Here’s how this JJ Bleday sleeper came into being: I saw he made good contact, then I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to not write this post. Sadly, at each thing I looked at, I still liked him. Why did I not want to write about JJ Bleday? Well, it’s a little complicated. “A’s are moving to SacTown but can they sack up?” asked my Inner Monologue. Well, I’m more of a DM guy, but if I’m gonna answer an IM, I like the idea of the A’s, in general. A lot. I hate that they left Oaktown, because of what it meant for their fans, but that ship ran ashore on the coast of We-Can’t-Do-Nothing-About-It-Now-istan. I don’t hate that they’re playing in SacTown. Any park will be better than the Coliseum in Oakland for offense-slash-fantasy hitters. It ranked 26th for offense, 29th for homers, and 25th for hits on the 3-year rolling average. It ranked 31st for homers last year and there’s only 30 teams. I’m not kidding; they ranked Rickwood Field in there, where they played the special Cards/Giants game. Honestly, just surprised the Coliseum didn’t rank below London Stadium and other commemorative stadiums. (There were 35 parks in total last year; Giants’ Oracle Park was actually worse than Oakland for your standard team parks.) Long story short, SacTown can’t be worse than Oaktown. Sutter Health Park, where the A’s will play, dimensions are 330 ft. down the left field line, 403 to straightaway, and 325 to right. It’s basically the same as the Coliseum (five feet in right shorter for SacTown). They’re the A’s now, no more Oakland, and the loss of the stupid foul territory in Oakland alone will help. I’m going with: It’s basically a push, but better BABIPs because of less foul territory, until I see it play differently. Everyone I talked to said it’s basically samesies. This is getting long, let’s segue out to next paragraph: So, what can we expect from JJ Bleday fro 2025 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
PSYCHE! My 2025 fantasy baseball rankings are all on Patreon. Don’t wait for the rankings to come out next month. Anyway II, the JJ Bleday sleeper:
Back to what I was saying in the intro, I didn’t want to write a JJ Bleday sleeper because it feels weird to like so many of their hitters. I like the A’s less about SacTown and more because their lineup looks great: Lawrence Butler, Brent Rooker, JJ Bleday. Dot dot dot. I nearly wrote a sleeper about Tyler Soderstrom, I think Langeliers is interesting and I wrote a Seth Brown sleeper a few years ago. That was dead-wrong, but he still has some surprisingly decent attributes. In all? It’s solid. A’s hitting is not their issue; their starters are. So, I thought, “How can this many A’s hitters be good? I like five of them and JJ Bleday? That just feels wrong.” That was my IM. (Again, Inner Monologue, unless you’re still on AOL.) It’s wrong to think about it like that. They can be good. Nothing says they can’t, except previous unrelated players. Unless Bleday married Jed Lowrie’s sister and they are related. Is one of the J’s for Jed?
Last year, JJ Bleday went 74/20/60/.243/2 in 572 ABs. He did it with a 10.4 BB% and 19.5 K%. Those numbers alone don’t add up, entirely. If you have a great walk rate, a solid K rate and hit .243, well, why? In his case, it’s because of a 47.8 FB%. He also had a .279 BABIP. That’s not extremely low for him, but, as mentioned above, A’s will have a park with a likely better BABIP. In 2023, he had a 42.9 FB%, but a higher K%. If he can get back to a little bit of a flatter swing and continue to mature as a hitter — he just turned 27 in November — it’s easy to see how JJ Bleday is the answer for: Who is this year’s Brent Rooker? Bleday has great power and plate discipline and can even chip in a handful of steals. The only thing he needs to do to tap into his potential is simply split the difference on his 2023 swing and 2024. He is one of the easiest sleepers to see once you’ve stopped being blinded by your hatred of A’s hitters. Oh, it also doesn’t hurt that he’s also barely being drafted in the top 250 overall. For 2025, I’ll give JJ Bleday projections of 76/27/82/.252/5 in 551 ABs with a chance for more.
