Post All Star break notes

We talked up a number of first-half surprises in last week's Fantasy Roundtable. This week, give me a player who wasn't a high-level fantasy performer in the first half but looks poised to carry significant value down the stretch. Could be player who got off to a slow start, a prospect, a guy who battled injuries … you get the idea.

I’m all about Brewers shortstop Orlando Arcia, who’s known more for his defense at age 22 but has begun to come around offensively over the last couple of months and could be poised for a big second half. Arcia is batting .330/.359/.463 since May 18 and he went 2-for-4 with three stolen bases on Monday night against the Braves. The overall counting stats are still relatively underwhelming (nine homers, 34 RBI, eight steals, and 36 runs scored in 90 games), but if he continues to mash like he has you can bet we’ll see more fantasy-relevant numbers moving forward. Arcia should also begin moving up Milwaukee’s batting order, after spending much of the first half hitting eighth. He hit seventh on Monday.

Put me in the Manny Machado camp. Admittedly, the window to buy-low on him is closing rapidly, if it was ever there in the first place. Machado went 3-for-3 in Monday’s victory over the Rangers and now has five multi-hit games in his last seven. He’s batting .500 (14-for-28) during that time, so good luck trying to pry him away from a fellow owner at this point, but he still owns a mediocre .238/.306/.448 batting line through 87 games this season. That’s shocking given where he was drafted coming into the year.

Machado has earned his underwhelming production to an extent, with a strikeout rate on the rise and a dip in line drives. Still, I don’t think there’s enough here to explain a BABIP drop of nearly 60 points from last year. The exit velocity has always given me hope. He ranks among the league leaders in the category, even if you separate it for fly balls and line drives.

There’s all sorts of speculation about Machado’s future, but he still plays half of his games in hitter-friendly Camden Yards and he qualifies between third base and shortstop in most fantasy formats. Maybe the first half wasn’t what we expected, but it would be no surprise if he finishes strong.

 Gregory Polanco has been a frustrating player for fantasy owners this season. Really, it dates back to the second half of last year, as he hit only .220/.267/.414 after the break last season before sporting a .237/.300/.368 line through the first three months of this campaign. However, Polanco has come on like gangbusters in July, batting .438/.460/.688 with two homers and a stolen base in his first 50 plate appearances.

So, what's changed? Well, Polanco said Monday that he finally feels healthy after dealing with nagging shoulder, hamstring, ankle and knee injuries. We can't assume he'll stay healthy from here on out, of course, but if he does the upside with the 25-year-old former top prospect is obvious. Polanco is currently available in 30 percent of Yahoo leagues and 35.5 percent of ESPN leagues, so some people had already given up on him. If there's still a buying opportunity in your league, I'd suggest taking advantage of it.

Even those who tempered their expectations for Rick Porcello coming off a Cy Young season are surely disappointed with a 4-12 record, 4.60 ERA and 1.44 WHIP through 20 starts. And while there does exist reason to believe the 28-year-old will be better in the second half -- he's getting swinging strikes at a higher rate than ever, and he's still not walking many guys; if he could just stop giving up so many dingers, he'd be onto something -- the bigger point may be: if we reframe how we think about Rick Porcello in 2017, he becomes more palatable.

We can't talk about Porcello's struggles without also mentioning them within the context of pitching as a whole in 2017. League ERA has risen from 3.95 in 2015 to 4.33 in 2017, so Porcello isn't alone in giving up more runs this year. Coming to terms with that fact requires a shift in thinking. An ERA that starts with a 4 isn't a disaster if it comes with other, positive statistics.

Which is why I see Porcello as a guy to hold onto, or pick up in some of the 18 percent of Yahoo leagues in which he's available, as we get into the second half. As mentioned, he's striking out more guys and walking few, and with some positive regression/luck in BABIP, paired with a Red Sox defense that's still among the top one-third of the league according to FanGraphs, his WHIP and ERA could (should?) improve. The Red Sox are also atop the American League East with 52 wins, which suggests they know how to win games despite Porcello's four wins to date. Those should also go up. Will his ERA look like it did in 2016? Nah. Is that reason to cast him off as a useless fantasy asset? I don't think so.

While he greatly under-performed relative to expectations in the first half of the season, I refuse to believe that Miguel Cabrera is done being an elite-level fantasy contributor. He was hampered by a wide array of injuries dating back to the World Baseball Classic which can partially be to blame for the slow start. Historically, Cabrera does most of his damage in the second half of the season. Remember last year, after an average first half he crushed to the tune of .346/.423/.635 with 20 homers and 55 RBI after the Midsummer Classic. His hard-hit rate is at a career high this season. The breakout is coming. Stay onboard.

 I'm not going to pull any punches -- Kyle Schwarber was just plain awful in the first half of the season. He started off the year as a powerful lead-off hitter for the best team in baseball, but he hit so poorly that he was eventually dropped to the ninth spot in the batting order -- behind the pitcher! Finally the Cubs had seen enough and sent him back to Triple-A Iowa to get himself sorted out. That date was June 21st and his batting line up to that point was .171/.295/.378 with 12 homers and 28 RBI in 261 plate appearances. Some of that bad performance can be pinned on an extremely unlucky .193 BABIP, which was the lowest among all 169 qualified hitters in baseball.

After his demotion he played 11 games in the minors and raked to the tune of .343/.477/.714 with four homers and nine RBI in 44 plate appearances. It was a small sample size but it was exactly what the Cubs wanted to see, so they called him back up on July 6th. Since then he has hit .273/.360/.682 with two home runs in six games. It doesn't mean he is definitely going to hit like a superstar from here on out, but it does give some hope that his extended slump is over and he can return to being at least as good as he was in his rookie season.

Schwarber was the fourth overall pick of the first round in the 2014 MLB draft. He punished the minor leagues to the tune of a 197 wRC+ at Low Single-A, 166 wRC+ at High Single-A, 188 wRC+ at Double-A and a 173 wRC+ at Triple-A. For perspective, 100 wRC+ is league average and 165 or higher is superstar MVP level. In 2015 as a rookie in the majors he slashed .246/.355/.487 with 16 homers in 69 games (132 wRC+) as a 22-year-old. Very impressive.

His second season was over almost before it started -- he missed all but two games last year after blowing out his knee in an outfield collision. Is it then a big surprise that after sitting out an entire season he might struggle at first upon his return? He certainly did struggle as we have seen, but the talent is still there. The pedigree is still there. The stellar track record of success is still there. And he has hit quite well for the past month, some in the minors and some in the majors. He's a potential impact fantasy player down the stretch who can be obtained cheaply right now. I'm buying.

 Call it a hunch, but I think Josh Donaldson will get it together. I know that’s not really going out on a limb since Donaldson is a perennial MVP candidate and still in the prime of his career at age 31, but hear me out.

It seemed like everything was stacked against Donaldson in the first half. He missed a chunk of spring training with a strained calf and was sidelined again after aggravating the injury in April. Though he’s looked a bit tentative since then, Donaldson was getting into a groove right before the All-Star break (six for his last 10) and his .374 on base percentage is actually a touch higher than his career mark of .366. Donaldson’s career average and OPS are both better in the second half (weirdly, his slugging percentage is exactly the same) and he still has 35 games remaining at Rogers Centre, where he has slashed .300/.397/.592 for his career. August has historically been his best month (.308/.399/.576) so I think fantasy owners can expect much more from Donaldson down the stretch.

 Jake Arrieta started out the season well enough, allowing one unearned run over six innings against the Cardinals in his first start of the campaign. He would go on to surrender at least three runs in eight of his next nine starts. In a way, Arrieta has been consistent this season. Just the wrong kind of consistent -- he put up a 4.66 ERA for the month of April, 4.54 for May and 4.85 for June. His ERA+ of 101 tells the same tale. Arrieta has simply been incredibly average to date.

There are signs that he might be able to turn this around over the next two-and-a-half months, though. For starters, while Arrieta is surrendering more runs than we're accustomed to, he is still allowing less than a hit per inning (101 knocks in 108 frames) and his 8.8 K/9 mark is actually a tick higher than the 8.7 K/9 he posted last season.

The results have already started to shape up in July, what has proven to be Arrieta's best month of work to date. In three starts since the turn of the calendar, he owns a 1.86 ERA and 0.93 WHIP, which has brought his ERA down from 4.67 to a relatively deflated 4.17. He should be able to finish with an earned-run mark in the mid 3.00's if he is able to put together a consistent string of outings during the dog days of summer, though granted, it remains at least a little hard to trust the veteran until he actually shows it over an extended stretch.