Three Outfield Sleepers

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).

An obscene May (.411/.450/.705) made up for a tepid April (.229/.297/.410) and he stayed strong through June with another six homers until suffering a wrist injury on June 25th. He missed a few games and it didn’t require a DL stint, but it’s hard not to think that it lingered through the rest of the summer. In fact, he missed another six games with it in early September. Look at his numbers pre- and post-injury:

Pre: .320/.375/.574, 16 HR, 44 RBI, 47 R in 299 PA

Post: .214/.269/.337, 7 HR, 32 RBI, 28 R in 309 PA

The injury was such that he could keep playing, but not at 100%. In fact, his batted ball profile didn’t change that drastically, but pair the changes with a little bad luck and it was enough to derail his season.

Pre: 42% GB, 39% FB, 19% LD, 20% HR/FB, .357 BABIP, 302 avg. FB distance

Post: 46%, 34%, 20% LD, 9% HR/FB, .241 BABIP, 290 avg. FB distance

You can see here that his exit velocity was still consistently above average, but we can’t get a breakdown of launch angle to see where those hard hit balls were going. Exit velo is great, but a 95 MPH groundball isn’t the same as a well-launched 95 MPH flyball. I think a healthy Ozuna is a 30-HR threat. He also batted fourth or fifth in 100 games, putting him in position to chase down his first 100-RBI season.

It’s also worth noting that while his triple slash is nearly identical to his 2014, he slashed eight percentage points off his strikeout rate to a career-best 19% so there is some batting average upside if he rebounds from a career-worst .296 BABIP. I got Ozuna in the 12th round of the 15-team draft in Arizona in early November and I think he’ll consistently sit in the 10th-13th round range.

Late-rounder: Max Kepler | Twins

Ol’ Ass Bomb (~77:00) may suffer from some prospect fatigue after joining pro ball at age-17 back in 2010 and hanging around in rookie ball for three seasons, but he really took a step forward in 2015 during his first taste of the high minors. He finally made top-100 lists before this season and didn’t disappoint. He made his season debut early on (April 10th), but only played sporadically before returning to Triple-A through May. Kepler was up for good on June 1st and did some nice things.

He hit 17 homers and swiped six bags in 433 PA (a full season pace of nearly 30/10) with solid plate skills (21% K, 9% BB). There were more groundballs (47%) than we’d like from someone who we’re hoping can push mid-20s with his home run total, but he had a 33% Hard contact rate and sat at or above average in exit velo during 13 of the 18 weeks he played during the summer.

If you listen to that full clip on Kepler linked at the beginning, you’ll hear Eno is a little tepid on him, but that was based on just a couple months of major league work. If the power continues to play at above average levels, he can pair it with some batting average growth (a .261 BABIP held his AVG down) and sneaky speed.

He had an 82% success rate on 51 attempts in the minors, including 19-for-23 in 2015. I don’t think we’re talking about more than mid-teens at the high end, but if getting double-digit speed with 20+ HRs and a .265+ AVG is valuable late in a draft, especially when there is room for more. A transcendent breakout requires growth against lefties, but we don’t need that to happen for him to pay off on a late-teens round pick (he went in the 18th of that Arizona draft).

Flyer: Andrew Toles | Dodgers

Toles didn’t take the easy path to the majors, regularly thwarted by his behavior. He was kicked off the University of Tennessee team and then released from the Tampa Bay Rays in 2015 due to “personal issues”. Former Rays GM Andrew Friedman, who is now president of baseball operations with the Dodgers, decided to give him a second chance and he’s made good on it. After missing the entire 2015 season, Toles blitzed his way through the Dodgers’ minor league system en route to the majors.

It’s not too surprising that the 24-year old hammered the High-A and Double-A competition given the advanced age. He spent just eight games at Triple-A before his MLB debut. He was only up for 16 games before another quick jaunt to Triple-A, but then on August 21st he was called back up for good and hit really well over 72 PA.

Of course, even taking all of his MLB work this year adds up to just 115 PA, but the skills are obvious. He hit throughout his minor league career save the 52 games he played in 2014 that included a suspension and eventually his departure from the organization. With his head on straight, Toles offers a diverse skillset highlighted by speed and backed by some punch.

He stole 123 bases in 1358 minor league PA, or about 40 per 450 PA. I think that’s the high end of playing time as a strong side platoon bat and while he might not swipe 40 bags in the majors in that kind of time, he seems like a safe bet for 25 as he settles into a regular role. The power is far from game-changing, but he won’t be a total zero there. He managed a .150 ISO in the minors and then a .190 in his brief MLB stint. I’d push him toward the low end there and look for 6-10 homers.

Toles had a strong postseason (.878 OPS in 26 PA, including a 1.082 v. CHC) that no doubt put him on the radar of some who missed his late-season work, but even with some hype, he’s unlikely to jump higher than maybe the 18th round area. I think you can safely plan on Toles as a late-round, low-dollar investment in mixed leagues.

You’ll have to throw a few bucks out there to secure him in NL-only, but I think it’s a wise deployment of resources. In the interest of consistency, I’ll note that he went in the 22nd round of the Arizona draft. I promptly cursed the team that took him and then myself for waiting so long.