Mid-Week Musings: A Few Steamy Players

Steamy in a good way.

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Just wanted to write up something quick on guys that weren't mentioned on Sunday and are playing some solid baseball, and will probably end up on my next waiver wire piece.

Nick Gonzales

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Nick The Stick had me believing in the breakout for the first half of the 2024 season, but alas, he quickly faded as the season wore on. His statcast right now looks about as good as it did when we were all aboard the Gonzales hype train last year, and the question is: can he sustain this? We have to remember that this guy was a 1st round draft pick in 2020, the #7 pick to be exact, and there's certainly a reason why. Gonzales plays solid defense, possesses sneaky good speed clocking in at an 88th percentile, and he generates a fair amount of power for his modest 5'9 frame. When comparing his final statcast of 2024 to his current in 2025, a few things have me concerned.

His bat speed is the same. His whiff percentile is the same.

His chase percentile is the same.

His BB percentile is the same. Right now, the only thing he's truly excelling at is sweet-spot %, and thus some of his power metrics are looking better as he makes quality contact more often. Is the sweet-spot sustainable, though? Is he just hot, much like he was for the early portion of 2024, and will he regress?

I decided to look further into his swing, and it turns out, his ideal attack angle % was actually better in 2024 than it currently is in 2025, coming in at 55.9% vs 53.2 %. So ideal attack angle isn't exactly supporting the idea that this is a new Nick Gonzales. One thing to note, though, is that his batting stance has changed - his stance angle is now 17 degrees open vs 21 degrees in 2024. Maybe the stance change belies the sweet-spot percentage, maybe not. I wouldn't necessarily get my hopes up, but Nick might be worth taking a chance on if he can continue this pace for another week or two. There's still pedigree here.

2025

2024

Colton Gordon

Jacob Lopez is the current talk of the town when it comes to waiver wire southpaws, but another "soft-throwing", low arm-angle lefty is quietly putting together a fairly nice rookie season. Yes, once again, it's Colton Gordon out of UCF. I'm mentioning him because he's pitched since the last mention.

His most recent outing against the Phillies was a cute little gem:

5.0 IP

0.00 ERA

4K

0.80 WHIP

0 BB

I mean, come on, a little credit where credit is due - this is an impressive outing against the Phillies, a team very capable of generating offense. Now, maybe you're looking at the statcast and seeing that 22nd percentile xBA and thinking this is fool's gold. But I think you'd be somewhat mistaken.

His curveball and changeups both have real, real ugly xBAs of .354 and .340, but he only throws those pitches 10 and 6 percent of the time. And in his most recent outing, he slightly decreased the usage of those two pitches while bumping up his sweeper usage to 39%. Smart move, because the sweeper is clearly his best pitch with a .212 xBA and 35 K%. As Gordon continues to refine his pitch mix, his sweeper usage should continue to increase and carry him through games.

Kyle Stowers

Kyle Stowers is the most recent victim of a mass dropping, and like every other player that gets mass dropped, he's now piping hot and instilling a deep sense of regret in those who couldn't hold him for just one more day.

It's not often you see a guy with a .275 BA and .833 OPS with this kind of statcast sitting at only 20% owned in late June, but fantasy baseball managers are fickle, sensitive creatures and recency bias is like a silver bullet. Go ahead, add him, I'll sure he'll have a bad week as soon as you do, even has his 76th percentile xBA and ridiculous .536 xSLG say otherwise.

Those could have been your runs!

Carlos Correa

Carlos Correa is still Carlos Correa, and Carlos Correa is a very good baseball player. Thus, Carlos Correa has been playing some good baseball.

So go ahead, add him, I'm sure he won't get Plantar Fasciitis the minute you do.

Spencer Horwitz

It seems like Spencer Horwitz is finally getting into the swing of things after his first 80 ABs more or less functioned as his late Spring Training, and that's good news for a Pirates team that also has a somewhat hot Nick Gonzales doing some good things at the plate as of late alongside a resurgent Bryan Reynolds, who is beginning to have quite the sexy statcast himself.

This club is desperate for any kind of run production, and frankly, so are we. We want to be able to roster these guys but the lack of counting stats across the board have simply made Pirates players unrosterable. And it really doesn't help that Oneil Cruz is currently a Mendoza line hitter that can't even find the hustle to sprint up the 1st base line. Think about a Pirates team with Nick, Horwitz, Reynolds, and Cruz all hitting well - sounds too be good to be true, doesn't it? Come on Oneil, try to give us a good product, at least.

But yeah, back to Horwitz - his sweet-spot remains strong and the bat-t0-ball metrics are slowly begining to creep up to what we expect from Horwitz after a surprisingly impressive 2024 campaign.

Dominic Canzone

Ever since Canzone completely dominated AAA for the Aces a few years ago, I've been really excited to see what he could do after being traded to Seattle to be platooned full-time against RHP. Unfortunately, injury after injury prevented that from ever materializing, and it's taken over a year since the first time I ever wrote of Canzone as a fantasy sleeper (https://www.gerbilsports.com/post/destroy-those-trades-and-make-those-claims-fantasy-baseball-hitters) for him to finally become relevant. April 2024 seems like an eternity ago.

Canzone possesses elite bat speed and effortless power, but beyond that, somehow never whiffs or Ks. This is an extremely rare feat for a guy with this much power - just look at Beck and Stowers. And although his sweet-spot % is extremely poor, one thing should be made clear - we will always take a ball put in play with weak contact, as opposed to a K. I think it's nearing the time we should all be considering this guy as a primary bench bat, as he seems to be an easy set against RHP.