Generally speaking, when it comes to fantasy playoffs time, I’m a believer in the strategy of “dance with the one you came with”. In other words, don’t fall for temporary and unsustainable hot streaks – trust your studs instead. The margins of victory in the playoffs is so small that getting cute with your strategy can quickly backfire and leave you feeling foolish. You wouldn’t want a no-name White Sox reliever deciding your championship, would you?

However, that strategy doesn’t mean you should sit on your hands and just let the chips land where they may. When it comes to players that have been shuffling on and off your roster all year, looking into available players on hot streaks and with favorable matchups is key – and that’s what we’ll do today with the three names below.

Lars Nootbaar – OF – STL – 23% Yahoo, 25% CBS

The Cardinals outfield has been a mess all year and Nootbaar has played no small role in that. His OBP (.334), SLG (.401) and wRC+ (107) are all at their lowest levels since his rookie season back in 2021.

But under the hood, Nootbaar has made some impressive improvements to his contact quality this year and despite his early season struggles, he’s now managed to turn things around over the last month, hitting .282/.364/.436 with a pair of homers and a pair of steals, including hits in 18 of his last 22 games. While very solid, those aren’t exactly eye-popping numbers, so what exactly inspires my confidence?

As mentioned above, while Noot has long been a Statcast darling, he has reached a new level in 2024. Take a look;

Pretty impressive! As a blind resume, you might expect that this type of profile belongs to a well-known slugger type such as Vlad Jr. but that’s not the case in actuality – why?

Well, I invoked Vlad’s name for a reason. Even with the improvements in many categories this season, Nootbaar is at a career-high rate for one that he’d rather avoid and that’s ground ball rate. Here are his rates by year;

While I’m admittedly not the most familiar with the Launch Angle Sweet-Spot% metric, the combination of that number in conjunction with his GB% tells me that Noot has a singular, glaring flaw that needs to be rectified before we are able to reap the rewards from his bat. Oddly enough, this hot streak has coincided with a GB% of 53.8% so a change there isn’t driving this particular run. That actually gives me more hope overall, as it means he’s finding a way to produce in spite of his current limitations.

That said, if he can finally break through and make those necessary changes just like Vlad did, he could be an All-Star level bat. And if not, a solid contributor is still a worthwhile pickup in 14-team leagues, particularly in OBP/SLG formats.

League size recommendation: 12/14-team leagues

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