In competitive leagues, the difference between winning and also-ran status often comes down to sleepers. That is, finding players with underappreciated value, and capitalizing on it.
Basically speaking, it’s the Moneyball of fantasy baseball. Are you ready to be the next Billy Beane?
If so, we can help. Over the next few days, we’ll take a look at some of the sleepers in categories seen in a lot of 5×5 and similarly-styled leagues. This time around, we’re taking a stab at some of the sleepers in the batting average and on-base percentage categories. Here’s who we like:
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The Batting Average Sleepers
Ben Revere (OF – LAA)
This’ll probably qualify as a deep pull since Revere is expected to be the fourth outfielder for the Angels, but it’s not as though the players ahead of him are ironclad. At least not starting left fielder Cameron Maybin, who came into his own with a .801 OPS with the Tigers last year in 94 games. Still, Maybin has a career OPS of .694 and isn’t exactly the bastion of health or production.
He missed extensive time last year with the Tigers due to thumb, rib cage, quad, and wrist issues. He’s also missed time this spring with shoulder fatigue. This could open the door for Revere, who is also coming off a rough season of his own.
Revere got into 103 games with the Nationals last year but hit a staggering .217/.260/.300. Revere has never been blessed with any power really, but his BABIP fell to a shockingly low .234 — 60 points below his career mark — and as a result, his batting line fell precipitously. An oblique injury certainly didn’t help things, and he stole just 14 bases, which was by far the fewest of his career as a regular.
He still makes a ton of contact — 96.4 percent on pitches in the zone last year which ranked third among 353 batters with at least 200 PA — and has his trademark speed. Look for this career .285 hitter to get back on track.
Joe Panik (2B – SF)
Here’s another guy who makes a ton of contact, as he ranked ninth in the same list Revere was mentioned on with a zone contact rate of 94.9 percent. Panik also had BABIP issues — .245, nearly 50 points below his career mark — and also had issues with his eyesight after suffering a concussion last June. Before the concussion, Panik was hitting .263/.327/.421; afterward, he hit just .214/.304/.335.
He recently told the San Francisco Chronicle that he’s got no lingering effects from the concussion, so it should be full-steam ahead for Panik, who hit a robust .312 in 2015 and .305 in limited duty the year before. A return to .300 should not be ruled out.
Denard Span (OF – SF)
Span saw a nearly 30-point dip in BABIP from 2015 to 2016 — nearly 30 points off his career mark, as well — and as a result hit under .300 for the first time since 2013 as he finished with a .266/.331/.381 line in his first season by the Bay. Span is another contact wizard, as he ranked 13th among hitters with over 200 PA in terms of zone contact rate (94.4 percent). His non-strike contact rate tumbled precipitously — from 82.7 percent in 2014 all the way down to 73.4 percent last year — so that is something to monitor.
His contact on pitches in the zone only dipped a little over one percent and is still fairly close to his career rate. It could be the sign of decline, but it also could just be part of adjusting to a new place. He has been prone to lulls in his career and did hit better in the second half (.287/.336/.429) than the first (.248/.328/.343) last season.
The OBP Sleepers
Gregory Polanco (OF – PIT)
This one might seem a little strange, but hear us out. Even though Polanco has just a career OBP of .318, could he be on the cusp of a breakout?
First of all, he’s heading into just his age-25 season, which is a prime time for any player to break out. Second, only four players (min. 200 PA) saw fewer pitches in the strike zone (Fangraphs’ Zone%) than Polanco’s 38.8 percent mark last season. That territory is typically reserved for two types of hitters.
First on the list was David Ortiz and third was Bryce Harper; you know, the kinds of guys who get pitched around. Tied with Polanco for fifth was Javier Baez, which is the kind of guy who swings at everything and thus doesn’t need to be thrown strikes. Polanco doesn’t profile as that kind of guy.
First off, he had a swinging-strike rate of just 8.5 percent last season — the lowest among the top-18 players on the Zone% list with the exception of Ortiz. By comparison, Baez had a swinging-strike rate of 14.4 percent. Furthermore, Polanco’s career and year-by-year walk rates have always been right around nine percent.
That’s marginally better than the NL average mark of 8.3 percent last year. So he’s not a free swinger, he’s obviously got the pedigree of a former top prospect, he’s still young enough to develop, and pitchers don’t throw him strikes. That feels like an OBP breakout waiting to happen.
Kennys Vargas (DH – MIN)
Through his work with Triple-A hitting coach and former Twins outfielder Chad Allen, Vargas has gone from a hapless whiff king to a potential TTO dynamo. TTO is short for “three true outcomes” and is the concept of players who specialize in plate appearances ending in one of three outcomes: home runs, strikeouts, or walks. Vargas’ massive power has always been evident, as he’s drawn body comps due to his uncanny resemblance to David Ortiz.
He’s listed a 6-foot-5 and 275 pounds, and he’s every bit both of those. His walk rate vacillated up and down in the minor leagues but was at times very, very good — though usually in smaller sample sizes — before it bottomed out early in his big league career.
In 2014, Vargas came up and hit a respectable .274/.316/.456 in 234 PA, but it’s not hard to see the issue there. That was the result of a 5.1 percent walk rate.
Things were even worse in 2015, as Vargas barely got a word in edgewise on a solid Twins team. He hit just .240/.277/.349 and was banished to the minor leagues with a walk rate of 4.9 percent. Each time he went back to the minors, he’d have a representative showing walks-wise in the minors, only to see it vanish in the bigs.
That wasn’t true in 2016, as Vargas hit .230/.333/.500 in 177 PA. He still struck out an alarming 32.2 percent of the time, but that came with a phenomenal walk rate of 13.6 percent — that’s Joe Mauer territory — and 10 home runs. That’s a pace for 34 home runs over 600 plate appearances, which could be in his future considering the Twins signed no competition in front of him at DH.
They could still resurrect talks with Pedro Alvarez, but for now, it looks like it’s Vargas’ job to lose. If he can come even close to his career batting average (.251 in 595 PA), he should prop up your OBP and give you plenty of power to boot.
Matt Joyce (OF – OAK)
Would you believe nobody walked more frequently than Joyce last year? It took me by surprise, too, but nobody with more than 200 PAs walked more frequently than Joyce’s 20.1 percent as a castoff with the Pirates last season. As a result, he put up a bananas .242/.403/.463 line in just under 300 plate appearances with the Bucs.
He’s always had a penchant for taking walks — 12.5 percent career rate — and he’s now headed to the place that values them quite a bit, as he’s currently slated to start in right field for the A’s. After a brutal 2015 season — .174/.272/.291 with the Angels — he’s squarely back on the fantasy radar, though it’ll likely be in relative obscurity. As a fantasy owner, we love that.
Robbie Grossman (OF – MIN)
How much longer do the Twins want to put up with Eddie Rosario’s swing-first tendencies? Grossman is the exact opposite type of player, and he put together a fine season for the Twins last year after exercising his opt-out from Triple-A Columbus (Cleveland) earlier in the season. The Twins sent Rosario down, inserted Grossman in left, and all he did was hit.
Grossman has always walked (12 percent in 1,153 MLB PA), but he added a bit of thump as well as he hit .280/.386/.443 while nearly eclipsing 400 plate appearances for the Twins. That surely came out of left field — pun intended, sorry — for a guy who had hit just .240/.327/.341 in his career coming into 2016. Grossman slaughtered left-handed pitchers last season (.344/.418/.576), but he also held his own against righties (.242/.367/.362).
Ultimately, what’s most important is that both of the OBPs he posted — regardless of pitcher handedness — are the kinds of things that should make fantasy owners salivate. Grossman walked 14.1 percent of the time last season and seemed to have the kind of approach that can sustain double-digit walk rates even if he isn’t hitting. With a career batting average of .254 flanked by an OBP of .347,
Grossman should be an asset in OBP leagues — assuming he can wrangle enough playing time to stay relevant. Keep an eye on that situation. At the very least, he should DH against lefties with Vargas playing first and Mauer taking a seat.
Sleepers for Runs
Sleepers for RBIs
Sleepers for Stolen Bases
Sleepers for HRs
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Brandon Warne is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Brandon, check out his archive and follow him @brandon_warne.
