Winning a fantasy baseball league usually comes down to value. When all else is equal, did your players outperform your opponents’? Were you able to identify those who were about to reach their potential?
Put another way, did you find the right players who achieved positive regression or successfully bounced back from a bad 2022 campaign?
This column is about sleepers, but not in the sense that other fantasy managers may draft them too late or bid too little to acquire them. These are the players who have the numbers or narratives — ideally both — to support a better output than they had last year. Maybe they aren’t the league’s best-kept secrets, but they are the targets who are poised to rebound from 2022.
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Fantasy Baseball Sleepers
Aaron Nola (SP – PHI)
A quick glance at Aaron Nola’s numbers from last year would make him an interesting option for a positive regression candidate. Overall, he did quite well, and many fantasy managers discount wins for a starting pitcher, so his 11-13 record might go overlooked. The reality is that Nola’s season could have been even better, and that’s exactly why we want to look into his value for 2023.
Among all pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2022, Nola ranked first in the league in WAR. It’s not a statistic that is usually applied to pitchers, but it is important to note that he obviously delivered to a top-notch level. His strikeout rate of 10.32 per nine innings and his ERA of 3.25 were all impressive in their own right, but his expected ERA was even better at 2.74. Suddenly, his 11-13 record looks a lot more unstable, and we can see the route to a better season ahead of us.
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