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.
- Fitz’s Positional Primers
- Hitters to Avoid | Target
- Pitchers to Avoid | Target
- Latest Fantasy Baseball Mock Draft
Fantasy Baseball Sleepers
Jose Abreu (1B – HOU)
In 2022, there were 277 hitters who had at least 300 plate appearances. Of that group, Jose Abreu ranked 10th best in expected wOBA — weighted on-base average. The problem? He hit just 15 home runs.
That hurt last year’s fantasy managers. It has created a discount for this year.
Abreu essentially performed to the tune of his expected numbers, but the drop in power certainly appeared to be an issue. Upon further inspection, there was a disconnect that simply didn’t reflect on the surface. Abreu actually decreased his soft-hit percentage and increased his line-drive percentage from 2021 to 2022. If he can move his fly-ball percentage back to where it was prior to last season, he should see a nice uptick in home runs.
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Mario Mergola is a featured writer at FantasyPros and BettingPros and the creator and content editor of Sporfolio. For more from Mario, check out his archive and follow him @MarioMergola.
