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
Josh Hader (RP – SD)
As written in the introduction of this column, not all players listed as positive regression candidates will also be sleepers. This is the case with Josh Hader. Most fantasy baseball managers will look past his comparatively gaudy numbers from last season and expect a better showing in 2023, and that is going to force him higher up draft boards. The difference, however, is that Hader was typically considered the first closer worth taking in prior seasons, and he has now slid down the rankings.
There’s no mystery as to why this happened. Hader went from an incredible 1.23 ERA in 2021 to a bloated 5.22 mark in 2022. What’s worse is that he was already in a precarious position with a 4.24 ERA with the Brewers before a midseason trade sent him to San Diego, where he somehow managed to perform worse. His ERA with the Padres was 7.31.
The most important bright spots for Hader’s ’22 campaign were his expected numbers. His xERA of 3.51 isn’t great for a relief pitcher, but it’s far better than his actual ERA. His xFIP sitting at 2.94 is where we should really take notice. That, and the second-best strikeout rate of any pitcher who logged at least 50 innings last year.
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