A Roster of Steady Eddies Wins the League, Part 1

I’ve played fantasy baseball for almost 30 years now. The older I get, the more I am comfortable leaning into building fantasy teams around higher-floor players, aka the Steady Eddies. You know who they are: someone consistent, reliable, and dependable. Though it isn’t known where the term originated, most baseball fans remember it as the nickname of the steady Hall of Fame hitter, Eddie Murray. There’s also the Australian comedian Steady Eddy from the 1990’s, though his act was hectic and chaotic, hence the irony of his moniker.

Steady Eddies are hard to find in baseball since no one can maintain consistent, dominant production over a 162-game season. We’re mostly talking about durable players who stay healthy and away from the IL, hitters with above-average plate discipline who don’t fall into prolonged funks, and pitchers who rarely get bombed for five or more earned runs in a start.

José Ramírez is currently the prime example: five straight seasons of 150+ games played, $30+ fantasy earnings, and five-category roto contribution. There’s a reason why he’s a first-round fantasy pick every season. Father Time catches up to everyone. Some thought that might be the case with JRam this season, but there he goes again, on pace to shatter last season’s career-best 44 stolen bases. Matt Olson is a playing time Eddie – baseball’s current Iron Man has played 162 games in four consecutive seasons. Freddie Freeman, Francisco Lindor, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. have been part of this elite group for years, but their armor has been penetrated lately. Freeman isn’t the same power threat he once was, and turns 37 in September. Lindor was a perennial top 10 hitter, but then it all came to a head at once – offseason elbow surgery, the broken hamate bone in spring, and now this severe calf strain that will keep him out at least another month. There’s on-base aficionado Juan Soto and a few others. Of course, these are all high-draft-capital hitters. We’re paying top dollar for the quality and consistency.

What about the middle and late rounds? Every season, a faction of players are overlooked in drafts because they’re “safe and boring”, aka SABs. The hot spring training hitters and sexy prospects rise quickly ahead of them in March ADP. There’s no market volatility with them, and so we can often get some great deals. Many of the world’s best high-stakes players like Mike Mager, John Pausma, and Clark Olson have done exactly that, specifically in years when they won the NFBC overall titles in the Main Event and the Auction Championship. They hover like hawks in drafts, on falling SABs, then print money and feast on the production of CJ Abrams, Cody Bellinger, Randy Arozarena, and Brandon Marsh, while I’m out here smugly drafting Luis Robert Jr., decreeing, “THIS IS THE YEAR HE STAYS HEALTHY!”, as I cry in my bowl of corn flakes. Mager, Pausma, and Olson probably wouldn’t recommend only targeting this archetype; we can take stabs at more volatile, high-risk hitters, but they should be calculated risks. And that the risk should not be compounded throughout your entire draft.

Here’s a mini sample draft of players from this draft season who were either popular and hyped or had significant rises in ADP. It’s the high-upside squad.

What else could Schwarber have done to deserve more respect and reasonable draft-day love. He dropped from the early second round range in February to the late-second, early-third come the last two weeks of draft season. Cal Raleigh, Pete Alonso and two pitchers all shot past him in late-March ADP. Some loved Wood’s massive power upside, but the massive power drought after the Home Run Derby and leading the majors in strikeouts pushed him out of the second round of 15-teamers to the third. Sale was well respected, but concerns of durability and age had some folks believing it was a trap pick. Pausma, Mager and Olson all targeted Sale and welcomed him with open arms. Harper was coming off a subpar year, Josh Naylor “could never steal 30 again” and “how can we pass up a rising Vinnie Pasquantino for him anyway?” A large faction of drafters wanted nothing to do with a closer with a 2.48 ERA and 0.94 WHIP with the third-most saves since 2021 and instead went out of their way to draft Robert Suarez several rounds later.

You get the picture. Not every player in the SAB mock draft fully fits the mold of a Steady Eddie, but they’ve mostly been durable, healthy, steady, and stealthy fantasy producers.

We’re nearly 33% through the season and waiting for some of the Steady Eddies to get going. Perhaps Ketel Marte’s 3-run game-winning homer on Tuesday night gets him going. Marte doesn’t fit the mold of durability, but he has been a dependable source of production on an at-bat basis for several seasons. It’s also early enough where we aren’t too worried about other SNBs available in drafts a round past their ADPs like Manny Machado, Brent Rooker, Freeman, Salvador Perez, Christian Yelich and Taylor Ward. Though there might be some concern about others of this archetype off to slow starts: Matt Chapman, Steven Kwan, Willy Adames, and freshly-injured Jose Altuve.

So, what is this incredibly long intro setting up for other than disappointment and some snark in the comments? Well, it’s to get us into the right frame of mind around these two archetypes (helium/hype/volatile/upside archetype vs. safe/boring/high floor/falling ADP value) during the season, to pay attention and track them and better prepare ourselves for next year’s drafts (barring a league lockout). And perhaps to help correct flaws in our draft construction strategies. I’ll touch on this topic in more detail towards the end of this season and in the offseason as we prepare for drafts.

The one example I wanted to dig into was the current MLB hits leader and the dynamic duo he closely works with.

Otto and the Mighty Marlins

Otto Lopez has been awesome this season as his surge comes to many of us with great surprise. Through 48 games (203 plate appearances), he is slashing .346/.377/.497  with 30 runs, four homers, 21 runs batted in, eight stolen bases (11 attempts), and is a top 25 hitter in standard roto. He flew under the radar in drafts and without much hype at his 230 ADP (per 240 NFBC Online Championship leagues). Part of this was because we projected the Marlins to have a subpar offense. Another reason was that Lopez was more “floor” than “upside”, and drafters love to chase that helium. So far, the Marlins’ offense has performed better than projected. Through roughly 30% of the season, the Marlins have scored the 13th most runs, averaging 4.3 per game. Lopez has been a key driver, leading the majors in batting average and hits (66). His BABIP (.388) is also among the league leaders, whereas last season, it was well below average (.264). Lopez hit .246 last season (.269 xBA), down from .270 (.272 xBA) as a rookie in 2024. Given his elite contact skills (career 81.5% contact rate), among other factors, including his hot start, Lopez is more likely to finish the season above .275 than below .250.

Lopez has improved in a few underlying power metrics in comparison to last season:

• Average exit velocity: from 88.5 mph to 90.3 mph
• Bat speed: from 71.7 mph to 72.2 mph
• Hard-hit rate: from 38.3% to 44.2%
• Barrel rate: from 7.1% to 9%
• Squared-up contact rate: from 37.7% to 38.5%
• Isolated power: from .121 to .155

These are all minor improvements, but a step in the right direction in his age-27 season.

Another big improvement, albeit a small sample size, has come against left-handed pitching. Lopez was abysmal against lefties the last two seasons — a 50 wRC+ over 328 plate appearances. In 56 PAs against southpaws through the first 8.5 weeks, Lopez has a wRC+ over four times that, batting .472 with a .490 BABIP (he went 2-for-2 with a walk against Braves’ lefty Martín Pérez on Tuesday). The Marlins don’t currently project to face many left-handed pitchers in the next couple of weeks. Lopez has been batting second against lefties and third against righties, part of that productive trio at the top of the lineup alongside Xavier Edwards and Liam Hicks.

Hicks is the current RBI leader and Edwards has more homers in less than a third of the season (his sixth on Tuesday) than he had in 1,000+ plate appearances before 2026. Of course, Hicks is unlikely to finish the season as the RBI leader, and Edwards probably won’t hit 20+ home runs. But it’s not a matter of all good things coming to an end; the question to ask relates to reasonable expectations of regression, where “reasonable” in 2026 is a 25-40% reduction from their current paces. Just like Lopez and Edwards, Hicks has also always been elite at making contact — over 80% in the minors, 88% in the majors. He also sports an 8.8% strikeout rate, which ranks fourth-lowest among qualified hitters (Edwards at 10.8% is ninth). It may go without saying, but hitters with plus plate discipline and contact skills are less prone to prolonged cold streaks, more easily projectable, and have higher floors. Steady Eddies, if you will.

And that’s a good thing in fantasy baseball. I’ll explain more and even prove it to you in future installments of this series.