Most fantasy owners look at Zack Cozart with little more than contempt because up till this year he had done very little overall fantasy wise besides his 12 homer season in 2013. This year his name made waves when he started off very hot belting six home runs and having a positive OBP at .350 at times. While his June has seen a return of the normal Cozart, owners that had jumped on the bandwagon have now jumped off because Cozart will be missing the rest of the year with a torn flexor tendon in his knee. The normal recovery time for such an injury is roughly nine months so there is no chance to see him come back early and be fantasy relevant.
If it wasn’t for the hot start Cozart would be a fringe 14-team league or higher pick up if an owner was just desperate to get a shortstop to fill in for a while. But for two months he became a nice little “ride the streak” player for fantasy owners, but ultimately the stats were unsustainable given Cozarts known skill set. Cozart was still striking out twice as often as he walked with a K/BB of 2.01, which means the odds of that OBP coming back down to career levels was pretty likely. With the added K’s the likely hood that his OBP and BA would likely, but not guaranteed, go down. Lastly, the speed was not going to help fantasy owners and this year he was three-for-six in stolen bases which wasn't a good sign of change.
The one area that Cozart could have stayed on fantasy teams was his power and the power was very interesting. His career OPS+ sits at 80 which means he was 20 percent lower than league average OPS+, but his year he currently owns a 108, his highest OPS+ since his 2012-13 seasons. At his current pace Cozart would have ended the season with roughly 23 home runs, and that would have blown away his pervious career high of 15. The probability that he could have kept up the pace of a home run every 21 AB’s is debatable, but if he was able to hit that many home runs and keep his slash line of .250/.310/.450 then we have a pretty elite shortstop on our hands.
With Cozart out for the season some owners need to find a good replacement for the rest of the season. We’re going to be looking at ESPN’s ownership percents for a 10-team league to find our players. Marcus Semien of the Oakland A’s is currently 68.2% owned and while he has fallen off from the hot start he had Semien still owns a .267 average and a .315 OBP. He is a good long term option who has shown that he can stand up to the big league pitching but he could have some cold spells. Jean Segura, 66.9% owned, is very much like Semien but can end the season with more steals and less home runs, but on the plus side Segura owns a OBP of .317 which is a good sign of improvement from last year. Jace Peterson of the Atlanta Braves has been a solid player for the first few months of the season and with no real competition to take time away from him so expect him to fill in quite nicely and he is only owned in 19.2% of leagues making him very available. Other players that are available in at least 50% of leagues: Alex Guerrero 46.8%, Brett Lawrie 30.6%, Addison Russell 45.8%, Jung Ho Kang 18%.
