Last week fellow writer Justin Vibber and I struck the following deal in the Ottoneu Champions League:
The goal today is not to go into the details of how this big trade came together (though I’d be happy to in the comments for those that want to know), but it is to focus on a very small piece of the puzzle: Luke Weaver.
When looking for breakout hitters, outfield is usually a great place to start. Volume alone gives it an edge over the other positions, but there’s also the fact that a lot of the best athletes play out there and can offer a dynamic set of fantasy numbers. Sleepers don’t exist as they used to anymore, we all know that. Before the internet age, you could legitimately know of some players that the rest of your leaguemates were oblivious to and scoop them up late. Nowadays, no player is truly hidden – or asleep, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get bargains in the draft.
Let’s not get hung up on the term “sleeper” and instead focus on mining some surplus value in the draft. I look at them on levels: mid-rounder, late-rounder, and flyer. I loosely use the following guidelines for them.
Mid-rounder: picks in the 7th-12th rounds
Late-rounder: picks in the 13th-18th rounds
Flyer: picks from the 19th round on, including reserves
To qualify as a sleeper, I generally see that player as someone who will deliver value about four or more rounds higher than his draft slot. Again, these are loose guidelines, but they give me a general framework for identifying my potential plus value picks. I’ve got an outfielder for all three categories today.
Mid-rounder: Marcell Ozuna | Marlins
Ozuna returned to his 2014 level after a rough 2015 that included a demotion, but that’s not quite as impressive when you consider the surge in offense across the league. In fact, his .773 OPS was a point higher than ’14, but his wRC+ was 11 points lower at 105. Credit him for rebounding from ’15, but there’s a level of disappointment to Ozuna’s season because it looked like he was going to breakthrough and have that big season some have seen coming for him (including yours truly).
Let’s be honest, most sleepers don’t come through in fantasy baseball. At least not the true sleepers, guys picked beyond the 250 mark. There have definitely been some big hits beyond 250 this year: Trevor Story (252), Marco Estrada (273), Rich Hill (288) – although he did just hit the DL, Jackie Bradley Jr. (320), and Carlos Beltran (326) to name a few.
I was reminded of the failure of late sleepers when news of the Chris Coghlan trade came across the wire yesterday during my chat. He was someone I really liked to keep up what he did last year (16 HR, 11 SB) with plenty of playing time available in Oakland. Let’s see what’s going on with him and two other deep sleepers (pick 250 or later) I liked. They’re still asleep, but let’s see if there is hope.
He’s hitting .146/.215/.272 in 172 PA so far. It’s been really rough. Sure, a .170 BABIP is unfavorable and probably due for some regression, but it didn’t just happen to him. His strikeout rate has surged from 19% to 27% with his walk rate dipping from 12% to 8% at the same time. Last year, he made a concerted effort to pull more and untap his power, but his 32% pull rate is his lowest since 2010 (30%) and well below last year’s 42%. He’s also reaching a lot more. His O-swing% is way up at 30% after a 23% rate last year that was 11th-lowest in baseball. He’s also seeing the fewest fastballs of his career at 54%, down from a consistent 57-58% from 2012-15.
It was suggested that we should celebrate the day that stats stabilize. Today is Grounder Day! Eat a sloppy joe while sitting on a blanket. Drink one of these, or some of this, but I don’t know about having any of this. Grounder Day!
Well, we actually aren’t all the way there. Only about twenty players have officially reached the stabilization point for ground ball rate. But that’s fine. It actually serves as a reminder that stabilization is not something that magically happens at one point. Stabilization happens over a spectrum, and today we know a little more than we did yesterday, and tomorrow we’ll know a little more.
But! Relative to *other* stats on our leaderboards, we know a good deal about a player’s ground ball rate by now. And the beauty of that news is that just knowing a player’s change in ground ball rate can tell us a good deal about what sort of power we should expect from them going forward.
This week we look at two hitters available in deep leagues whose uncharacteristically good contact thus far warrants a closer examination. Obviously, as should be stated with almost any analysis at this point in the season, small sample caveats apply. And now that we are disclaimed, let’s irresponsibly dig for upside!
Preston Tucker (2% Yahoo, 2.8% ESPN, 8% CBS) – Tucker burst onto the scene last year in Houston posting a .243/.297/.439 slash line. Wait, that’s not very good. Why did I say burst? Oh right, because Tucker actually posted a 120 wRC+ through July before tanking in just 83 plate appearances the rest of the way. Tucker’s decrease in playing time obviously coincided with the arrival of Carlos Gomez.
But even beyond the trade deadline’s roster crunch ramifications, Tucker just stopped making good contact. His soft% increased to an alarming 32% from August onwards. He also stopped taking walks, reaching base via the free pass just 3.6% of the time.
Yesterday was busy with baseball news including a rush to the wire for Matt Harv…I mean Cody Anderson. Speaking of players who look like other players, remember when Charlie Morton started aping Roy Halladay? That sure was fun.
I’ve been telling people all spring that the entire point of acquiring Drew Storen is so that Roberto Osuna doesn’t get used to closing. He reportedly already likes life in relief more than starting. The Jays have named Osuna as the closer which may permanently shut the door on starting. See Jonathan Papelbon, Aroldis Chapman, etc.
Other things happened too – Jose Reyes is no longer riding a runaway train to deportation. Fear not Trevor Story owners. I hear the Rockies will trade or cut Reyes. The Roto Riteup has more details on everything. It’s time for me to switch gears back to stolen bases. Yesterday was for the AL sleepers so guess what’s up today (oh, you read the headline).
Sleeper week continues. Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to deep sleepers. Today and tomorrow we’ll look into stolen base threats. Most of these guys are waiver wire fodder in standard leagues. You should be able to stream them. Certain notably steals threats like Jose Altuve and Billy Burns were excluded because they aren’t sleepers in any sense of the word.
As you may recall, the Annapurna that we have been preparing to scale this season is the NFBC Auction Championship: mixed league, 15 teams, 5×5, standard-issue 23-man roster with a 7-round snake draft for reserves. Well, we had our auction last week, and it was…humdrum. Somewhat to our surprise—about which more below–bidding was restrained and prices were temperate. Once we caught on to this—Bryce Harper for $41 and Mike Trout for $44 did the trick—we accomplished most of what we set out to do, and don’t think we overpaid or underpaid by more than a dollar for anyone. Possible exceptions are noted below. Our roster is barely worth reporting, and certainly not worth analyzing in detail. Nonetheless, for the record, here it is, with our picks listed in order of acquisition by way of giving you an idea of where we went with our endgame. As always, we invite your comments: Read the rest of this entry »
The NL version came yesterday. Today we’ll shift over to the AL. The point of this exercise is to identify a handful of little known players who could become fantasy relevant this season. In most cases, it will be better to track these guys than rush out to pick them up.
While the NL has teams like the Phillies, Braves, Brewers, and Reds poised to deliver substantial time to unknown players, the AL is a much more competitive league. A few teams have an unsolved position or two, but nobody has thrown in the towel with a full rebuild.
Edit: I somehow overlooked Tyler White, but he’s easily the top name for this list. He’ll be a sleeper for another 30 minutes.
As you may have guessed, the following is a list of five players who deserve to be monitored. In most cases, you probably won’t want to draft or rush to the wire for these guys. Just keep an eye on their stock.
Juan Nicasio – SP/RP
Chances are, you’ve heard some buzz about Nicasio this spring. What he’s done is pretty buzz worthy – 15 innings, 10 hits, five walks, and 24 strikeouts. Nicasio returned to major league relevance last summer. He pitched out of the Dodgers bullpen, averaging 95 mph with his fastball and also using an average slider. Over his career, he’s mostly been a fastball-slider guy with a few changeups and sinkers mixed in for variety.