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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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.
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.
Tyler O’Neill (OF – STL)
Tyler O’Neill is all about perspective. If we compare his outstanding 2021 campaign to the rest of his career, we could argue that it was an outlier. It was the only year in which he played 100 games — granted, he played in 50 of his team’s 60 games in the atypical 2020 — and his 34 home runs were just one fewer than the rest of his other seasons combined.
Conversely, if we look at 2021 as the culmination of a young player growing into a regular role, then 2022, in which O’Neill again missed time due to injury, is the aberration.
It’s obviously subjective to pick one of these years as the anchor and subsequently discount the other, and that’s why we have to look at the numbers that drive the final output. O’Neill actually cut his strikeout rate to a career low, but he suffered from a below-average BABIP — and one that was far below his own career mark. His expected slugging percentage and expected wOBA were both high — and higher than his actual numbers — but his ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio reached its peak. If he can simply stay on the field and move back toward his 40% fly-ball rate — it had dipped to 37.8% last year — then he can approach a repeat of his ’21 season. The other positive is that, even in 96 games, O’Neill swiped 14 bags.
Aaron Nola (SP – PHI)
A quick glance at Aaron Nola’s numbers from last year would make him an interesting option for a positive regression candidate. Overall, he did quite well, and many fantasy managers discount wins for a starting pitcher, so his 11-13 record might go overlooked. The reality is that Nola’s season could have been even better, and that’s exactly why we want to look into his value for 2023.
Among all pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2022, Nola ranked first in the league in WAR. It’s not a statistic that is usually applied to pitchers, but it is important to note that he obviously delivered to a top-notch level. His strikeout rate of 10.32 per nine innings and his ERA of 3.25 were all impressive in their own right, but his expected ERA was even better at 2.74. Suddenly, his 11-13 record looks a lot more unstable, and we can see the route to a better season ahead of us.
Austin Meadows (OF – DET)
While this article eventually filtered out any hitter with fewer than 300 plate appearances last year, one player jumped off the screen despite a small sample size — 147 plate appearances. Austin Meadows played just 36 games with the Tigers following a trade just days before the start of the season — and technically after the originally intended season opener that was delayed until the new collective bargaining agreement was settled.
If we only look for players who fit the mold of a possible “bounce-back” candidate because of missed time, then Meadows would make this list anyway. It’s the addition of the “positive regression” that makes him a no-brainer. Among all hitters with at least 100 plate appearances, Meadows had the largest positive gap between expected and actual slugging percentage. He also ranked third in that group for the distance between expected and actual batting average. In fact, his expected batting average of .308 was the fourth best.
Meadows hit 27 home runs and drove in 106 runs two years ago with the Rays, but last year was completely lost for him. We shouldn’t forget about the potential he holds.
German Marquez (SP – COL)
German Marquez almost did it. He almost moved past the stigma of pitching in Colorado and ascended up the fantasy ranks into a category where managers could trust him. Then, 2022 happened.
Overall, Marquez didn’t have a terrible season. He simply moved so many of his numbers in the wrong direction that it wasn’t worth waiting to see if he can pitch his way out of it. Compared to 2021, Marquez’s strikeout rate decreased while his ERA and FIP increased. Why, then, should we look for a bounce-back season from him?
Marquez’s home-run rate spiked to 1.49 per nine innings, just less than his career high of 1.50. The prior two times that this mark moved higher than 1.3, Marquez responded with a drop in home runs allowed and, consequently, a decreased ERA. In addition, Marquez’s fastball velocity was higher in ’22 than in ’21, and both his xERA and xFIP were lower than his actual ERA and FIP, respectively. The name value of pitching for the Rockies will hurt Marquez’s draft position, but the numbers show that he can rebound.
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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.