Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball is running a promotion on SB Nation. Yeah it's no fun to have to have ads but something is needed to keep the lights on. Anyway, we are to write about fantasy players to watch, which, since I'm such a fantasy baseball fan, is less fun than it might be, but let's give it a shot.
I'll just skip the incredibly obvious, Jose Bautista, and move on to the merely obvious:
Brett Lawrie: Brett, in 43 games, hit .293/.373/.580 and stole 7 bases. To compare, the MLB leader among regular third basemen, in stolen bases is Ryan Roberts with 18. Brett could easily end up with 25 steals. He'd give you a leg up in that catagory.
Brett also had 9 home runs, so figuring he could hit 25 or so home runs, in a full season, isn't out of line. And he had a .293 batting average so, odds are he won't hurt you there either. I'd like to think he'll get 90+ RBI too.
Brandon Morrow: Morrow was tops in the AL, among starting pitchers, in SO/9 with 10.19 and there is no reason to think he won't continue to strikeout more than a batter an inning.
Where you can hope for improvement is his 4.72 ERA. I'd like to think there is no way that he won't improve on that. He had a FIP of 3.64 and a xFIP of 3.53, so hoping for an ERA under 4.00 doesn't see like too much of a stretch. He had a pretty good WHIP too, and I wouldn't expect that to be any worse next year.
I'd think that, if you want to win the strikeout column of your fantasy league, Morrow would be a good choice and he won't hurt you in the other catagories too.
Beyond those two and Bautista, of course, I'm not sure which Jays would be good fantasy targets. Yunel Escobar is a great shortstop, his WAR will be about as good as any AL shortstop out there, but he doesn't do much for more fantasy leagues. He doesn't steal bases, he doesn't hit a lot of homers and he won't get you many RBI, batting at the top of the order.
J.P. Arencibia will get you as many home runs as many home runs as any AL catcher and he'll likely get you a good number of RBI for a catcher, if you figure he can get you a .250 or better average, he might be someone you'd want.
What Blue Jays would you want for your fantasy team?