Fantasy Baseball Late-Round Draft Targets: Pitchers (2023)

With fantasy baseball draft season in full force, we need to research all areas of the drafts, including the draft’s last picks. Some may use these picks to take risks, as they can be easy drops. Some may even refer to them as the final pieces to fill out your roster. But, no matter how you look at them, some of these last picks, if they hit, can be league-winners.

In this article, I will look at seven players going past ECR/ADP 300. Of course, more than seven players can be taken, but these are the players I have been taking in this area of drafts so far. Some veterans look to bounce back from injury, and a young outfielder is looking to stake his claim in the bigs. Let’s look at some of the deep-league targets for draft day.

Deep-League Fantasy Baseball Draft Targets

FantasyPros Consensus MLB ADP

Kenta Maeda (MIN – SP)

Maeda was injured after 21 starts in 2021 and required Tommy John Surgery. He missed all of the 2022 season and is ready to roll in 2023. Maeda had that fantastic, shortened 2020 season with a 2.70 ERA, 2.63 xFIP, and 28.2% K-BB. The strikeouts dipped in 2021, and that may have been partly due to the injury. He is healthy and has only allowed one run over 5.2 innings this spring. Maeda has walked five and struck out four which is not ideal, but control is usually the most prominent thing when returning from TJ surgery. I will take a late shot on Maeda, hoping he returns to a solid SP2 or SP3 for fantasy teams.

Eduardo Rodriguez (DET – SP)

Rodriguez is coming off an awful 2022 season with injuries and off-the-field issues surrounding poor production and decreased velocity. Injuries and off-the-field problems may still happen, but the velocity is up this spring, which brings some nice optimism for this season regarding fantasy. This spring, Rodriguez has thrown 8.1 innings with seven hits, only one walk, and 10 strikeouts. He has looked great, and any sort of a bounce back would be fantasy goodness this late in drafts.

Alex Wood (SF – SP)

Wood has been a health risk recently, but his draft price was higher in previous seasons. He still made 26 starts in the last two seasons and had a K-BB% over 18% in both seasons. Last year, Wood had a horrible 5.10 ERA, but his 3.41 xFIP proves he may have been a bit unlucky. He looked great in his first spring outing, where he did not allow a run and struck out five over two innings. Wood is a major target for me late in drafts.