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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- Hitters to Avoid | Target
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Fantasy Baseball Sleepers
German Marquez (SP – COL)
German Marquez almost did it. He almost moved past the stigma of pitching in Colorado and ascended up the fantasy ranks into a category where managers could trust him. Then, 2022 happened.
Overall, Marquez didn’t have a terrible season. He simply moved so many of his numbers in the wrong direction that it wasn’t worth waiting to see if he can pitch his way out of it. Compared to 2021, Marquez’s strikeout rate decreased while his ERA and FIP increased. Why, then, should we look for a bounce-back season from him?
Marquez’s home-run rate spiked to 1.49 per nine innings, just less than his career high of 1.50. The prior two times that this mark moved higher than 1.3, Marquez responded with a drop in home runs allowed and, consequently, a decreased ERA. In addition, Marquez’s fastball velocity was higher in ’22 than in ’21, and both his xERA and xFIP were lower than his actual ERA and FIP, respectively. The name value of pitching for the Rockies will hurt Marquez’s draft position, but the numbers show that he can rebound.
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