What's up, friends, and welcome into Fantasy Pros MLB. I am the Welsh. There is no Joe Psipia here today, but I have got a great replacement. He is my dear friend, Ryan Bloomfield. The Bloomer is in the house as we're going to be discussing the thirteen most undervalued players that you guys have got to target. Most might be a little contrite. Actually it just thirteen undervalued players that we've targeted, and we're going to talk to you about why are they undervalued? Why do you need them?
Hopefully we will give you some answers and you can find all those answers as well over at Fantasy Pros. If you guys are looking to get into your drafts, the Draft Kit is out. Go and check that out today. The Draft Wizard. You can start experimenting and having so much fun with all your different draft settings and there's some amazing tools you guys can get in and sink your leagues can You can literally mock draft how your league does it, and you can do a lot out
of that for free. You want to get a little bit more, you can get into the premium product and you can start getting all the insights, the draft assistants, and more. So go and check it out today over at Fantasy Pros fantasypros dot com slash Premium draftkit do all the stuff. Get locked in today, Ryan Bloomfield, what is up, brother? It's really good to see your face.
It's great to see you, man.
I'm very very jealous of of you being able to kind of gallivant around the Phoenix area and check out spring training as I used to live down there. But uh, but yeah, I always love this time of year. So doing well, man, Shout out to your Hillsborough Hops hat by the way, that's just up the road from me, and let's.
All, yeah, yeah, thank you. Actually, I get like I've got a couple collection of hats that get the most attention, and the two are the Hillsboro Hops and the Savannah Bananas, so I'm just trying to collectively. I've got one that I haven't unveiled on camera yet. It's the Lake Elson or Lookouts, but it's the one with the eyes, and I think it's gonna weird everybody out if I have two eyes looking at everybody, but I'll try it on an episode.
You won't know until you try.
Yeah, switch it out mid mid episode and see who notices that's right.
Well, this is gonna be great. This is awesome having you here. Bloomfield is one of the best. You can find him over at Baseball HQ and on one of the hottest podcasts in the land, of course Joe and Myself, but Bubba and the bloom k C Bubba, Deer Casey, Bubba who does some writing over here Fantasy Pros and Bloomfield. You guys have been rocking the podcast, and I imagine you guys have probably hit on, like conceptually this interests me.
Sleepers and undervalued and breakouts. They're all kind of terms that have like slight variations from each other. And I imagine you guys have had these conversations when you think about, like undervalued, how does that differ from sleepers or breakouts, even if it's just like a minute little you know instance.
Yeah, it's tough to it's tough to tell.
Like what I what I think of undervalued is I'm looking at average draft position at ADP and just comparing guys to certain positions going you know, right around them, and you take a cluster of three or four players at the same position, say which one do you like kind of out of that group going roughly at the same time in the draft, and that would be my quote unquote undervalued player for there, So.
I mean and that makes sense. So we've got thirteen. We've got to buzz through them. If you guys like it, go down and check into the comments and tell us who's your favorite undervalued guy. When you do so, you got opportunities to win some awesome stuff. We were talking about the Jazz Chisholm Jersey last week. I gotta be honest with you, I don't remember if when you're listening
to this you're still eligible. But there's always great prizes that are out there, so make sure you're commenting on the videos below because you never know what you're gonna win. So let's get into this. Let's talk about undervalued player number one. You actually came up in our atc Ario Cohen Projections episode. How about Xander Bogarts. Xander Bogarts coming in with an overall ADYP, which is great about Fantasy pros. You can go and check out the ADP across all
the sites. It creates a collective ADP pulling all the data in and the ECR he has got a rank of ninety five, and he's actually got an ADP of ninety six, so it's almost outside the top one hundred. This was almost a twenty twenty guy last year. Projections like him just about the same twenty twenty with high batting average usually isn't a lower end to top one hundred range. It's usually in the like seventy five plus. So talk to us about why Xana Bogart's if and is undervalued in your mind.
I think he is just because, like what one of my crusades so far through through draft season has just been prioritizing batting average as much as I can in the kind of the early and early mid rounds, and Xander Bogart's like totally totally delivers that last five years batting average three or nine three hundred two ninety five, three h seven two eighty five across a boatload of played appearances. The power is not, you know, great, but like you said, could go twenty home runs at nineteen
last year. I think the question is and whether Bogarts returns his returns of profit here is at stolen based total eight stolen bases in twenty twenty two nineteen last year in twenty twenty three for San Diego. Was that taking advantage of the new rules, a different organization philosophy. Not sure, but I think despite that kind of variance, and we don't know what the stolen base total will be, the batting average, the runs he can play every single
day that he can. He's played hurt last year, He's played hurt almost throughout his entire career. Kind of a nagging risk thing, but he continues to deliver throughout. So really like Xander Bogart's I kind of comp him to Danceby Swanson going a little bit later at the same position. Both rock solid shortstop options for you if you need some stability up the middle.
But the different stands be pretty you know, significant drop in batting.
Average, different types of players. Yep.
Why do you think you're honing in and targeting batting average so much? Because I don't want to go too far in this, But what I think is so interesting
is there was a couple of years ago. If people are new to the fantasy baseball space and don't follow like the trends or listen to a lot of the podcast, there was this and I was kind of with this, I liked it, and our friend who was just on not too long ago, Justin Mason, kind of started this like, Hey, I'm gonna punt batting average and this is like three or four years ago, Like I'm going to like actively go and punt batting average, And a lot of people felt, hey,
this is the POSI this is the spot that I think I could punt in a Roto league, I could actually start to punt batting average. Well, then in first Pitch this year, there was a presentation I believe it was Scott cho was talking about that batting average was the most difficult position to pick up off the waivers
in season. So is it that versus the priority that people don't really put on bat Like is it because people don't prioritize batting average and you can take advantage, or it's so hard to make up in season?
It's it's it's the most scarce, like stolen bases get talked about all the time. Is maybe pre rule change as the scarceest category batting average.
Batting average with.
The ability to do other things like bogarts can is the scarcest modity out there. And I listened to Scott Chow's presentation at First Pitch Arizona and kind of prove that out during the season. It is very difficult to uh to replace batting average. And I also think in these later rounds, having a batting average cushion, having a batting average floor on your team opens you up to
a lot of different options later in the draft. And so I just like having that flexibility later in the draft to be able to take you know, adult and var Show or you know an Anthony Volpi or you know whatever, those types of players. There's there's it seems like there's a lot more of those, and you can do that with a good batting average.
Here's a quick break in the action. MLB draft season is here, friends, and the easiest place to play fantasy baseball is a underdog Fantasy. Joe and I have already been active in their best ball format fantasy drafts, where you draft your team over twenty rounds and the best score from the team you drafted becomes your score for
each week of the MLB season. Drafts are consistently filling each and every day, So go to Underdog Fantasy right now and draft in the dinger for your share of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in prizes, with the first place prize being a cool one hundred k. It's only ten dollars to draft, and the tournament closes on opening day, March twenty eighth, So jump in now. Sign up for Underdog and use the promo code fp MLB to get your first deposit match up to one hundred bucks.
That's ten free dinger drafts. Use that promo code fp MLB and join Underdog today and get drafting for the upcoming MLB season. Now back to the show. Next up on the undervalue players. We're going into the pitching market. We're actually staying in the average rank of the nineties according to Fantasy Pros, and we're looking at Joe Ryan. Actually, everybody's very excited about the other Minnesota pitcher, Im Pablo Lopez.
There's another guy that we're gonna talk about later that I like, we're all like with baited breath, looking for data on Chris Paddock to see what it looks like. But Joe Ryan jumps out as an undervalue guy. Really low walk rate, career, low walk rate into the five's K percentage went way up. The strikeouts were there because
he added the split finger. This is one of those pitchers that his return on value versus his rank ADP really doesn't quite mesh, because this is the type of player you would think would be twenty or thirty spots higher. So talk to us about Joe Ryan.
I think Joe Ryan.
So you mentioned the splitter that was fantastic and a nice compliment to one of the best fastballs in the game. I think Joe Ryan from an actual fifth percentage on the four steamer was like fourth best. He's definitely top five in baseball last year, so he now has that second kind of putaway pitch along with the fastball, and the skills just soared last year. I think Joe Ryan is being undervalued in the market because of the home run problem. And there's two things to a home run
problem for a pitcher. There's the ground ball fly ball, which the pitcher can control, and Joe Ryan does give up a lot of fly balls fifty percent fly ball rate last year. But there's also the home runs per fly ball that is not as sticky year to year, and Joe Ryan just got hammered down the stretch in the second half. Had a twenty one percent homer to fly ball rate league average on that is like twelve percent, and so that's really what drove Joe Ryan's six 'oh
nine eer in the second half. And I just don't think that home run variance is that sticky from year to year.
I think if we get Joe Ryan with the league average homer to.
Fly ball rate, the strikeout and walk skills are just fantastic. And you alluded to Minnesota Welsh. They know what they're doing as an organization, and I think they can they can get Joe Ryan to ascend to an even higher level than he's at right now.
A real oddity is like the fastball got hit up more from a batting average standpoint one seventy four against in twenty twenty two two forty, But the expect bio would point out that's like a huge gap, but the expected batting average against was actually closer year over year. But he gave up nine homers against the forcing fastball
in twenty twenty two, gave up nineteen this past year. So, you know, having a big adjusted pitch change, especially a split finger, which isn't necessarily Nick Polck talked about it on the Pitching Guide episode isn't viewed as like a breakaway, punch away pitch. It's kind of the setup pitched everything that that fastball fastball became a little bit more vulnerable. Be interesting to see if maybe the sweeper kind of takes a tick up or something like that. That's year,
so the fastball doesn't get hit up so much. But the low walk rates make him pretty exciting. And I'm down with this one coming in at number three. This guy has a new team, and this team is quite exciting. He does not cost inside the top one point fifteen as far as ranks go. According to Fantasy Pros. Lookame across the board and his ADP is almost one thirty across all of the sites combined. New Dodgers Taoscar Hernandez is who we're going to be talking about as an
undervalued player. Hit twenty six home runs last year in a not great pitching environment, goes to a much better spot. The bat x actually has him projected as the most homers with twenty eight at least versus ATC I could see him easily going over thirty in that really really strong lineup and good hitting environment. How undervalued is Taoscar When you think about the scope of where he is,
the lineup protection, and really who he was lot. Even in that environment last year, dude still hit twenty six homers.
I know, I know.
It's just absolutely you know, it's a perfect landing spot for Taioscar because he's going to play every day in LA and he's probably hitting behind like a Freddie Freeman, Will Smith guys who it's perfect to hit behind those guys because they don't really hit a ton of home runs. They just get on base consistently, so there's always gonna
be ducks on the pond for Taoscar. He's also going at a point in the draft, at least where I've found so far in kind of feeling out, some of my early drafts feel like around this time of the draft, power starts.
To wane a little bit in the player pool.
And Taoscar is one of one of the last few, Like Anthony Santander's another guy kind of going a little bit later that I like too, But I feel like Taoskcar is one of the last few guys who not only gives you that power but doesn't really have deficiencies elsewhere. A lot of projections have ta Oscar hitting right around two sixty. And again the runs and RBI, those kind of hidden counting stats that are so hoorton and fantasy. Are you know the floor for that in la Is?
I think just just massive, so perfect landing spot, especially compared to Seattle last year.
I mean, and it's still like an above thirteen percent barrel rate. It was top ten percent tele in a league, hard hit percentage, love all of those things. He's still getting the ball in the air. The batting average you expected batting average. If you're somewhere between two fifty and two seventy for Taoscar, you're really in a great spot.
And you know you said something that's really important. I was asked this question just the other day about like, hey, what's your early round prioritization if you were looking for categories, and I said, you know what, my surprise people, it's power, because speed usually is that answer. That's why you say
that batting average might be one of those. It's kind of a pseudo one, but like power, I want power throughout the draft because I feel like we have a bigger gap between supreme power versus like stolen base Obviously, like if you had Ellie and a story Ruiz that might change the whole game on speed, But you can catch up speed every where you're mentioning we get to the top one hundred or outside the top one hundred, there's only so many more real power bats that can
maintain some average, you said, Anthony Santander. I would say, like ta Oscar and Jorge Solaire are like two of my big options. There's a couple corner infielders. We're actually going to talk about one in a second. But chasing power a little bit later is still something you have to pay attention to and do. And outfield gets it wanes out a little bit, like are you in the camp that outfield absolutely gets away from you? Or do you think that narrative is kind of getting overplayed?
So I just drafted the Labor Mixed League Tuesday night, and it's a fifteen team mixed league, and did I had one outfielder in the first twelve rounds.
And man, I was nervous.
I was very nervous when outfielder, outfielder, outfielder rounds thirteen, fourteen to fifteen, because I could kind of see the writing on the wall that this was starting to fade quickly.
So I feel like I got out just in time.
But I think you do need to kind of keep track of where your outfielders are at, because once you start to get into that, like those late teens rounds, it's it starts to get pretty tough. It's a lot of just like older platoon bats, and you kind of don't want that.
Yeah, there's some guys I like, like, I'm into Jared Kellnick this year. I'm into Jared Durant and stuff like that. But again, if you're focusing in on power too, there's only so many. Who was the one outfielder you did get in the beginning.
It was Brian Reynolds's core piece.
I love that. Yeah, my tout I actually started with Corbyn Carroll. But that's my only outfielder so far. But draft and hold, we're like six rounds in or something like that, So shocker that I got Corbyn Carroll. Let's go into the fourth undervalued player and we're serving up burgers. He is Jake Berger. Definitely heard this name a whole lot. We know the hard hit numbers through the roof. He's outside the top one fifty ECR ranks over on Fantasy Pros.
His ADP is even lower. Let's talk about Jake Berger and those obscene hard hit numbers and why he is so undervalued.
That's the main part. Art we all know Jake Berger has power. I think it's I think it's elite power. I think it's elite power, and what we saw from Jake Berger and I try not to go too much, especially for hitters, into like first half second half stats that much, but in Jake Berger's case, with the context of kind of honestly just getting kind of jerked around in the first half of the season with the White Sox, inconsistent playing time, playing different positions, that sort of thing.
Berger finally, once he went to Miami, settled into a role and not only kept the thump, kept the power, but severely cut down on his strikeout right to the point where, like I do think, maybe not as high as like a Taoscar batting average, but I think Jake Berger can hit two fifty. I don't think this is just a power bat who's going to hurt you in batting average. And so for all those reasons, Berger is
a very much target for me. And third base too, just looking at kind of a macro level at that position, you're a couple guys after Jake Berger, you're starting to get in trouble at the hot corner. So Jake Berger is just at the time of the draft and the power batting average foundation that he provides, I think it's a great fit for pretty much any team.
Yeah, I want to second this. Ariol Cohen beat the Shift podcast. They just had me on and we did a draft using Fantasy Pro's Draft Wizard. I had a good team, but I tanked third base. When I say I tanked it, I just at every level I was like, oh, okay, I just missed him. We'll just wait for this guy. Oh, we'll wait, and then all of a sudden we were no longer waiting. I completely tanked it. Jake Berger was one of those targets and I completely messed it up.
But I would remind everybody Fantasy pros check out the Draft Wizard. You can even import your own cheat sheets. You can take my ranks, multiple people's ranks. You can really customize it however you want, and you can experiment, you can play around with it. You also can set priorities in drafts in the Draft Wizard, like third base, you could say I want want to make sure I am taking third base what that mock looks like and the suggestions that gives you. So go and check it
out today. Fantasypros dot com slash Draft Wizard. Download the app, start drafting. Download the app. Like my, uh my best friend Justin Steel who has a Draft Wizard on his phone and he likes the draft a guy, Yeah he does. We we we were just hanging out. As I told the story, people are so sick of me and I apologize. But he found out I worked at Fantasy Pros and he was like, are you serious. He's like, I love Fantasy Pros and I was like, okay, let's give me
some extra credit at my job. And he pulled up the Draft Wizard. He had the Draft Wizard on his phone and we had a great time. So he might have some swag come in his way, but be like Steel.
Moving him up the rings. Now.
I have used I have used the the mock Draft tool and it is awesome, but the experimentation you get to knock out a mock draft very quickly and just play with different different types of bills and that sort of thing. But yeah, to go back to third base. In labor, I was in the same predicament as you well did not take Jake Berger. I was actually a snipe by Mike pod Ors or not that I'm keeping track of how that work. Waited all the way to get Matt Chapman, who does not have a home. I
think will I think I'll get signed. But that was that was like the eighteenth nineteenth round. It's a bad place to be if you wait on third base that long.
That mock I did. I would have killed for Matt Chapman. That's how bad I did. So just you can't go and check it out. I do a really bad job, all right. Number five, Let's go to the next undervalue. This is one of my favorites. I've talked about him a decent amount. Nick Pavetta. Can you believe we're talking about him here, Nick Povett. No, actually particular crazy order outside of kind of the love and some of the
big value. When we're going through these thirteen names, there's a little bit of like think of these as tiers, not like insane numbers. But and the reason I say that is Nick Pavett is ranked outside the top two hundred right now on Consensus ECR. His ADP, though, is higher than the rankers. That's a really interesting fact. And I've mentioned a little bit on the last few pods. One of the reasons I really love Nick Pavetta is from July first on last year, he led baseball in
K percentage. And he also had and I'll say the stat one last time, he had the highest wiff addition from a starting pitcher year over year, if I could even properly say that. So he had the highest whiff addition like five or six percent to overall whiffs from any sp because it's usually filled with RP. So either way, like a big strikeout guy. They got body over there. Why do you like Nick Pavetta?
It is that second half like dominance, but it's it's not just again cherry picking that second half. It was it was back by a pitch mix change, kind of joined the sweeper revolution had that had that change. And yeah, like I mean, my favorite, my favorite stat to look at his strikeout minus walk great from first to second half last year. The second highest jump in strikeout minus walk greate behind Freddie Peralta was Nick Pavetta at twenty nine percent, which is just which is just crazy.
It's an absurd number.
The the haters will say, yeah, but it was mostly out of a relief role. But he's Pavetta still threw over eighty innings in the second half, finished the season in the rotation through five starts actually to end the season, and in those five starts had I've got it right here a two thirty seven ERA, four percent walk grade and a sixteen percent swinging strike so just excellent stuff. We've all been burned by Nick Pavetta at some point in our fantasy lives.
Yet here we are in the year twenty twenty four.
Still hyping this guy. But I do think the changes that we saw from him, and you mentioned like Potty and some of the organization changes, I think he can reinvent himself and pitch very well over a full season in twenty four.
You haven't played Fantasy baseball list. Nick Pavetta is her new season, so you have not, no, So it's all your turn this year because we're hyping them up. We're getting excited about it. We're going to stay on pitchers for a little bit. I alluded to this guy earlier. There are things to like about the twins, and outside of Pablo Lopez, they're actually all kind of undervalued. Like Bailey Ober and probably should have let Bailey Over out of here because he's come into a lot of conversations,
but he has continued. He continuously fits the mold of the pitchers that I like. You talk about K minus walk percentage. His strikeouts aren't insane, but the walk percentage is really low, and he keeps it over a twenty K minus walk percentage, which you really really love. Bailey Over doesn't have a big power fastball, but has a kind of absurd wifth percentage. You don't see like twenty five plus wifth percentages on fastballs a whole bunch when you go and take a look, and it was twenty
seven point seven. And all of his main three big pitches that are over ten percent had a twenty seven or higher percent wifth percentage. So it's a pretty eaven distribution. With good control, ERA is going to be there. There's good run support. Bailey Ober undervalued to what.
Degree, to a pretty good degree. Like honestly, I Baileyover. He's a flyball pitcher, kind of like Joe Ryan. But what that does for Bailey Ob is it kind of locks in, especially with such a small walk rate, it locks in a really good whip, and I don't think, at least in you know, in road leagues, we don't talk about whip enough, and Bailey Ober has all the
tools to be able to do that. The biggest thing for me with Bailey Ober is the number one hundred and sixty nine, one hundred and sixty nine innings from Ober last year, Like he would never very nice. He had never had a professional season with over one hundred
and ten innings in a single season before. So to see Bailey ob jump from you know, one hundred eight innings in twenty twenty one fifty six and twenty two to one sixty nine last year across the miners and majors, like that's kind of the last box I was waiting for him to check, was that durability. So I think he can think he can stick all year man.
Yeah, and you know the projections got I've only got him around like one forty something, So I think we can press. I think we can press our innings this year.
And I think yeah, And I think he's locked into Minnesota's rotation.
I don't see I mean.
Unless there's another like bad fit with with the with with gopher ititis, with home run ball. I can't see Ober being out of that rotation. He's kind of gone in and out a little bit the last few years. But I think that role is pretty safe.
All right, coming in at number seven, we are going to my Arizona Diamondbacks, I know, not World Series champs, just to.
The World Series. Just the cameras cropped perfectly. It just says World Series. Can we can forget what has to pretend? Yeah?
Boy can we? We can sure forget, But we won't forget in our drafts Merrill Kelly. Because Meryl that ADP every year. I mean, maybe it's a little bit higher and maybe it gives people it's a little bit more squeamish to people because he is boring. But ECR has got him at around one forty eight. His ADP is actually higher, so he's going higher in drafts, but that
variance doesn't push him inside the top one hundred. But when you think about his ability to absolutely eat innings in a landscape where pitchers do not eat innings with a great defense and a great offense behind him, Marril Kelly has been and as solid as all. He's just boring. He's just a boring picture for a lot of people. But what I do think that does is it makes him undervalue to not only what he gives you, but what he provides your whole team context when you take
some risk. I'm gonna take Cole Reagan's early on. But you know what I love. I love some of these boring pictures that can help just give me a baseline a little bit later when I'm taking some of those risks.
And you need you need a Merrill Kelly or too in your in your in your fantasy rotation.
Anyone who play has played the last couple of years.
If you look at the waiver wire for starting pitchers, it is it is so barren. Yes, you can go with some of the guys where you know, we just talked about ober Cole Reagan's where like they you know that they're not quite the horse that that Merril Kelly is, But you're ope. If you get too much of those guys, you're opening up some risks that you need to at
some point replace someone in your rotation. And that replacement value, replacement level value is is really bad for starting pictures, and it just gets worse in the deeper leagues that you play. So I actually think too, Like, yes, Meryl Kelly does get the boring label. We saw a nice uptick in the k rate and swinging strike rate. When I see both of those go up at the same time in the same season, I get excited. Yes, Meryl Kelly's thirty five years old, so like, is there truly
another level? I don't know, but I think you've got a pretty good foundation with perhaps the ability to even get a few more strikeouts and maybe ascended that two hundred strikeout plateau he had one eighty seven last year.
He almost got there.
You know what I found out too, I didn't know until this year. He went to my high school and now now the high school. Yeah. Of course the famous people at our high school, Mark Andrews, Merril Kelly, and.
Of course the Welsh. So those are your three that are out knew. I knew the Mark Andrews, I did not know, did not know Meryl. Yeah, And sadly I'm older than all of them, so was he? Yuh was hey you guys cross paths or old man is old man Kelly younger than you?
Old Man Welsh was out of that high school when Merrill was popping in. So that's the that's the sadness. Let's go to number eight. This was a bloomer hand picked thyroi Strada. Gotta love stolen bases that you can get later in drafts and multiple qualifications. So talk to us about how and why thyro Strata is undervalued.
Kind of have been in love with Thyrostrata ever since I wrote I wrote his player box in.
The Baseball Forecaster. What Baseball HQ puts.
Out every fall and we pump it out and get it out and by Thanksgiving.
But I wrote Estrada's box back in October, and I just there it is there.
It is a little little plug.
There you go, my boys, I gotta take my gnome down, but beneath my gnome is senior Acunye.
Yeah, sorry, completely completely broke the podcast, but I wanted to give you guys a plug. You guys sent me one, so.
Put it out there. Excellent.
So, yes, I I had mister Estrada's box in that book, and I'm just I think the batting I would hit two seventy one last year.
I think he can totally repeat that.
I think the stolen bases and talking with Bubba, who's very much plugged into San Francisco. Bubba's confident that Estrada is going to get that green light. Had a, you know, almost an eighty percent success rate on the bases last year, and that helps. So I think there's thirty stolen base potential with the strata. And I'm more bullish on the power most of all than I think everyone else. I think a lot of the projections have a strata like
in the low teens for home runs. I think he can get into the high teens maybe best case pop twenty home runs. And if that's the case, I'm not calling for that. I think it's probably more fifteen sixteen. But I think this is a five category guy eligible at two positions that's gonna play every day in San Francisco. The big thing too, with the strata, like we kind of had a little bit of a fade in the second half, but he broke his hand in June or in July, and I think that I think that affected
things for Estrata in the second half. So I'm much more willing to believe the early breakout path that we saw from Estrata in the first half last year.
ADP One, p. Fifty two. For Estrata, you don't usually see guys get higher projections stolen bases when they've played over one hundred games. Now it's simple because they're projecting more games, so his stolen base numbers are higher. But even still you don't see that. Sometimes you'll see a guy that plays one hundred games, their projections will then put him at one hundred and forty and then the stolen bases are about the same. These are actually higher.
If he were to go twenty twenty, you are easily breaking inside the top one hundred, and this would be one of the bigger, bigger, most undervalued players with all the other position eligibility. So that is a very fun one coming in at number nine. I'm excited to hear your take on this one. Cedric Mullins stolen bases again, Cedric Mullins was underwhelming, hitting two thirty three last year.
Fifteen homers was a three year low, the nineteen stolen bases were a three pretty much three year lows across the board with strikeouts coming up, but projections they throw it all out the window because you do have a three year a three year window that it's working off of, so they really see last year as more of the outlier, his cost is cheap, and is it that outlier season that makes him such a good value right now?
That's what I'm banking on, I think Cedric Mullens. So we do have that two year track record of over thirteen hundred played appearances from twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two where Cedric Mullins was just an absolute monster for fantasy this time.
Last year, Mullins I believe was like a third round pick. I think, yes.
One of my kind of things is we and I'm guilty of it all the time focus on just last season so much we tend to forget what this track record was for a player who is still not even thirty. This is Cedric Mullins is age twenty nine season, so I think he's young enough to turn things around. I wonder there was a similar to like the broken hand with the strata that I just mentioned. Love to go in and look at injuries and kind of see the
before and after. Cedric Mullins had a pretty bad groin strain in the middle of this season, and again those second half numbers just absolutely tank. So this is a guy who, quite honestly, in five of the last six half seasons, if that makes sense, has been really good. It's just his last half season was awful.
And there is some platoon risk.
I'll give you that, like he didn't play against lefties down the stretch last year for Baltimore. But I think he'll stay even if he hits lower in the order against South Pause. I think Cedric Mullins is young enough to turn this around and get back to the player he was. Maybe not in twenty twenty one when he went thirty thirty. I'm not going to sit here and say that, but a lot closer to the twenty twenty two version that hit sixteen homers, thirty four steals and hit two fifty eight.
Pretty electric lineup that could potentially be as well, and that the veteran hitting near the tippy top of it free. Cedric Mullens is also one of those players. Why when I look and I'm like, hey, I can get stolen bases a little bit later Tyrostrada Cedric Mullins won thirties ADP four in rank for Mullins, one fifties for Estrata. You can find those stolen bases a little bit later. You don't find all of those those big power numbers.
All right, we're coming into the last couple. We've actually got two, and then we're gonna do a final undervalued battle between these guys. But I want to remind you guys to make sure that you guys have subscribed to the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash Fantasy Pros because we've got Fantasy Fest coming up. They didn't even ask me or tell me to do a promotion for this, but this is going to be coming up here very
very soon. We are gonna have an amazing, amazing set of stuff going on, so make sure you are locked in to the podcast feed. You can follow it wherever you listen to podcasts, where I think we usually have kind of like a best of version of it, and we are gonna have hours and hours of awesome content content coming up here in mid March for Fantasy Fest.
I have the date. I'm not really sure if I should say it because we're still finalizing it, but put it on your radar and make sure you're following the YouTube channel Fantasypros dot com slash YouTube because if you do and we get hordes of them, Joe and I will be forced to wear wigs and mustaches for the opening day of leading off. That's what we've that's what we've yessed. A good, good old mustache. I was thinking maybe like like a long one, like I'll do like
a handlebar. How about like that, like that, like a good handlebar one.
I like that.
I you can you can always do the the Valentine disguise as well.
You can do with the mustache. Remember when you got thrown out.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yea, yeah yeah, put in the disguise and the dugout.
This was I didn't even think about doing like we could just wear the glasses. That would be good. So we'll make sure you guys do that, so we'll have some fun with it. All right. Here are the last couple ones. Here. The last one is gonna be a battle of versus. But let's stop over to actually the camp that I was just over at the Brewers with Willia Damas. Now, Willia Damas was one of those kind of premier power shortstops, one of the guys that everybody
wanted to target. He was why you could skip out on shortstop early on in draft. If I could get myself a Willia Damas well, the battang average just started to sink two seventeen after a two thirty eight year. Except here is the addit. He is projected for a higher batting average of this year on every single projection system than he has hit over the last two seasons. So XBA is higher, expected slug is higher, every expected
number is higher for Willia Damas. So talk to me, mister Ran Bloomfield, about Willia Damas and can he be a massively undervalued draft target this year?
Yeah? I mean taking the longer view with the Damas. He was a consistent two fifty two to sixty hitter with Tampa earlier, earlier in his career, And so I actually buy the at HQ and the forecaster we have a damis projected for two forty five, which is higher than two thirty eight and two seventeen his last two seasons. As well, the babbitt was insanely low last season. This
is not a two seventeen hitter. A. Damas also had a concussion in May, I believe, and I it seemed like that linger June was by far Willia Damas's first month started to turn things around after that hit two thirty who kind of started to come back up in the second half. The biggest thing for me, it's just the power. If you need a power hitting shortstop. At this point in the draft, I think Adamis is fine.
He's gonna play every day in a decent lineup. So so I mean I like Estrata more, but where Adamas is going it makes sense. And then again different types of players if you need batting averager speed.
Actually also maybe two compliments with the strata's ability for multiposition eligibility, you can throw a Damis in a middle infield. He is ranking one seventy one. I also want to point out in all those projections he is just at the thirty home run marker. It's somewhere between twenty six
and twenty eight home runs. You get one little bit of a pop and a bus back, you might have thirty plus home runs with that two to fifty batting average for a Damas, and he might be a trade candidate to go to an amazingly incredible destination that makes his fantasy output even more exciting. Let's not say that that's not a possibility. As I saw self Frielick actually working at shortstop in the outfield here the other day, So I would not throw that under the bus quite
yet for him. All right, this is the last one before our battle, and we're going to talk about Jamer Candelario, who goes to the Reds. This is going to be pseudo number eleven because twelve and thirteen are going to be a battle. Hit twenty two home runs last year with a two fifty one batting average, now goes to the world's greatest ballpark factor you could possibly have, and is going to play all day. Yet his value really
has not. Let me look at it here. One ninety seven is his average, his expert consensus rank with an EIGHTYP on all the major sites take away our ranks outside the top two hundred. So is Candelario one of the better corner infield targets you could have. And we talked about missing out on third base. That might work out for you. So talk to me about Jamer Candelario.
Exactly one of those few kind of semi shining stars at third base in an otherwise vast array of blackness. So Candelario is I like him. Hark factor is fantastic. The question is the playing time That we know there are approximately thirty five infielders in Cincinnati buying for playing time, but I think it's pretty safe.
I think it's pretty safe for Candelarios.
So I said it was they told that.
They said, like, he's playing every day, like you can't, and like I believe that more than oh, we don't know he's going to play every day because maybe you're just trying to incite some competition.
It is.
I trust a team when they I trust a team a little bit more.
I never fully trust a team, but I trust him a little bit more when they say they come out and say he's going to play every day. I think you do need to take that at face value. So for all those reasons, Candelario like it doesn't have the highest ceiling in the world, But if you can get a third basement that hits two fifty twenty twenty five home runs in that park in a really good lineup, again, I think it works very well.
Qualifying it first and third is going to be a big key to for where you can move him around for any deficiencies. Maybe you take on a little bit a risk at third or first base, a little bit of injury risk out there. Having that guy with a ballpark factor that can go twenty five plus. In all
of this other thing aside. Think of how exciting and kind of amazing that lineup could be if all the things work out with Spencer Steer and Elie da Lacruz and if everybody's going that could be like this year's Diamondbacks as far as how they're running and how you know, aggressive they are offensively, and he could be at the forefront of it. He really could be kind of like the Lords Guriel breakout Lord has kind of broke back out post post post post h sleeper type of guy
from last year. Jamer could be one of those as well. All Right, so this last one, this is a pitcher duel for undervaluedness, and they're very different because I think perception is different. One was kind of a reliever going into starter and one we really don't know anything about, so how can they be undervalued? We are pitting Shota Amonica versus Christopher Sanchez.
Up.
What a weird collection of names. I know you're saying that, but Christopher Sanchez is a very popular sleeper in a lot of lands, so much so mister Ryan Bloomfield gave me him as one of the names he wanted to talk about. I threw on show to Amonica because everybody can't stop talking about if Justin Steele couldn't stop talking, Nick Pollock had him in the thirty fives. A Monica might be a monster. But people don't know what they're in for. So here's the question, what you know versus
what you don't know? And what we do know is both of these guys are outside the top two hundred. So who is more undervalued, Christopher Sanchez or Choto Amonica.
Yes, I pleaded incessantly that we add Christopher Sanchez on the on the rundown here. He is my pitcher that I'm trying to get in every single draft outside the top two hundred. I will admit that the track record, the minor league numbers with Christopher Sanchez were not that great.
The schedule down the stretch was pretty soft.
But this change up that he refined and threw more as throughout the season went on, Christopher Sanchez. It was one of the best pitches in baseball in terms of ground balls and whiffs, and that's what you want a change up to do. You want to get that on the ground and you want it to miss bats. The walk rate was fantastic. I use ball percentage to kind of validate a walk rate and Christopher Sanchez through strikes consistently.
Anytime you have someone with like a four to five percent walk rate with the ground ball rate that's in the upper fifties, it's just it just does so much for you in terms of run prevention. And yes, like the strikeout upside may not quite be there, but if that change up continues to kind of do what we saw in the second half, I think Christopher Sanchez is an absolute breakout this year. Like I said, having him on every single one of his one of my teams.
No shade to Amonaga, but I'm going Sanchez.
Man, okay, so clearly over so Chris Sanchez wins that battle. But show too, Monica is still a potential big underva because he has not jumped in value. He is too. Let me like I just had it up here. He was two oh eight on the consensus rank and or no, I'm sorry that was his ADP was two o eight. He was around two twenty. Chris Sanchez has an ECR of two sixty, but is two eighty three, So that
is a difference. There's almost eighty spot difference in eighty P versus these two guys, it's just will Sanchez's innings and strikeouts go to a level if Amnaica works out where I think in some people's minds the Monica might be way closer than Yoshinobu Yamamoto than anybody actually really expects and could be one of the front runners in that cub's rotation. But Christopher Sanchez is a free square.
That's kind of the big one, right, Yeah, and then the thing all out about Amanica too. Yeah, Go go compare Yamamoto and Amonica's numbers last year and then compare their ADP this year. I think I think you'll be surprised. I think that's yeah. I think that's the big thing with.
So Minic got and you got a great splitter to go with the you know, the number one stuff. Plus in the WBC. You can say all of that, God can't. If you can say it, you're hired. I cannot. Those are the thirteen undervalued players that you guys need to target, according to myself and Ryan Bloomfield. You can find Bloomer, my boy Bloomer over at Baseball HQ. I'd also follow
him on Twitter at Ryan BHQ. You can check out all the great bloom boards, and of course you've got Bubba in the bloom anything else that everyone needs to know.
About, that's pretty much it. Man.
Check out Yeah, check out our podcast after of course listening to Fantasy Pros every day, but check us out Monday or Wednesday and Friday new episodes.
Perfect and like I said, follow him on Twitter, Ryan Bhq. You'll get all the updates and everything that's going on Bloomer. Thank you so much for taking the time. He's one of the best in the industry. So make sure that you are supporting and following because it's going to make you a better fantasy player, just like the tools over here at Fantasy Pros are going to do as well. Check out the draft kit. I got a bunch of articles. Mike Mayer, by the way, you finished top five in
Baseball accuracy ranks this year. He's got all his stuff in there. Check out all the great so we got articles going. We got some premium content as well. My Draft Day targets article is officially out. If you want to see the player at every position that I must have, you can go and check that out. So go over to Fantasypros dot com peruse all the great stuff, sign up for premium, get in the discord, hang out with us, and have so much fun. Thank you guys all for
hanging out with me and Bloomer. You can find me on Twitter at is at the Welsh and we will talk to you next time right here on Fantasy Pros, my friends,