Often, scouring the waiver wire feels like prospecting for gold in the California hills. There are tons of people out looking, but very few striking it rich. This may lead you to believe that there is not much left for the taking one-third of the way into the season except for the next big prospect coming up to steal away FAAB like thief in the night. (Lowe, Kieboom, Tucker, I’m looking at you.)
However, what if there was a genuine golden nugget out there in over half of leagues on all three major platforms? Number two at his position in ERA and sixth in WHIP with top 10 SIERA’s and xFIP to back up his numbers. While drafted way behind the likes of Mychal Givens and Andrew Miller, he is hands down a must own in all formats. You would probably be willing to drop at least 25% of your remaining FAAB wouldn’t you?
Well, get ready to spend on Ryan Pressly. Yes, the man who just set the scoreless appearance streak is way under-owned in all leagues. I know what you’re saying, “But he doesn’t get saves, he only has three on the season!” You are right, he hasn’t had many save opportunities. However, his 3 saves have him tied for 33rd in the majors, or to put it another way, a high-end RP 4 in a 10 team league. He’s a RP 3 in 12 team leagues based on saves alone.
Forget the saves though. There just are not that many high end saves guys. And if you have managed to grab several of those guys odds are it is not helping your ratios as you’d expect from a reliever. Of the 32 pitchers with more saves than Pressly, 16 of them have an ERA over 3.00. That’s a good ERA for a starter or your staff as a whole, but not what we’ve come to expect from the pen. So say you are waiting on Leclerc to get his second chance and clean up his 5.32 ERA, wouldn’t you like to wipe it off your teams’ ledger with Pressly’s 0.93? Or did you take a chance on Cody Allen and have experienced his 1.84 WHIP? Try Pressly and his WHIP, which is 0.72.
ERA Leaders
Emilio Pagan | 0.83 |
Ryan Pressly | 0.93 |
Kirby Yates | 0.96 |
Brad Hand | 1.01 |
Shane Greene | 1.08 |
Whip Leaders
John Gant | 0.67 |
Will Smith | 0.68 |
Alex Colome | 0.68 |
Roberto Osuna | 0.69 |
Ryan Presly | 0.72 |
Another concern I hear is that his k% is not in that elite 35% and up club. However, his 31.4% is higher than teammate Osuna’s 27.7%. Which brings me to another advantage for Pressly, his team. We know that guys like Greene, Hand, Colome, and Romo are capped by the number of wins their teams will accumulate the rest of the way. Pressly, on the other hand, plays for a team that will get 50 more wins if things go wrong. Of those wins, you have to think that 30 of them will be save opportunities. Yes, the Houston offense is good enough to make the percentage of save chances smaller, but if they play that well there will be more than 50 more wins. The way the Astros like to rest their players, Osuna will likely get two-thirds of those outings leaving at least 10 more saves for Pressly leaving him with 13 for the season. In 2018, that would have placed him tied for 27th on the saves leaderboard, directly ahead of Josh Hader and Jose Leclerc. Factor in that the Astros are done with the tough portion of their schedule and there are going to be save opportunities. (They have one series against the Brewers, Yankees, Cards, and Rays and two 2 game sets against the Rockies. The rest is pretty bad.)
Those save numbers are all based on if things go bad for the Astros. If things go the way they should, expect 60-65 more wins with around 40 more save opportunities. There is no way that an organization like Houston is going to have their main closer get 50 or more saves and risk dead arm in October. And, yes, this will include Pressly. I expect to see both him and Osuna get the better part of a week off, if not a full 10 days sometime between now and the end of July. But do not worry about that, Pressley’s save opportunities will rise with the temperature this summer.
How is he doing it you ask? No, he is not a flame thrower, and that is exactly the reason why he is not 100% owned on all platforms. Instead, Ryan Pressly sports one of, if not the nastiest curves in the game. Paul Sporer recently pointed out that Baseball Savant’s new pitch movement leader board records it as having 156% MORE break than the average. That is why the Astros are having him throw it 35% of the time. Combine that with a good slider that he throws 27% of the time and his breaking ball usage has gone up from 34.7% in 2017 (his last full season in Minnesota) to 62.3% this year. And with that change, Pressly has gone from an OK middle reliever to the best non-closer in the game.
The only way I could see an owner not needing Pressly is if the team already has something like a Yates, Chapman, Jansen combo and the league is an NFBC style no trade. Otherwise, you should be picking him up, at the very least grabbing him as a trade chip to give to the owner of a Cubs reliever this week. The guy can flat out deal and should end the season a top twenty RP when it is all said and done. Buy now before everyone else realizes what you already know!
Leave a Reply
Friends don't let friends talk to themselves.
You must be logged in to post a comment.