Kyle Blanks & Marco Estrada: Deep League Wire

It’s oldies week here on our dumpster dive as we look at two players who, at one time or another, have generated interest in fantasy only to flame out. But they’re back with playing time opportunities, and do enough well to at least place them on the radar in AL-only leagues. As a reminder, I’m using CBS for the ownership percentages.

Kyle Blanks / 1B / Texas Rangers / 7%

Highlighting Blanks as a deep league pickup has become something of an annual tradition here at RotoGraphs, so I figured I might as well contribute a writeup of my own. The 6-foot-6, 265-pound Blanks casts an imposing presence in the batter’s box, but his career has been sidelined by a series of injuries, including TJ surgery and a torn labrum in his left shoulder, and, more recently, an Achilles problem that hampered him over spring training. Of course, it hasn’t helped that he’s also shown a poor ability in his career to make consistent contact and owns a career 29.7% strikeout rate.

But, power! The 28-year-old has a career 15.5% HR/FB rate and has a 24.2 AB/HR ratio, and he blasted two bombs over the weekend, capped by a 4-for-5 performance on Saturday. Texas, of course, is a terrific environment for offense, and there’s still enough pop in that lineup to give Blanks some opportunities as he hits behind the tag team of Prince Fielder and Adrian Beltre.

He should receive playing time for at least the next couple of weeks, as Fielder occupies the DH slot and Mitch Moreland rehabs from surgery to have bone chips removed from his elbow. What happens after Moreland returns is not yet clear, though both he and Blanks would make an interesting platoon, as both have very pronounced splits against opposite-handed pitchers. The main point, I suppose, is that playing time is available to Blanks in the immediate term and quite possibly after that — if he can stay healthy — making him a good source of power for owners in AL-only formats.

Marco Estrada / SP / Toronto Blue Jays / 8%

There was a time when Estrada, 31, was an in-demand fantasy sleeper, but that was several years ago in a different league. Entering 2015, he was merely the long man out of the Toronto bullpen, but the demotion of Daniel Norris has opened up a spot for Estrada on a team that is desperate for starting pitching depth.

Six relief appearances (10.2 innings) is such a small sample size as to be nearly inadmissible, but hey, at least Estrada pitched well in those outings, striking out more than a batter per inning. That’s going to change when he’s stretched out in a starter’s role, of course, and we can assume that the diminishing velocity that was largely responsible for plunging his K/9 from 9.3 in 2012 to just 7.6 last year will slip back as well.

The real key with Estrada is the whether he can limit the long balls. His 1.56 HR/9 from 2012 to 2015 is second highest among qualified starters in that span, but his gopher was particularly hungry last year, chowing down at a 13.2% HR/FB rate. While one would ordinarily expect that number to recede a bit, he’s now calling the Rogers Centre home and could be spending quite a bit of time in places like Yankee Stadium, Camden Yards and Fenway Park, so it’s by no means guaranteed that Estrada won’t replicate his awful 2014.

But he probably has a steady job for the time being, and can be counted on to deliver at least league average strikeout totals with a decent walk rate. The Blue Jays’ plan with Norris, it seems, is to hope he gets hot in Triple-A so he can generate some momentum for a big league return later this year, but again, the Jays’ starting pitching is thin enough where Estrada could hang around. We’ll just have to see if he can find a way to stop allowing home runs at such a high rate.