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 runs scored category. Here’s who we like:
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The are a few angles at play here. First of all, Fowler just flat out gets on base. While runs can be largely context dependent, a large part of the equation is getting on base. Fowler did just that last year, as he ranked 13th among 353 players (min. 200 PA) last season with a .393 OBP. That OBP helped Fowler rank 53rd in runs scored last season (84) despite the fact that he got into just 125 games. In fact, take a look at how many games the five ahead and behind him got into on the runs leaderboard: 152, 131, 150, 150, 152, Fowler, 147, 143, 160, 146 and 162. One thing to note is that he is leaving the Cubs offense, which could ding his value a bit. That shouldn’t matter too much, though. Last year, the Cubs had a collective 106 wRC+ as an offense (No. 3 MLB), while the Cardinals checked in at 104 (No. 5). Fowler is probably good enough to bridge that gap on his own and should score a ton of runs if he can stay healthy.
Broxton is a trendy pick in deeper leagues this year after he hit .242/.354/.430 for the Brewers in 75 games last year. In fact, much of the hope resides in the fact that Broxton hit an insane .294/.399/.538 in 46 second-half games after hitting a paltry .125/.253/.188 before the break. Like with Fowler, that’s an OBP one can dream on. For the whole season, Broxton walked at an excellent 14.8 percent rate to rank 12th in MLB (among players with at least 200 PA). With the reports that manager Craig Counsell would like to insert him near the top of the Brewers batting order, there’s potential for a perfect storm of value with Broxton also a capable base thief (23 steals in under a half season). He’s not only a runs scored sleeper, but also a steals sleeper. That’ll be a welcome change for the Brewers, who ranked 26th in MLB in runs scored last year.
Projecting runs scored sleepers is sort of hard, so this might just be wish-casting with a guy who takes a ton of walks. Pederson was 25th in MLB last season with a walk rate of 13.2 percent — tied with Baltimore’s Chris Davis — and as a result posted a .352 OBP in spite of a meager .246 batting average. At the end of the day, this is an uber-talented guy heading into his age-25 season — a prime spot for a breakout — who’ll be hitting in an excellent offense. He’s already a very good player on the cusp of perhaps becoming a great one. Why not give him a ride?
The same things about Pederson hitting in a good offense are applicable to Forsythe, who is making the jump from an offense that scored 672 runs last year (Rays – 24th) to one that scored 725 (Dodgers – 14th). Forsythe might end up in the thick of things as well as the leadoff hitter, which would only serve to help him score more runs on an offense that should have a decent chance to fare better than last season’s decent, but not great showing. The Dodgers had a collective 98 wRC+ — a four-way tie for 12th among offenses, including with Forsythe’s Rays — though a huge part of that was the team’s collective struggle against left-handed pitchers. No team had a worse wRC+ against southpaws last year than the Dodgers (72) — something that Forsythe will help with immensely. Forsythe has a career .278/.343/.475 line against lefties in his career. By comparison, the Dodgers had the No. 2 wRC+ against righties last year (109), which means there’s a significantly higher ceiling for this offense if they can close that gap. Forsythe will only help. Forsythe also matched his career walk rate with a respectable 8.1 percent mark last season while hitting almost exclusively leadoff for the Rays (125 games).
Deeper League Targets
Sleepers for AVG/OBP
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.
