Top Fantasy Sleepers for 2010

Dont sleep on these ballers

There is a well-worn axiom in fantasy baseball circles that says that while it is impossible to win one’s league on draft day, it is possible to lose it. That may be true, but draft day is a great time to get a head start on one’s competition.

That can’t be done in the first three to five rounds, however. A player may get the league’s best combination of talents out of the top five rounds, but the simple truth is that everyone can collect superstars at the top of the board. There are, most years, more than 50 top-50 players to be had, and so everyone’s team looks loaded until the elite talent begins to dwindle.

That is when the so-called fantasy experts make their money. That is when league champions surge to the forefront, and also-rans begin also-running. That is when sleepers begin to emerge.

The following ten players are good bets to provide solid value above and beyond their average draft positions (or projected rotisserie values) in 2010, and deserve fantasy players’ attention as the top sleepers of the upcoming season.

1. Ricky Nolasco

Nolasco logged a hideous 5.06 ERA in 2009, despite the fifth-best strikeout-to-walk ratio in the league. His fielder-independent ERA (3.35) was actually a marked improvement from his 2008 figure. A mid-season demotion to Triple-A is all that kept him from logging 200 or more innings for the second straight season, and he would easily have eclipsed 200 strikeouts had he done so.

In fact, had Nolasco been anything short of horrifically unlucky in 2009, he would have been a top-shelf pitcher of Justin Verlander’s ilk. Of the 77 pitchers who threw at least 162 innings last year, Nolasco’s 61.0 percent figure in left on base percentage (basically, the number of runners a pitcher puts on base, minus the number who score, divided by the original number of runners on base) was the absolute lowest. As this article shows, that problem sometimes repeats itself across seasons, but more often than not, such situational splits even out fairly quickly.

Nolasco’s Clutch index (which measures how well or poorly a player does in high-leverage situations, relative to their norm) was also the lowest among qualifying 2009 hurlers, according to FanGraphs. That is nearly always an unreliable predictor of future performance, and a little regression could go a long way toward smoothing out Nolasco’s ERA problems.

Nolasco only narrowly qualifies as a sleeper; his ADP is inside the first ten rounds in most leagues. It also hurts that he has always tended to give up home runs, a trend that continued unabated through last year. He has Zack Greinke’s upside, though, and at 27, he still has one more season in which to discover and express it fully.

2. Carlos Quentin

Quentin, slowed by plantar fasciitis in 2009, posted a miserable .236 batting average. Much of that came courtesy of Quentin’s .223 batting average on balls in play (BAbip), however. Aside from being an impossibly low number for a skilled hitter like Quentin to duplicate, .223 was some 72 points below Quentin’s expected BAbip, which is calculated using a player’s batted-ball tendencies and speed score, among other factors. By the reckoning of xBAbip, no player in baseball received worse treatment from Lady Luck last season.

Of course, some of the problem was a direct result of the injuries, which hobbled Quentin even after his premature return to the Chicago White Sox’s futile playoff push. With those in the past, Quentin seems ready to rake again. Thirty home runs is a reachable benchmark for the slugger, who popped 21 of them in fewer than 400 plate appearances last year and had 36 in somewhat less than a full season in 2008.

3. Geovany Soto

Soto, too, struggled to reach base on balls in play in 2009. The general consensus, however, is that his conditioning (or lack thereof) had more to do with that than did his strained oblique. Indeed, most clear-headed observers might link the extra weight he carried in 2009 to the overworking or hyperextension of muscles along his side.

Skills erosion certainly was not the issue. Soto walked more and struck out less, as a percentage of his total plate appearances, than he had during his Rookie of the Year season in 2008. He maintained roughly the same batted-ball profile, as well, all of which suggests he simply needed to slim down. New Cubs hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo seems eager to work with Soto, and so far in camp, the feeling has been mutual.

At any rate, Soto dropped 40 pounds in the off-season and seems both healthier and more focused in 2010. His rookie output of 23 home runs and 86 runs batted in were good enough for him to be among the top five catchers in fantasy baseball headed into 2009, and that is the sort of baseline from which his projections should be made this season.

4. Chad Qualls

Qualls missed the last six weeks of last season, but all indications are that he will be fully ready for the start of the season, and as long as that is true, he is a valuable and under-rated closer option. His WHIP isn’t elite, but is much better than Carlos Marmol’s or Brian Fuentes’s figure to be. Both of those men go ahead of Qualls as often as they go after him in recent mock drafts, and that is folly, especially with Fernando Rodney on board to steal save chances from Fuentes.

More importantly, Qualls is just good value. For players who grab an ace starter early, Qualls can add 30-plus saves just in front of pick 200, and provides enough strikeouts to carry the weight without sacrificing WHIP by walking people. There are always a million ways to come away with the best team on draft day, but this season, Qualls is a part of many winning strategies.

5. Edwin Jackson

Now a teammate of Qualls with the Diamondbacks, Edwin Jackson brings the same skills that moved him gracefully through American League lineups to a 3.62 ERA, 13 wins and 161 strikeouts last season to the National League’s inferior hitting. He now also gets to face the pitcher.

It is a wonder, then, that so many pundits are adamant in their belief that Jackson is headed for a serious and unpleasant course correction. Jackson, 26, did post a fielder-independent ERA of 4.42 last season. That was fueled largely by a falling ground ball rate and Jackson’s long-time vulnerability to the home run.

It became fairly apparent that Jackson, who had thrown 100 or more pitches only 16 times in 32 appearances with the Rays in 2008, wore down as the season wore on. He would toss 100 or times in 21 different starts for notorious task-master Jim Leyland, and crested that mark seven straight times beginning July 4 at Minnesota. In fact, from that date onward, Jackson threw 100 or more pitches in 13 of his remaining 17 starts.

That abuse resulted in a 5.07 ERA during the second half, after a first half that saw him go 7-4 with a 2.52 mark. If Arizona is wise enough to treat his arm with more caution in 2010, Jackson will reward them with a very strong showing, and will be a surprise top-tier number two starter in fantasy leagues.

6. Martin Prado

Almost any player who is eligible at both second and third base has value, provided they get playing time. Not only will Prado finally get full-time at-bats at second, with a chance to expand his role even further if third baseman Chipper Jones continues to battle aging and injury, but he will also bat second for Bobby Cox’s Atlanta Braves this season. That means 90 runs scored, in addition to Prado’s almost assured .300 average.

Batting average is an underappreciated category in fantasy; a player who can provide it in full-time work is hard to find late in drafts, yet Prado continues to fall into the twentieth round and beyond. Prado is eligible at first, second and third base in most leagues, and could well smack 10-12 home runs if whoever bats behind him can scare pitchers into throwing him fastballs. At either the corner or middle infield spot, Prado is a steal at his current market value.

7. J.J. Hardy

Hardy will benefit from the change of scenery, after constant rumors about his imminent replacement at the hands of phenomenal prospect Alcides Escobar marred Hardy’s final season in Milwaukee. A November trade to the Minnesota Twins gives Hardy a chance to prove himself once again, and at just 27 years of age, it is not at all beyond the realm of possibility.

A .260 BAbip held down his batting average, while the patient approach thrust upon him by his coaches—Hardy swung at fewer pitches inside the strike zone than all but four other hitters in the league, who accumulated 220 or more plate appearances—failed to translate into significantly more walks. Yet, Hardy is not so far removed from the two-year span of 2007-08, wherein he hit a combined 50 home runs and batted a stout .280.

Those numbers might be a bit ambitious, but his realistic ceiling still reaches 20 homers and a .270 average. That kind of production makes Hardy a very good piece of a winning draft strategy, too: because there is an abundance of speed to be had in the outfield this season, players who solidify the steals category in the middle rounds can scoop up Hardy as a hefty-hitting middle infielder with their last pick of the draft.

8. David Freese

At 26, going on 27, David Freese will finally get a long overdue chance to play every day in the Major Leagues this season. The St. Louis Cardinals have slotted him for that role, after watching Freese bring his career slash statistics in the Minor Leagues to .308/.384/.532 in the 64 games to which injuries limited him last year.

Inexplicably, analysts everywhere are unwilling to trust what the numbers tell them about the 2006 ninth-round draft pick of the San Diego Padres. He seems to have the confidence of the Cardinals brass, however, and that may be all he needs to bust out with a .280, 20-homer, 85-RBI campaign, batting fifth and scoring a modicum of runs. All of that can be had for the price of one dollar at auction or the use of a reserve round draft pick.

9. Derek Lowe

It’s easy to see why Lowe could bounce back in 2010: he hardly needs to bounce back, at all. Despite a 4.67 ERA, Lowe had a 4.06 FIP last year. No pitcher who threw more than 162 innings had a worse Defensive Efficiency Rate (DER, the percentage of balls in play a team defense turns into outs) than the .655 mark the Braves posted behind Lowe. That came in spite of the team posting an above-average DER overall, and in spite of Lowe’s marked ground-ball tendencies; the Braves have a slick-fielding group across their infield, generally.

The .330 BAbip posted by batters against Lowe last season was the highest since 2004. Lowe also walked more batters than he had since 2004, something he must correct in order to reel in his sky-high 1.52 WHIP from last season.

In the final calculus, though, Lowe has a relatively short way to go to regain some fantasy relevance, and as he will be available well into the reserve rounds of even the deepest mixed leagues, he is worth a look. Note that, before his 36-year-old arm wore down in his final nine starts, Lowe had a 4.08 ERA and 79 strikeouts in 150 innings.

10. Drew Stubbs

Stubbs wants to bat leadoff and play center field every day for the Cincinnati Reds, and if he has anything better than the worst-case scenario of a spring, he will get his wish. At 25, Stubbs is just three and a half years removed from being drafted in the first round by the Reds, and now looks ready to shine.

The power he flashed last season—eight home runs and a .439 slugging average in just fewer than 200 plate appearances—is not real. If he gets over twice as much playing time in 2010, and that’s a safe bet, he may hit 12 homers. That is the absolute ceiling for this season, and if Stubbs is smart, he won’t push to develop more power too quickly.

That is because Stubbs’s greatest asset, both on the field and in fantasy play, is his speed. Bill James has bullishly projected him for 51 thefts this year, but 40 is not out of the question. Best of all, Stubbs will provide those 40 steals without a .240 batting average or 20 failed stolen base attempts, a la 2009’s Reds center fielder Willy Taveras. He may only hit .265, but even that has value. If he hits .275 instead, which is possible, he is every bit as valuable as Houston Astros outfielder Michael Bourn, and can be gotten about 150 picks later.

Matt Trueblood