The Sharp & The Fish: Round 12
A series where we pick out the best and worst picks in each round
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Good morning! Here are my options for round 12!
SHARP: CHANDLER SIMPSON
Even I’m stunned I’m choosing a dude with zero (real) home runs on his professional resume.
But hear me out! As you can tell from that post, Simpson is a true outlier. There’s nobody like him. Every other hitter who doesn’t show the ability to hit homers does not stay in pro ball for very long.
There’s a reason for this, though. The Rays know what they’re doing. As big of an outlier Simpson is in not hitting dingers, he’s a similar level of outlier in making contact and stealing bases. His plate approach and skills play perfectly to his capabilities. He has elite contact rates, rarely strikes out, and rarely hits the ball in the air (which is perfect for his level of power - you do not want this guy hitting balls in the air, his speed becomes irrelevant in those situations).
Picking him in a vacuum doesn’t make you sharp. You have to be very delicate with this. The sharp strategy is this
Know you’re going to pick Simpson coming into the draft
Ignore steals early on, pile up those elite power hitters who fall out of the first couple of rounds because of their lack of steals
Draft Simpson
One injury or demotion to Simpson probably puts a fork in your team, but if he stays in the lineup and steals 70 bags, you’re in very good shape.
And the Rays don’t have a ton of guys hanging around threatening his job. There’s a pretty strong chance you get 125+ starts from Simpson this year, and that automatically turns into a TON of steals.
The other funny thing is, as long as this dude is on the 26-man roster for the Rays, you’ll want to start him. Who cares if he’s on the bench at the beginning of the game? You’re starting him for steals. And there’s a high likelihood he enters that game as a pinch runner for the purposes of stealing a bag.
Just make sure you’re piling up homers around him, because you’ll be lucky to get even one out of him.
FISH: STEVEN KWAN
I like this round. So I don’t have much conviction here. Similar to Simpson, Kwan can be very valuable in fantasy as long as the team context makes sense. He’ll probably top out around a dozen homers and 20-25 steals, but he offers the possibility of a .300 batting average in these days of that being very, very rare. So if you enter the draft knowing you’ll take him, and then you take on a couple of high-power, low-average dudes to match with him, that’s perfectly fine.
My fish take here is just a bet against the Guardians and a hedge against batting average variance. You’d think Kwan and his 9.5% career K% would turn into a .290 batting average every time, but the dude hit .268 in 2023 and .272 last year. There’s downside there. And if the Guardians are a bottom-ten team in run scoring (not a sure thing, but possible), that’s quite bad for a guy whose main value comes from leading off and getting on base a bunch.
I think there’s way more downside than upside with Kwan. Has anybody ever looked back at a fantasy season and said to themselves “man, I wish I had more Steven Kwan”. I don’t think so!