has a 50% whiff rate thus far. He has notched the save in each of his past seven opportunities, striking out a stunning 17 out of 24 batters faced while allowing only one hit over that time.
My mea culpa: I did not expect the Athletics to regard him as a traditional, single-inning closer this year — and certainly not this quickly. I likened his probable role to that of Garrett Whitlock‘s for the 2021-22 Red Sox. Well, Miller looks the part, and this year’s Athletics team is nowhere near as terrible as last year’s, on pace to shave 99 runs off their run differential (although admittedly, they’re still likely to be beneath minus-200 in that department).
Riley Greene, OF, Detroit Tigers(40.4%): I was a huge Greene backer in the preseason and remain one today, not that that’s a difficult stance to take when he’s one of those players whose Statcast page is a sea of red — that’s the color you want to see there. Though his surface-level rotisserie numbers appear ordinary, among batting title-eligibles, he has the seventh-best Barrel rate and is the MLB leader in walk rate (19.2%). Greene still seems destined for a 2024 breakout. On a side note, what is it with Tigers outfielders with stunning metrics and so-so back of the baseball card stats (see: Castellanos, Nick while with Detroit)?
Deeper-league add
Jo Adell, OF, Los Angeles Angels(3.3%): Could Adell, the No. 10 overall pick of the 2017 amateur draft (as well as Kiley McDaniel’s No. 10 overall prospect entering his 2020 debut season), finally be breaking through after struggling through four disappointing big league years? He has hit .400 (8-for-20) with two home runs in six games over the past week and, while such small sample sizes carry minimal weight, what stands out in his season-to-date profile is a more all-field approach (career-low 35% pull rate) — especially against fastballs — along with a greater lift in his swing (career-low 32% ground ball rate) and a greater quality of contact (career-best 51% hard hit rate).
It’s not the first time he has enjoyed some very short-term success as he managed to hit .300/.344/.533 over his final 16 games of 2021, for example. However, it wouldn’t be a complete shock to learn that this is the “figuring it out” phase for a player whom scouts said might struggle initially due to his free-swinging ways. Adell is well worth the speculative stash in any league larger than standard.
Two-start streamer
Bailey Falter, SP, Pittsburgh Pirates (15.1%): Any pitcher who draws matchups at the Athletics and at home against the Colorado Rockies is a seemingly automatic start for fantasy purposes (despite my earlier comment about the Athletics’ year-over-year “improvement”). The Forecaster grades both of those opponents as a top-five matchup on either the home or road side of things, for both run prevention and strikeout potential.
What stands out with Falter, however, is his amount of extension with his pitches, releasing his fastball 7.4 feet in front of the pitching rubber, which ranks among the very highest numbers in baseball and gives his 91.3 mph pitch the look of a pitch noticeably faster. He averaged 92.0 mph with the pitch while striking out eight Milwaukee Brewers in his last turn, which was a solid stepping stone toward these advantageous matchups.
It’s a new era for the College Football Playoff, with the field growing from four to 12 this season. That means three times as many programs will gain entry, but, beginning with Tuesday’s initial playoff rankings, there’s three times as much room for outrage, too.
Under the old rules, there was a simple line of demarcation that separated the elated from the angry: Who’s in?
Now, there are so many more reasons for nitpicking the committee’s decisions, from first-round byes to hosting a home game to whether your supposedly meaningful conference has been eclipsed by teams from the Group of 5.
And if the first rankings are any indication, it’s going to be a fun year for fury. There’s little logic to be taken from the initial top 25 beyond the committee’s clear love for the Big Ten. Penn State and Indiana make the top eight despite having only one win combined over an ESPN FPI top-40 team (Penn State over Iowa). That Ohio State checks in at No. 2 ahead of Georgia is the most inexplicable decision involving Georgia since Charlie Daniels suggested the devil lost that fiddle contest. Oregon is a reasonable No. 1, but the Ducks still came within a breath of losing to Boise State. Indeed, the Big Ten’s nonconference record against the Power 4 this season is 6-8, just a tick better than the ACC and well behind the SEC’s mark of 10-6.
But this is the fun of early November rankings. The committee is still finding its footing, figuring out what to prioritize and what to ignore, what’s signal and what’s noise. And that’s where the outrage really helps. It’s certainly not signal, but it can be a really loud noise.
This week’s Anger Index:
There are only two possible explanations for BYU’s treatment in this initial ranking. The first is that the committee members are too sleepy to watch games beyond the Central time zone. The second, and frankly, less rational one, is they simply didn’t do much homework.
It’s certainly possible the committee members are so enthralled with metrics such as the FPI (where BYU ranks 28th) or SP+ (22nd) that they’ve determined the Cougars’ actual record isn’t as important. This is incredibly foolish. The FPI and SP+ certainly have their value, but they’re probabilistic metrics, designed to gauge the likelihood of future success. They’re in no way a ranking of actual results. (That’s why USC is still No. 17 in the FPI, despite Lincoln Riley spending his days wistfully scrolling through old pictures of Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray and wondering if Oklahoma might want to get back together.)
To look at actual results paints a clear picture.
BYU (No. 4) has a better strength of record than Ohio State (No. 5), has played roughly the same quality schedule as Texas and has two wins against other teams ranked in the committee’s top 25 — as many as Ohio State, Texas, Penn State, Tennessee and Indiana (all ranked ahead of the Cougars) combined.
Indiana’s rags-to-riches story is wonderful, of course, but how can the committee compare what BYU has done (wins over SMU and Kansas State) against Indiana’s 103rd-ranked strength of schedule?
And this particular snub has significant effects. The difference between No. 8 and No. 9 is a home game in the first round, of course, though as a potential conference champion, that’s a moot point. But what if BYU loses a game — perhaps the Big 12 title game? That could not only doom the Cougars from getting a first-round bye, but it could quite likely set up a scenario in which the Big 12 is shuffled outside the top four conferences entirely, passed by upstart Boise State.
What’s clear from this first round of rankings is the committee absolutely loves the Big Ten — with four teams ranked ahead of a subjectively more accomplished BYU team — and the Big 12 is going to face some serious headwinds.
There’s a great, though little watched, TV show from the 2010s called “Rectify,” about a man who escapes death row after new evidence is found, only to be constantly harassed by the same system that fraudulently locked him away for 20 years. This is basically the story of SMU.
Let’s do a quick blind résumé here.
Team A: 8-1 record, No. 13 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 22, .578 opponent win percentage
Team B: 7-1 record, No. 15 strength of record, two wins vs. ranked opponents, loss to SP+ No. 91, .567 opponent win percentage
OK, you probably guessed Team A is SMU. The Mustangs have wins against Louisville and Pitt — both relatively emphatic — and their lone loss came to No. 9 BYU, which came before a quarterback change and included five red zone drives that amounted to only six total points.
Team B? That’s Notre Dame. The Irish have the worst loss by far (to Northern Illinois) of any team in the top 25, beat a common opponent by the same score (though, while SMU outgained Louisville by 20 yards, the Cardinals actually outgained Notre Dame by 115) and have played one fewer game.
The difference? SMU has the stigma — of the death penalty, of the upstart program new to the Power 4, of being unworthy. Notre Dame is the big brand, and that results in being ranked three spots higher and, if the playoff were held today, getting in, while the Mustangs are left out.
There are three two-loss SEC teams ranked ahead of Ole Miss, which seems to be a perfectly reasonable consensus if you look at the AP poll, too. But are we sure that’s so reasonable?
Two stats we like to look at to measure a team’s quality are success rate (how often does a team make a play that improves its odds of winning) and explosiveness. Measure the differentials in each between offense and defense, then plot those out, and you’ll get a pretty clear look of who’s truly dominant in college football this season.
Explosive Play differential vs. Successful Play differential
Auburn & Ark make no sense Iowa & Iowa St are twinsies! Is Ole Miss undervalued? pic.twitter.com/h87SKCdOtr
That outer band that features Penn State, Texas, Miami, Ohio State and Indiana (and notably, not Oregon, Alabama, LSU or Texas A&M)? That’s where Ole Miss lives.
The Rebels have two losses this season, each by three points, both in games they outgained the winning team. They lost to LSU on the road and, yes, somehow lost to a dismal Kentucky team. But hey, LSU lost to USC, too. It has been a weird season.
SP+ loves Ole Miss. The Rebels check in at No. 4 there, behind only Ohio State, Texas and Georgia.
The FPI agrees, ranking the Rebels fifth.
In ESPN’s game control metric, no team is better. Ole Miss has the third-best average in-game win percentage. That suggests a lot of strange twists, and bad luck was involved with its losses. These are things the committee should be evaluating when comparing like teams.
But how about this comparison?
Team A: 7-2, 23 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Team B: 7-2, 19 points per game scoring margin vs. FBS, 1 loss to unranked, three wins vs. SP+ top 40
Pretty similar, eh?
Of course, one of them is Ole Miss. That’s Team A this time around.
Team B is Alabama, ranked five spots higher.
Sure, this situation can be resolved quite easily this weekend with a win over Georgia, but Ole Miss starting at the back of the pack of SEC contenders seems like a miss by the committee, even if the math will change substantially before the next rankings are revealed.
Oh, thanks so much for the No. 25 nod, committee. All Army has done is win every game without trailing the entire season. Last season, when Liberty waltzed through its weakest-in-the-nation schedule, the committee had no objections to giving the Flames enough love to make a New Year’s Six bowl. But Army? At No. 25? Thirteen spots behind Boise State, the Knights’ competition for the Group of 5’s bid? Something tells us some spies from Air Force have infiltrated the committee’s room in some sort of Manchurian Candidate scenario.
Sure, the Seminoles are terrible now, and yes, the committee this season has plenty of new faces, but that doesn’t mean folks in Tallahassee have forgiven or forgotten what happened a year ago. Before the committee’s playoff snub, FSU had won 19 straight games and averaged 39 points. Since the snub, the Noles are 1-9 and haven’t scored 21 points in any game. Who’s to blame for this? Mike Norvell? The coaching staff? DJ Uiagalelei and the other struggling QBs? Well, sure. But it’s much easier to just blame the committee. Those folks killed Florida State’s playoff hopes and ended their run of success. The least they could do this year is rank them No. 25 just for fun.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Alabama A&M linebacker Medrick Burnett Jr. remains hospitalized after sustaining a head injury during a game.
Burnett was still in the hospital Tuesday, according to an Alabama A&M spokesperson. The school hasn’t disclosed details of the injury Burnett suffered during a collision against Alabama State on Oct. 26.
A fundraising request on gofundme.com had raised more than $17,000 of a $100,000 goal as of Tuesday, and the school also set up an emergency relief fund. The gofundme goal included money to help the family pay for housing so they could be with him.
“He had several brain bleeds and swelling of the brain,” Burnett’s sister, Dominece, wrote in a post on the page. “He had to have a tube to drain to relieve the pressure, and after 2 days of severe pressure, we had to opt for a craniotomy, which was the last resort to help try to save his life.”
An update on Saturday said Burnett had had complications, but didn’t elaborate.
Burnett is a second-year freshman from Lakewood, California. He transferred from Grambling State during the offseason.
College Football Senior Writer for ESPN. Insider for College Gameday.
Nebraska is adding former Houston and West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen to the staff as an offensive consultant, sources told ESPN.
Holgorsen will work with the offensive staff in a role that will evolve as the season goes on, per sources. Holgorsen joins the staff after spending this season with TCU as an offensive consultant.
He joins Nebraska at a time when the offense — and freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola — have been mired in a rut of uneven play and the team is on a three-game losing streak.
In Nebraska’s six conference games, the Cornhuskers rank No. 12 in the Big Ten in offense, No. 14 in rushing offense and No. 11 in passing offense. Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield has drawn criticism during Nebraska’s recent offensive slump, which has seen a dip in the passing game of Raiola, who was ESPN’s No. 11 recruit and the top pocket passer in the 2024 recruiting class.
Raiola has the third-most interceptions among Big Ten quarterbacks with eight, trailing Michigan State‘s Aidan Chiles (11) and USC‘s Miller Moss (9), who is being benched by the Trojans in favor of Jayden Maiava for next week’s matchup with the Cornhuskers.
In the past four games, Raiola has thrown just one touchdown and six interceptions. After starting 5-1, Nebraska is 5-4 and needs a win during a tough closing stretch to clinch the program’s first bowl game since 2016. That’s the longest drought of any team in power conference football.
Nebraska has a bye this week before next week’s visit to USC.
In adding Holgorsen, they are bringing in a coach who is a noted quarterback tutor and author of prolific offenses. Over the years he has worked with a slew of top college quarterbacks as an assistant and head coach — Graham Harrell, Case Keenum, Brandon Weeden, Geno Smith, Will Grier and Clayton Tune.
Holgorsen arrived in Lincoln on Monday, per sources.