2017 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Jerad Eickhoff and Jason Heyward are new additions to Sleepers 2.0

If his new Breakouts were mostly static, his Sleepers 2.0 feature all kinds of change. Heath Cummings details all the turnover.

The debate over what a sleeper is or is not rages all spring both in our office and throughout the industry.

Is this a player no one has heard of? Is it simply a player who is being underdrafted? Underappreciated? It’s a little bit of all of these to me, which explains why I had to remove so many names from the first version of this column. 

It’s hard to call Anthony Rendon and Odubel Herrera sleepers when their ADP keeps creeping up to a more respectable place. Kelvin Herrera seems to be getting his due as the new closer of the Royals as well, so he’s gone. Yasmany Tomas and Collin McHugh were removed simply because their injuries have scared me away from thinking they’re great values. 

Here’s the list of players I’m sticking with from version one, along with a round you can draft them in and feel confident that they won’t be gone.  

• Travis Shaw, 23rd Round
  
• Robbie Ray, 15th Round
  
• Yangervis Solarte, 17th Round
  
• Cameron Rupp, 19th Round
  
• Josh Reddick, 23rd Round
  
• Lance Lynn, 18th Round
  

Yangervis Solarte and Lance Lynn stick out to me as exceptional from this list. They both have a history of being solid contributors, and on some sites they aren’t even being drafted regularly. I try not to put too many big names in this article because it kind of defeats the purpose, but ADP forced me to add at least one more. 

Jason Heyward was atrocious last year. Absolutely abysmal. But he’s being drafted (or not drafted) as if that is some sort of new reality. He’s 27 years old. In the three years before 2013-2015 he had a .274 average, .768 OPS, and averaged 13 HR and 15 SB. So what changed last year?

The first thing that stands out is he generated more soft contact (27 percent) than hard contact (26.4 percent). That’s terrible, but not exactly a huge career outlier. From 2013-15 he never had a soft contact rate below 22 percent or a hard contact rate about 29 percent. In fact, nothing stands out enough to justify his 4.8 percent HR/FB rate and his .230 BABIP. 

Just a simple correction of HR/FB rate and BABIP to career norms would have made Heyward a .260 hitter with 16 home runs. Maybe the slight difference in his batted ball profile made those numbers unlikely, but he is absolutely due for some regression even if you don’t assume his underlying skills will bounce back in 2016.

If Heyward does bounce all the way back, you’ve landed a No. 3 outfielder for the price of a end-of-bench piece. People are focusing too much on last season’s blunders and sleeping on the likelihood of a bounceback.

Jerad Eickhoff is being drafted in Round 20. Aaron Sanchez is being drafted in Round 10. But there’s a pretty strong consensus that Eickhoff was actually better last year. 

Who was better in 2016?
A) 197 IP 1.92 BB/9 7.62 K/9 41% GB% 4.05 SIERA
B) 192 IP 2.95 BB/9 7.55 K/9 54% GB% 4.01 SIERA

— Heath Cummings (@heathcummingssr) March 22, 2017

Yes, that poll may be slightly misleading, but it isn’t that far off. Eickhoff had a home run problem last year that was new, but that’s bound to happen occasionally when you get as many fly balls as he does. 

He’s a 26-year-old pitcher with elite control and near-average strikeout numbers. He profiles as a low-BABIP pitcher who just needs to keep the ball in the park. If his changeup or curveball take a step forward this year, he could be a borderline top 25 starting pitcher. 

Welington Castillo isn’t exactly the most exciting option at catcher, but you’re getting a guy with proven pop in a very good lineup and an excellent park. He has hit 33 home runs over the past two seasons at a pace that would translate to roughly 20 long balls in 500 PA. There’s hope that he’ll get a few more PA in Baltimore with the option to DH occasionally on his off day. 

While Castillo was in a good park last year, Camden Yards is tied for the seventh-best park for right-handed power hitters. He’s being drafted as the 13th catcher off the board so you can wait until very late before snatching him up. if you wait too long, the aforementioned Cameron Rupp should still be there.

I was conflicted for most of the offseason in where to rank Ian Kennedy. On one hand he pitches in a ballpark that is perfectly suited for him, he has a good defense behind him and he’s an innings eater on a team that should win plenty of games.

On the other hand both his strand rate and BABIP allowed were unsustainable in 2016 and there’s a chance Jorge Soler makes the Royals’ outfield defense much worse. Then I saw where Kennedy was being drafted and most of those concerns went away. 

Kennedy’s industry ADP is the end of the 22nd round. In CBS drafts it’s only slightly better (late 20th round). That’s way too low for a pitcher with his track record of eating innings and the space of Kauffman Stadium. 

Cesar Hernandez is coming off what looks like an unsustainably good 2016 at first glance. His .294 average was aided greatly by a .363 BABIP. Then again, he has a .352 BABIP through 1,330 career PA. His .371 OBP was buoyed by an elite walk rate in the second half that doesn’t seem sustainable. But he’s now at a .350 OBP for his career.

Mostly Hernandez is an overlooked source of average and speed late in the draft. He still has room to grow in the base running department and could score a lot of runs if he hits at the top of the order and Maikel Franco makes the improvement we think he will. Hernandez is going 10+ rounds later than guys like Javier Baez, Dansby Swanson and Jose Peraza but I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he was in the same class as all of them. 

Domingo Santana hasn’t quite hit his groove yet, or been able to stay healthy, but he’s just 24 years old and there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic. His 38 percent hard contact rate from 2016 is a good place to start. In Miller Park, with his ability to make hard contact, Santana just needs to make contact a little bit more often and stay healthy to be a huge discount on draft day.