Josh Rutledge steps forward. A hush falls over the crowd. Delino DeShields stops obnoxiously sucking on his soda straw when he realizes the crowd has silenced. Rutledge continues, “At one time or another, we’ve all been sleepers. Some of us never reached our potential. Others have, but are still forgotten.” Rutledge taps his chest with his fist and motions towards Brad Miller. “While most of us have seen our best days pass us by without making good on being sleepers, one of us still has one year left to be a post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-hype sleeper.” One man stands from the crowd, but Rutledge quickly gets annoyed, “Not you, Brett Lawrie.” Lawrie shrugs and sits back down. “No, I’m talking about you.” Rutledge points into the crowd, realizing he’s not pointing at the right person, he asks, “Adam Eaton, could you move right or left?” Finally, we see Rutledge is pointing at Leonys Martin. He’s surprised to be singled out. Martin tentatively stands, “Me?” The preceding took place in The Tomb of the Forgotten Sleeper. We’ve been here before with Martin, and this, I promise, will be our last time. A’la Q-Tip, “All you bad sleepers, you must go…” So, what can we expect from Leonys Martin for 2017 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
Why he’s a sleeper is easy, no one’s drafting him, at least not in the first 250 players off the board. In Leonys’s word cloud, ‘board’ appears, but it’s spelled ‘bored.’ I get it, he’s not the most exciting upsidey player. He will play thanks to his glove, and I’ll admit that part of this sleeper post is contingent on him hitting 2nd, where he should hit. Only real threat to hit leadoff is Jean Segura, then The Lisper’s Nightmare is in the two hole and that’s thilly. Worst case scenario, Leonys hits 7th and Smith platoons out of the two hole. Not awful, not great, but that is possible. That leaves Leonys with 65-80-ish runs, depending on lineup placement. Last year, Martin learned to hit for some power. He pulled more balls and hit more fly balls. With authority:
Like no joke:
Oops, bye-bye:
Now, he’s not going to hit 30 homers. Though, his homers did average about the same distance as Mookie Betts. No, I didn’t just compare him to Mookie Betts. OR DID I?! No, Reversal Question, I didn’t. But his 15 homers last year does seem repeatable. I also made sure to include two lefties in the GIFs presented to you today by DeWalt ladders. Little gopher pitcher heavy with Wily Peralta and CC, but they still count on the stat line. Of course, fifteen homers makes the Head of Development in the Excitement Department yawn, but it comes with 25 steals easily. He’s really more of a 30+ steal guy. On the Speed Scale, he ranked 14th in the majors for qualified hitters. 15/30 gets my jowls jolly. My biggest concern for him is his Ks went up a tad last year and he might struggle to hit .260. Average is never something that stops me from drafting guys, unless they’re potential .190 hitters. A .240 guy turns into a .265 guy with a little luck and five bloop singles. For 2017, I’ll give Leonys Martin projections of 72/16/61/.251/31 in 560 ABs.
