Fantasy Baseball Today - Toughest Players to Rank Heading Into the Second Half! (07/11 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)
Episode Date: July 11, 2026Frank Stampfl and Chris Towers run through the toughest players for them to rank heading into the second half. What's going on with Bryce Miller and Kyle Harrison? Which Gerrit Cole is going to s...how up? Is this the beginning of the end for Christian Yelich? What happened to the Vladimir Guerrero Jr.?Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballTodaySign up for the newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters
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Confusing players to rank heading into the second half.
Up next on Fantasy Baseball Today Express.
Welcome into FPC Express on Saturday, July 11th.
I am ranked sample joined by Chris Towers.
And let's just rattle them off.
Chris, we'll go back and forth.
Lots of confusing players in baseball this season.
Where would you like to start?
Yeah, I'm going to start with a guy who is pretty newsworthy after Thursday's start.
And it's Bryce Miller, who finally had a bad start.
And normally I would just write that off.
It's just one bad start.
He's been on a per inning basis, maybe the best pitcher in baseball so far this season.
But his velocity was down.
About 1.3 miles per hour on his foreseamer, a little more on everything else.
This is a guy who last year pitched through bonespurs in his elbow, never got them removed.
He's been awesome.
The velocity's been up.
I just, there's just that little twinge of doubt in the back of my mind when I see the
velocity go down and a poor start. It's probably nothing. It's probably just one bad start.
I'm mostly willing to write it off. And if I knew he was healthy and there was not going to be any
issues moving forward, I think Bryce Miller would be a top 20 starting pitcher. That's where he was
before this start. After this one, it just makes me a little more, a little bit more nervous.
You know, I think in a similar vein here, I'll bring up Kyle Harrison, who has been struggling as
of late. And then we found out on
Wednesday night after his start that
he's been dealing with some elbow soreness
on the outside of his elbow.
So it's not the worst kind of elbow
soreness, but it's elbow soreness for a pitcher.
And this is a guy
for most of the season we've ranked in our top 24.
I mean, he's looked like one of the true breakouts
and his strikeouts are up
and he's getting a ton of whiffs on his fastball
this year. And the Brewers do a great job
developing their pitchers. So
if he was just struggling without knowing
about the elbow thing, I would feel similar
to you and Bryce Miller that I would just kind of leave him where he is. But I moved him down to
like SP 40 in my most recent update just because I'm, I'm guarding against an elbow injury
and this kind of becoming a bigger thing. So I think Kyle Harrison has leveled up, taking his
game to the next level, but now I think we have to knock him down a few pegs because of this
elbow injury. I don't know if that's the right place to rank him at SP40, but that's just kind
of where I've landed right now. I think he's really talented, but it's just an unknown situation
here going into the second half.
I'll throw it back to you.
Yeah, he was also on my list.
And I just want to say,
anytime you're dealing with even a minor injury,
I think especially a minor injury, actually,
there's no right place to rank a player
because it might just be nothing
and the extra time off from the All-Star break,
he's fine.
He comes back and he's himself.
And Kyle Harrison would be a top 24 starting pitcher
if he was healthy.
But he might be, you know,
this might be a serious injury
that lasts the rest of the season.
It makes him useless.
That's all on the table.
So I think 40 is right.
I think that's about where I'm going to have him as well,
but I have no idea if that's the right move.
I will also just throw out there.
We talked about it a lot on the full episode of the show.
Gavin Williams, I just, I don't know what to do with this dude.
And I think you can, it's not just me.
Because you look at the expected stats that we usually look at are the ERA estimators.
His ex-fip is 317.
That's terrific.
His FIP is 376.
That's okay.
That's pretty good.
His XERA is 466.
Like, who is Gavin Williams?
And there's also just on a start-to-start basis, who is Gavin Williams?
And he was incredible on Thursday, 11 strikeouts and seven innings.
His six starts before that.
He has 660 ERA and a 143 FIP or a whip.
He is just a super volatile pitcher.
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason or,
or momentum is not a thing for Gavin Williams.
There's no like, well, he's pitching well right now,
so you can trust him that that doesn't exist for him.
I just have no idea how to value him.
He's 27th at SP for me.
I can't really justify putting him any higher.
It wouldn't take, like, if you really twisted my arm,
it wouldn't take a lot to get me to drop him down in like 40.
I just think he's kind of a headache.
That's exactly what.
where I have Kevin Williams as well, so I totally get where you're coming from.
At 27 or?
Yeah, at SP 27.
That's exactly where I have him too.
So I totally get what you're saying there.
Let's talk about one more pitcher before we hit a break.
And a pitcher that I have just behind him is Gary Cole, who, no clue what to do with
Garicol right now because he's kind of, he's a pitcher that you want to guard against
ranking too low because he's a legacy pitcher and he's a future first ballot hall of
famer, but he's also coming back from major elbow surgery, and he has an 8% swinging strike rate
on the season, and he only has two starts with more than a 10% swinging strike rate this year.
With all that said, the results have been okay, and over his last four starts, his stuff plus
and his location plus are way up.
So I don't really know what to do with that.
Like, if there are metrics telling me that the stuff is better over this four-star stretch,
why isn't he getting more whiffs?
So still a very confusing pitcher.
You could tell me that in the second half,
Garrett Cole doesn't get all the way back to Garikol,
but he turns back into, let's say, 80% of Garikol pre-injury,
and he's a top 24 pitcher rest of season.
I could see that happening,
or if he continues to not get whiffs
and he pitches in Yankee Stadium and he gives up home runs,
maybe he's barely startable.
I think that's on the table as well.
So I think it's a pretty wide range of outcomes here for Gary Cole going into the second half.
Let's take a quick break and we'll get to some hitters right after this.
Welcome back, FBT Express.
We are taking a look at the most confusing players to rank heading into the second half.
We spoke a lot about pitchers, Chris.
Who's a hitter that you are confused about?
I'm really struggling with Christian Yalich.
I think this is going to be a theme, the rest of the podcast, looking at your list,
because Christian Eilich is a guy with a super strong track record who might just be falling off.
He's 34 years old.
He's had a lot of injuries.
He missed some time earlier this season with an injury.
And the underlying numbers are all basically worse than they've been at any point in his career.
He has a 28% strikeout rate.
That's his highest since 2020.
That was a small sample size.
So that doesn't really count.
Although I guess the number of games is about the same right now.
he's not hitting the ball as hard.
He is not hitting the ball in the air,
which he never does,
but at least he usually hits the ball hard.
It's just,
it might be over for Christian Yelich.
But it's Christian Yelich, you know?
Like, he was a, what,
29 homer 16th steel guy last year.
He had 264.
He had over 100 RBI.
So I,
I don't want to give up on him entirely,
but it's mostly just because of his name
at this point. I don't have anything I can grab onto beyond that. Yeah, he is a tough one for sure.
And I lean towards this is kind of the start of the end because he's 34 years old. And you see
the cracks underlying in terms of the swinging strike rate, a career high strikeout rate from
the season as well. He's been sitting against left-handed pitching. So I don't know if I could go
as far as to say that I would drop Christian Yelich. Like maybe in a shallow head to head points
league. I think you probably can, but he's only, he's DH only. So like that it's really, it's, it's
genuinely hard to have him on your team. Yeah. He's not dominating. I think anything deeper than just
head to head lineups, I probably would hold on to him just on the off chance that he can kind of find a
spark. And it's a really good Brewers lineup as well. But the underlying stuff does look pretty
worrisome here for Christian Yelich. That brings me to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. who I still rank as a top 10
first baseman, my eighth ranked first baseman. And I fully admit, like someone, someone,
pointed out to me earlier this week.
How do you still have him ranked that high?
And it's really just me guarding against the fact that his name is Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
And when he's on, he can produce, maybe not first round caliber like production because we
haven't seen that in a while, but he can be a second or third round type player.
He has not been that this season.
He has at the time of recording this more steals than he does home runs, which is just insane
to think about.
But everything is down across the board.
He's been playing through this back injury.
So I think perhaps that has been lingering for a while.
But this is the worst version of Ladd Jr.
That we've seen, like he's gone through Funks before,
but I don't know that it's ever lasted a full half of a season.
So I get people that are down on him and they want him to be ranked lower.
I can see an argument for him being outside the top 12,
the top 15 first baseman.
It is the most stacked position in fantasy baseball.
this season and Vlad Jr. has hurt you more than he has helped you. So I totally understand that.
But just look at what he did in the postseason last year. Like he can flip it like that if he's
healthy. It's just he's a major question going into the second half. Chris, back over to you.
Yeah, if you want, I guess a reason to be optimistic about Vlad, I would just say he had an 88 game
stretch in 2023 where he had a 310 Woba. This year it's 308, I think. So there is one stretch in his career.
can look at that is similarly bad for Vladimir Guerrero but no I agree I have him eighth but I don't
feel good about it in either direction so I get that my other guy is Luis Garcia who is I just he has
been so good this season and and really it's like the last month and a half or so really that he's
been really good but this dude is second in the majors in strikeout or in RBI despite
starting seven of 29 games against lefties. That alone is just one crazy, but two tells us there's
probably some regression coming. He's got like a 900 OPS. He's hitting the ball really hard. He doesn't
strike out much. And then I just look at the first base rankings. And like you said, it's such a
stacked position. I can't get Luis Garcia inside my top 24. And I really want to because he's good.
but like he just doesn't play against lefties.
Maybe you can get him there in a Roto League, but in points,
it's just a guy who's taken two days off every week is really hard to trust.
So I want to believe in Luis Garcia Jr.
He looks awesome.
It's just hard to get there.
And even more than believing in Luis Garcia Jr.,
you've got to give the player credit, obviously.
But give credit to the Nationals organization, man,
because they have done fantastic work this year.
I was completely down on that team coming in,
but they have a new regime.
They have a bunch of guys that are my age
that are running the organization
and coaching the team, managing the team,
and they're doing great work.
James Wood having a career year,
CJ Abrams career year,
Luis Garcia Jr. career year.
They've managed to get something out of Curtis Mead.
They're doing a really good job.
So credit to them, credit to Luis Garcia Jr.
But yeah, he's a bit of a tough feat to rank.
I did get him inside my top 20 first basement.
I think he's inside my top 12 at second base now as well.
But it did come with consternation.
There's a lot of really, really good players at that position.
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