Fantasy Baseball: Seven players you need to pick up

Jed Lowrie (Fantasy Baseball owned: 80% Yahoo, 86% ESPN, 87% CBS, 83% Fantrax)

Simply put, Jed Lowrie is one of the hottest hitters in all of baseball at the moment. His .367/.418/.633 slash with 6 HR and 23 RBI is an MVP worthy pace, and he currently sits 3rd in fWAR in all of baseball. He’s behind only Mike Trout and Mookie Betts and is tied with Didi Gregorius. That’s not bad company to keep.

And here’s the thing, what he’s doing appears to be at least somewhat sustainable. He’s 32nd in MLB in Brls/PA (a measure of quality contact found at Baseball Savant), just 0.1 behind Mike Trout. He’s crushing the ball, and the results are there. If he’s available, pick him up and ride the streak until he cools off or gets hurt (the latter might be more likely).

Currently, Lowrie is putting the ball into play in productive launch angle ranges (0 to 39 degrees) 61.5% of the time, good for 114 in the majors out of 333 with 25 PA or more. It’s not elite, but it’s a good indication he’ll continue to be a productive hitter going forward.

Last season Lowrie played in 153 games (his second most ever by far), and hit 14 HR with 69 RBIs. The A’s appear to be a much better offense than the 2017 iteration, however, so those RBI totals should go up if he stays on the field.

His 119 wRC+ last year is likely a better guess at his upside this season than the gaudy 192 he has now. But even if he regresses to his 2017 self, that’s a nice player to have on the bench.