For some of us, the end of the fantasy baseball season was welcomed with a warm embrace. The fatigue of setting lineups, identifying waiver wire pickups, and making daily -- if not hourly -- decisions about your team can spoil what most of us consider a hobby. The end of the fantasy baseball season allows us to pivot entirely over to fantasy football, mostly so that we can retain any semblance of bragging rights we have among our friends and family.
However, for others, we use this time to understand and dissect what proved to be a very interesting fantasy baseball season. If you won a championship, this is the time you should seek to understand how you developed that team, what key decisions you made along the way, and maybe which lucky breaks fell your way. If you lost, you should be doing the same exact thing -- break down where the failures occurred. Was it just a bad draft? Which rankings did you use to get there? Was it several injuries that weighed down your team? Or was it waiver wire wonders that seemed to flame out as soon as you picked them up? These are the things we should be thinking about -- right now, while it is still fresh -- so that come next March, we will be ready to attack the next season.
For the next few weeks, I will be writing a few articles about the past season in an attempt to glean and identify any tips, tricks, or key players that might help us going into next season. We will start off with an easy one -- identifying some of the key players that pushed teams to championships, but players that would largely be unknown commodities to the droves of fantasy players that switched to fantasy football a little too early. In this edition, I will call them my late-season darlings that become late-round sleepers.
Darling and sleeper #1: Jake McCarthy
Most fantasy players were anticipating Corbin Carroll's call-up and rightfully, they should have. In a re-draft context, adding a player like Carroll could carry you to your playoffs. A player with a strong hit tool, speed, and pop is the kind of late-season addition you would want to make. However, while some of us were drooling over the prospect of Corbin Carroll and his tantalizing skillset, we missed the player that actually performed the best -- Jake McCarthy.
McCarthy has some pedigree, but was clearly -- and I mean clearly -- overshadowed by his peer group. Over the course of 99 games, McCarthy hit 8 home runs and had 23 stolen bases. He was exactly the type of player we were expecting out of Carroll, but was overlooked just because he did not carry the same name brand. McCarthy looks to be especially helpful in a roto context because of his ability to contribute in multiple categories. The only question at this point will be the type of spring training buzz he gets -- will he get the attention he deserves or will he, again, be overshadowed by Corbin Carroll. I am banking on the latter, which is why I have him as one of my top targets in the later rounds of next year's draft.
Darling and sleeper #2: Oscar Gonzalez
To the credit of the Cleveland Guardians, their farm system is absolutely loaded. Just to name a few, they have Daniel Espino, George Valera, Gavin Williams, Brayan Rocchio, and Bo Naylor on the precipice of making the big league squad. Those are all top 100 prospects and according to most of the dynasty nerds, really good ones.
And much like Jake McCarthy, Oscar Gonzalez is one of those under-the-radar players that didn't carry the same name brand or expectations as his peer group, but wound up exceeding expectations by a healthy margin. In my mind, Gonzalez is boosted by two key metrics: 91st percentile max exit velocity and 93rd percentile in expected batting average. Those two things don't always go together, but when they do, you're talking about legitimately good hitter that can carry you for a full season. However, only the fantasy players that picked up Gonzalez were really paying attention to just how good he was over the course of the season. The only thing to keep an eye on is playing time in Cleveland; is what he did enough to enshrine his spot in the lineup or will he get bumped because of higher-ceiling prospects?
Darling and sleeper #3: Taylor Ward
This one is cheating... kind of. Taylor Ward exploded onto the scene earlier in the season. I personally lost out on Ward because I was too stubborn to move off of Jo Adell and his too-hard-too-ignore pre-season hype. Over the course of nearly 500 at bats, Ward hit 23 home runs and a .281 batting average. Not bad, right? Well, the thing is, he was scorching hot to end the year, finishing with a .345 average, 6 home runs, and 2 stolen bases over the course of the last 30 games. Ward is, for all intents and purposes, the player we hoped and expected Jo Adell to be and I think, for most of us, we were just too stuck on Adell to pivot over to a relative unknown in Ward. Unlike the two players mentioned above, I think Ward has staying power and a secured spot in the lineup. Ward hit .299 over the course of 490 games in the minor leagues along with a .867 OPS. He can hit and this time around, no matter how much attention Jo Adell is getting, I think I would easily go with Ward over the helium balloon that is Jo Adell.
Darling and sleeper #4: Vinnie Pasquantino
Vinnie most likely didn't push your team into the finals, but he also didn't kill it, either. Vinnie was as solid and steady as ever for the last stretch of the season and it is that attribute -- consistency -- that I value the most from him. Vinnie did not make a splash with respect to counting statistics, but over the course of his last 30 games, Vinnie hit .343 with a .435 OBP. What matters the most is his walk to strikeout ratio: 17 walks to 9 strikeouts. If that doesn't scream off the page to you, nothing will. Vinnie is an on-base machine and has the pop to contribute to your counting stats, as well. There may be a certain degree of "fatigue" that comes with Vinnie -- only because of the up-and-down nature of his first season of major league action. However, don't let the fact that other analysts are sleeping on him deter you. The plate discipline is the thing that should solidify his status in your rankings: go get him.
Darling and sleeper #5: Blake Snell
It's hard to call Blake Snell a darling or a sleeper, but I most likely think that's what he will be going into next season. To a greater degree than Pasquantino, I think fantasy analysts will downgrade Blake Snell because of his volatile nature. Maybe that treatment is warranted, but if it is, I will happily scoop him up later in next year's draft. Over the course of Blake Snell's last 7 games, he threw for a 1.76 ERA and a 0.93 WHIP. Can Snell give you this kind of performance over the course of the season? No, probably not. I wouldn't advocate for banking on an outlier season from Snell, but Snell is one of those kinds of players you must own for an entire season to reap the benefits. He may burn you here and there, but when you look at the stats of the entire season, they are remarkably strong. If you're like me and thinking about waiting on hitting next year, Snell fits the bill of one of those late-round pitchers that can complete your team. There are two other things worth mentioning about Snell. The first is his remarkable consistency: he struck out 170 and 171 innings, respectively, over the course of 128 innings in each of the 2021 and 2022 seasons. But beyond those marvelous numbers, Snell lowered his walks from 69 to 51. The bottom line is that Snell did a lot better than he's getting credit for and that's exactly the kind of player you want to target going into next season.