With only a month before the fantasy playoffs, it’s officially the home stretch! As trade deadlines pass and waiver wires dry up quicker than a puddle in the Texas heat, it takes a keen eye and some shrewd moves to position yourself for a league trophy at the end of the year.

Will one of these players be the one to push you over the top for a championship?

Joey Estes – SP – OAK – 14% Yahoo, 14% CBS

We start things off today by going back to the well on a player I wrote about in this space previously: Joey Estes.

Here’s the Reader’s Digest version if you’re not familiar with Estes’ profile; he’s a two-pitch pitcher with a dominant set of off-speed offerings but his fastball is more of a meatball and he struggles to get groundballs more than almost any pitcher (23.5% GB% – 1st percentile).

This was my final overall breakdown of his abilities at the time;

Despite his struggles with his sweeper/slider, the pitch has a 128 Stuff+, while his underutilized Cutter (1.8% usage) has a 109 Stuff+. If Estes can re-work his pitch mix to better complement each other, he could have two strong off-speed pitches to work off of, giving him a chance to breakout in the back-half of the season.

Since the start of July, he’s actually ditched his cutter entirely but he has also shaved off 4.1% from his fastball rate, redistributing it towards his slider. His arsenal is still a work in progress and is continuously being tinkered with but the results have nonetheless been positive, minus one eight-run blowup in 1.2 innings against the Red Sox back on July 9th. Otherwise, he has allowed two earned runs or fewer in each of his last five starts, with a 24:9 K:BB rate over the same time.

It’s not a sexy profile but it’s still one that holds value – especially since he still may be only a tweak or two away from a true breakout.

League size recommendation: 14-team leagues

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