In all likelihood, Bud Selig won’t be hosting your fantasy baseball draft this year—but that doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal. You probably wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t in it to win it, and while it’s tough to win a league if your top picks don’t deliver, the best way to truly separate yourself from your fantasy league opponents is by nabbing some late-round value picks.
The key to uncovering late-round draft day steals is to get a sense of what types of players tend to be undervalued in the fantasy marketplace.
As I’ve detailed elsewhere, in reasonably shallow leagues sometimes it is the injury-prone player who can dramatically outproduce his draft slot while healthy. Sometimes it is the former superstar many managers wrongly assume is now washed up. Sometimes it is the famed “post-hype sleeper,” a relatively young player who did not initially live up to the hype but still possesses the talent that made them a touted prospect in the first place. Sometimes it’s a player whose consistent production year after year is routinely under-appreciated, perhaps because the player isn’t “flashy” enough.
For our purposes, “late-round” steals will only include players who are going in the 15th round or later (pick 169 onward) in 12-team standard leagues, according to either Mock Draft Central or Yahoo average draft position data.
On to the list we go.