Who knows how to get pageviews better than me? I mean, when people see the title Vernon Wells, 2012 Fantasy Sleeper they are bound to click on that. Am I right, or am I right-right?! Shoot, I imagine a lot of people will link to this article and before I know it I’ll have a castle made of all the pennies I earn from people reading this article then people will tour my penny castle in a bus and point out the room where I went mad waiting for Vernon Wells to actually hit. The irony! (If that’s irony, I don’t know. Only British people know what irony is.) Neverthehullabooloo, guys and three girl readers, Vernon Wells really wasn’t bad last year. He was terrible! See what I did there? Clever with a capital K. He hit 25 homers but batted .218 and he just turned 33 years old. Nice sleeper, Grey, did you not want to write about Edgar Renteria? Oh, Random Italicized Voice, you are the ball buster, aren’t you? Yup, that’s my job. And not understanding rhetorical questions. Touché! So what can we expect of Vernon Wells for 2012 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
Vernon Wells led the league last year in being unlucky. If he fell out of boat, he would’ve missed the water and hit the jetty. He hit a whammy every time he pressed his luck. His BABIP of .214 would have actually led the major leagues six of the past seven years in unluckiness (this wasn’t selective sampling either; it may have have been 9 out of the past ten years, but I grew bored while researching — Razzball: Where we do just enough research to make our point!). Basically, every time he made contact, the ball would ricochet off the 1st base bag and end up being an out. Wells’s walk rate went in the dumper last year, but, when you have really bad luck, you try to make things happen and then the downward spiral happens. The addition of Pujols will help the Suburb of Los Angeles Angels’ lineup and Abreu will be hurt for playing time, Wells should be fine. Speaking of fine (hey, clunky segue!), last year Wells had 25 homers and 9 steals. I think he can repeat those numbers and get his average up to respectable. Say 75/25/85/.260/8 which is a solid 4th to 5th outfielder in mixed leagues and a great sleeper for AL-Only leagues considering no one (and I really mean no one) will be excited about drafting him.
