Understudies, Standbys, and Swings: Reserve-Round Targets, Part 2

Let’s continue our reconnaissance through MLB in search of reserve-round picks—the more camouflaged the better–whom we expect to outperform the market’s expectations. This week: AL West and NL East. The numbers in parentheses are the average draft positions in the 68 National Fantasy Baseball Champions Draft Champions (15 teams, 50 players a team, no FAABs) completed since the start of the year.

Angels: Jared Walsh (350) is to 2023 as Christian Walker was to 2022: a power hitter with a doctor’s note. Through June 21^st last season, Walsh hit .265 with 13 home runs in 266 plate appearances. Thereafter: 188 PAs, 2 home runs, .144, until he packed it in for the season in late August. He then had surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome, and while he’s still a bit under the weather, he says he’ll be fine by opening day. We envision a Walkeresque season of 30 or so home runs and a .260 BA.

Astros:  For the most part, the front-line players on this team are so good and so well-established that your only chance for a bargain is if someone gets injured. Bryan Abreu, for example, was essentially unhittable in the second half last season, and that doesn’t look like a fluke to us. But something untoward will have to befall both Ryan Pressly and Rafael Montero before Abreu gets a shot at saves. The only unsettled territory in Houston is center field. The incumbent is Chas McCormick, and ADP 420 is a decent price for a guy who figures to hit 20 home runs and .240 if he gets 500 at bats. But we’re looking for longer shots, and the shot we like is Jake Meyers (717). Meyers and McCormick were about even in the pecking order until Meyers tore his labrum in late 2021. His 2022 was a disaster, but if he’s all the way back he offers a stat package not unlike McCormick’s. McCormick is faster but Meyers hits harder, and probably has more upside. Surely worth a very late pick on the chance that he attains it.

Oakland: Let’s try soon-to-be-33-years-old, lifetime-.231/.321/.343-hitter, moving-from-hitters’-park-to-pitchers’-park Jace Peterson (467). Quit laughing. First of all, he’s got a starting job, albeit on a team that wouldn’t be a lock to finish first in the Pacific Coast League. But he is still quite fast (same stolen base times as Tim Anderson, Whit Merrifield, and Jose Altuve, according to Bill James) and a superb baserunner. More significantly, over the last three years on the road against right-handed pitchers he has hit .290 in 259 at bats with 14 home runs and nine stolen bases. And overall away from Milwaukee his numbers are about the same regardless of the persuasion of the pitchers he’s faced. As a platoon bat he could get 450 or 500 PAs with 15 to 20 HRs and 10-15 SBs.

Seattle: Dylan Moore (458) is still here and still outperforming the market’s expectations.  There’s no reason he won’t do that again, especially since the new supersized bases should help him. It’s also interesting to ponder the question of who will be this team’s closer. Paul Sewald might manage to keep the job. But he gives up so many home runs that he otherwise  needs to be nearly perfect, as he was last year. And his decline in strikeouts is worrisome. The market is all over Andres Munoz as the heir apparent, and for good reason. But Munoz is awfully injury-prone, so if you draft him you may also want to grab Penn Murfee (746), whose 2022 was pretty remarkable until an October blowup. He’s a Sewald-like pitcher, but with more strikeouts.

Texas: There aren’t a lot of late-round guys to love on this team, and the ones to love aren’t all that late. We’d be happy to pay a dollar for Leody Taveras (351) as our OF5. He cooled off significantly after a hot start last season, which could mean that the league has figured him out. But overall he was better in 2022 than in 2021, and on his resume there’s some power (in 2021) and some plate discipline (in 2019). Moreover, he’s exactly the kind of guy—excellent speed, indifferent base stealer—who should benefit from the new maxibases.

Atlanta: Orlando Arcia’s  power returned last season after taking a two-year sabbatical. He’s your standard-issue infield backup, and has no place to play unless someone gets injured, but someone always does. If he gets 200 at bats (the pundits project more than that) and does about what he did last season—9 home runs, .244—he’s a good buy at ADP 651.  To the naked eye, Raisel Iglesias will be Atlanta’s closer. But he was quite unreliable in the second half last season, and his strikeouts were a bit down while his walks were a bit up. A.J. Minter will supposedly inherit the job if Iglesias can’t handle it, but he’s had trouble as the closer before, and the Braves may be just as happy continuing to use him as a lights-out setup guy. If so, our candidate is newly-acquired Joe Jimenez (607), who was sneakily excellent—his hard-hit percentage was very low—for Detroit last season  despite getting COVID and multiple injuries.

Miami:  Here you’ll find the usual cheap-guys-who-always-outperform-the-market Joey Wendle (365)and Garrett Cooper (419), and they’re worth getting at the price. Dylan Floro is the incumbent closer, but we don’t expect him to keep the job. He’s 32, his velocity and strikeouts were down, and he’s kind of vulnerable to left-handed hitters. Tanner Scott is or was next in line, but he gives up too many walks. Wise guys will note that the Marlins just traded for A.J. Puk, whose intermittently superb season in relief with Oakland may have moved him to the head of the class in Miami. But it was also an intermittently disastrous season—-including the kind of sustained performance that gets people yanked from the closer’s job–and Puk isn’t very good at staying healthy. So how about Steven Okert (749), who’s been excellent for three straight seasons, and, though left-handed, has no trouble getting right-handed hitters out.

Mets: Genuine question: what’s the over-under on the number of starts the Mets will get from their projected rotation? Max Scherzer is a high injury risk, Justin Verlander is a miracle of nature but is inescapably 40, Jose Quintana can’t be trusted under any circumstances, Carlos Carrasco has been injured more often than not the past four years (and not all that effective when healthy), and Kodai Senga is exactly the kind of Japanese-import hard thrower whose arm might fall off at any moment. We wish them all well, but the Mets need to be prepared with two or three useful plug-ins. David Peterson is the market’s first choice, and he’s certainly worth considering at ADP 391, though he’s kind of shaky third time through the order. Tylor Megill (408), the market’s next pick, looks to us more like a multi-inning  reliever. He’s horrible third time through, mediocre second time through, and has trouble with left-handed batters. And then there’s Joey Lucchesi (743). He’s dealt with injuries continuously since June 2021, and it’s impossible to say whether he can stay healthy or what he’ll do if he can. But (1) he was superb in last season’s post-TJ minor league sojourn; (2) he was fairly effective as a starter with the Padres in 2018-19; (3) he’ll be pitching in Citi Field, which is a happy place for a left-hander to be; and (4) if he’s healthy the Mets are likely to need him.

Washington: We don’t like to see teams tanking, because we’re old guys and longtime fans, and as both old guys and fans we consider life too goddamn short to wait around for two or three years while a team undergoes remodeling, even when the remodeling is done with more panache than the Nationals have shown. One of tanking’s few charms is that it gives old favorites whose careers might otherwise be in jeopardy another shot. Here, for example, we have Corey Dickerson (597), moving from perhaps the worst park for hitters in the National League to a park that, last year at least, was kind to left-handed hitters, and in which he has a career record of .359/.391/.688. And here is Jeimer Candelario (390), a participant (to the tune of .217/262/.361) in Detroit’s team-wide, season-long hitting mortification, for which our best explanations are quasi-mystical. But he’s only 29, he’s one year removed from leading the AL in doubles, he still managed 13 home runs last year, and figures to benefit, more than nearly anyone else in MLB, from the new shift rules.

Philadelphia:  With Bryce Harper sidelined, Nick Castellanos has inherited the right-field job.  He’s only 31, and we hope we’re wrong, but we have trouble looking at his 2022 and not seeing a guy who’s near the end of his career. Who might replace him? Most would say Dalton Guthrie (744), a right-handed hitter who had a nice, though brief, MLB debut last season, plays all over the diamond, can hit both species of pitcher, and should get at least 10 home runs and 10 stolen bases if he’s a semi-regular. He should also, however, hit about .230. Still, he’s worth acquiring at the prevailing rate. But if you’d like to make a statement with a truly outre, truly declasse selection, we recommend Jake Cave (746). Yes, he’s ostensibly been awful for the last three seasons. All we can tell you is that he hit right-handed pitchers very hard last season, and that if he gets 400 plate appearances as the strong side of a platoon (perhaps with Guthrie) he should hit about 15 home runs with a batting average that probably won’t help but also won’t embarrass him or you.