Fantasy Baseball: 9 Spring Training Position Battles With Big Implications
Toronto Blue Jays' Leadoff and Clean-Up Hitters
As a generality, there's tons of value in targeting quality offenses in pursuit of late-round gems. If you can get a guy hitting at a decent spot in that lineup, he's going to automatically stumble into run and RBI opportunities due to the hitters around him. The Nationals are an obvious target there, but even without Edwin Encarnacion, we shouldn't overlook the Toronto Blue Jays.
Here's a peek at the Blue Jays' projected lineup at Roster Resource alongside each player's current ADP. The positional eligibility is based on ESPN's eligibility rules.
| Spot in Order | Player | Position | ADP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Devon Travis | 2B | 187.7 |
| 2 | Josh Donaldson | 3B | 10.7 |
| 3 | Jose Bautista | OF | 100.3 |
| 4 | Kendrys Morales | DH | 155.0 |
| 5 | Troy Tulowitzki | SS | 144.0 |
| 6 | Russell Martin | C | 174.7 |
Jose Bautista isn't in a position battle, so we don't need to discuss him here, but he's a screaming discount. Please grab him.
Devon Travis is coming off the board with an ADP of 187.7 despite potentially hitting at the top of the order in front of two of the best hitters in the game. Travis has a career slash line of .301/.342/.469 in 670 plate appearances to go with 19 home runs. He's not going to bring many steals, but sitting atop that order will help you in enough other categories to compensate.
Travis seems like a solid bet to win that spot. The clean-up hitter may be a bit more up in the air, but all candidates are worthy of investment.
The most likely candidate to wind up there seems to be Kendrys Morales. Morales wasn't bad last year with the Kansas City Royals as he churned out a .263/.327/.468 slash with 30 home runs, but his 41.1% hard-hit rate and 35.7% fly-ball rate say his numbers could have been even flashier. Now, he's moving to a better lineup and a better park for dingers, so we should be trying to snag him if he can lock down the fourth spot in the order.
Troy Tulowitzki -- like Morales -- had some sporty batted-ball numbers last year that should get us into him for 2017. His hard-hit rate of 34.2% was well above average, and he coupled it with a career-high 40.3% fly-ball rate. These indicate that Tulowitzki's season-ending slash of .254/.318/.443 may have been a bit low. If you add a dope spot in the order behind batters like Donaldson and Bautista, Tulowitzki's appeal should be obvious.
