Fantasy Baseball Player Notes
2021 Fantasy Baseball Draft Notes
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28.
Whit Merrifield
2B,CF,RF
Merrifield has established an extremely strong floor, as he'll almost always be an asset in batting average, steals, and runs scored, and chip in for the remaining categories. There were some concern after his steals dropped to just 20 in 2019, but he bounced back to a 32-steal pace last year while also seeing a power spike. Merrifield is 32 years old and does not hit the ball particularly hard, but that's really irrelevant at this point. He is what he is, and with multi-position eligibility, what he is a major asset in fantasy and one of the top second basemen in fantasy.
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31.
Adalberto Mondesi
SS
Mondesi will begin the year on the 10-day IL with a strained oblique. When healthy, however, there's no reason to doubt his performance. Even in a shortened year, it was a tale of two seasons for Mondesi. In 35 games in July and August, he batted just .186 with 11 runs, two RBI, no home runs, and eight steals. In his final 24 games, he batted .356 with six home runs, 22 runs scored, 20 RBI, and 16 steals. In the end, Mondesi delivered exactly the type of season that fantasy managers have come to expect, and his 24 steals were eight more than the next highest total. Mondesi won't help in batting average and offers minimal power, but he's an unmatched source of steals. And given that much of his lackluster first month can probably be written off to offseason shoulder surgery, fantasy managers should be able to expect closer to the second-half version of Mondesi rather than the first this year.
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69.
Salvador Perez
C
Perez returned from missing all of the 2019 season to put up monstrous numbers. He batted .333 with 11 home runs in just 37 games. Sure, his meager walk rate became even worst and he struck out more than ever, but his strong numbers were absolutely earned. He had an expected batting average of .325, an expected slugging percentage of .624, and barreled baseballs at a significantly higher rate than he ever had before. Perez will be 31 years old this year this year but considering that he's had just 156 plate appearances combined over the past two years (after having one of the heaviest workloads for a catcher over the previous six seasons), he should have some gas left in the tank. Draft him as a top-three catcher without hesitation.
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79.
Jorge Soler
DH
Soler's injury-shortened 2020 season didn't live up to his massive 2019 campaign, but he did show that a lot of his gains were legitimate. Yes, it was more of a 30-homer pace, but his barrel rate, average exit velocity, and hard hit rate were all elite, as they were the prior year. Soler struck out way too much (34.5% of the time), and if he can't fix that, then his average will suffer as it did last year. But, his walk rate remains high and the power is going to be there with how hard he hits the ball. He's a source of cheap power you can grab later than other similarly-profiled bats going several rounds earlier.
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123.
Carlos Santana
1B
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125.
Andrew Benintendi
LF
Benintendi will get a fresh start with the Royals in 2021, and if any player ever needed a change of scenery, it's him. After looking like a perennial 20-20 player with a solid batting average, Benintendi has fallen off a cliff the last two years. To the extent you could boil his struggles down to something simple, it was that he appeared to get too homer-happy in 2019. Despite making better contact when he did hit the ball, his swinging strike rate jumped by four points to 11.6%, and his fly ball percentage and launch angle skyrocketed. Things didn't look much better in his brief 2020 season, which was cut short by a rib injury. Benintendi is still young, and out of the spotlight of the Boston media, might be able to return to what made him an impact player prior to 2019. You won't need to spend a ton to find out, thankfully, and he's worth a late-round pick in all formats.
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134.
Hunter Dozier
1B,3B,RF
Dozier is almost entirely off the fantasy radar this year, but that feels like an overreaction to 2020. Yes, his poor performance last year makes his breakout 2019 performance seem like an outlier, but really, it seems like 2020, rather than 2019, should be discounted. Dozier's quality of contact was awful last year, but it was out of character for him over the previous two seasons, and was more likely the result of him having tested positive for COVID-19 rather than from a sudden loss of skills. The Royals' lineup is sneaky deep, and Dozier will start at third base this season, giving him eligibility at three positions. Considering he's free in drafts, there is every reason to scoop him up with a late-round pick.
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279.
Hanser Alberto
2B,3B
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291.
Michael A. Taylor
CF,LF
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297.
Bobby Witt Jr.
SS
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312.
Edward Olivares
LF
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357.
Kyle Isbel
CF,RF
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366.
Nicky Lopez
2B,SS
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398.
Cam Gallagher
C
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432.
Erick Pena
CF
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480.
Meibrys Viloria
C
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492.
Ryan O'Hearn
1B
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501.
Jarrod Dyson
CF,RF
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544.
Ryan McBroom
1B
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581.
Bubba Starling
CF
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643.
Lucius Fox
SS
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665.
Erick Mejia
3B
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707.
Kelvin Gutierrez
3B
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792.
Jeison Guzman
SS
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