Sleeper: Rougned Odor, 2B Texas Rangers

Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

Over the next week or so I’m going to highlight a bunch of guys who are being overlooked in fantasy baseball drafts so far in 2015. Each and every one of these guys are going outside of the first 250 picks, according to fantasypros.com. We’re going to start this series with a sleeper from the Texas Rangers, Rougned Odor.

For the last few years there has been a ton of hype surrounding Rangers’ prospect, Jurickson Profar. Profar has been widely viewed as a future MLB star (he was the number one prospect according to Baseball America entering 2013) and an organizational building block for the Rangers. Injuries have stalled his development though and we just found out a few weeks ago that Profar will miss the entire 2015 season (after missing all of 2014) after having surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder. With Profar going down it means that Odor will be the Rangers everyday second baseman and if he’s going to get regular at-bats he needs to be on your radar in all formats.

Odor saw 417 plate appearances across 114 games last season, his first in the majors, and he hit .259 to go with nine home runs, 39 runs, 48 RBI and four steals. If you prorate that out to be a 600 plate appearance season you’re looking at 13 home runs, 56 runs, 69 RBI and six steals to go with that .259 average from a middle infielder. That line would have made him roughly a top-25 middle infielder… during his rookie season… at just 20 years old (yeah, he just turned 21 in February). Even without getting into the advanced statistics that’s extremely impressive and very encouraging moving forward.

When you do look at the advanced statistics you see that Odor is a 21-year old player who has shown that he has the skills to hang around in the show with the ability to grow. His .306 wOBA was just under the league average of .310, his .142 ISO was just over the league average of .135 and his .698 OPS was virtually at the league average of .700. He was a bit of a free swinger but his 84.8 percent contact rate and 17 percent strikeout rate were both better than league average. All-in-all, even though he didn’t set the world on fire, Odor had an extremely impressive rookie season for a 20-year old who’s path to the big leagues was accelerated due to injuries.

In order to take the next step forward, Odor needs to develop a little bit more patience at the plate, which should allow him to get on base more, and make harder contact when he does connect.

Odor’s 50 percent swing percentage was higher than the league average and his 36.9 percent swing percentage on pitches outside of the strike zone was over five percent higher than the league average. As a result, Odor had a very sub-par 4.1 walk percentage last season and he made a lot of weak contact on pitches outside of the zone that lead to lots of ground balls and pop fly’s. Hopefully if he develops some patience it will lead to a few more walks and a few less weakly hit balls outside of the strike zone.

Steamer currently has Odor projected to hit .263 with 13 home runs, 59 runs, 62 RBI and 14 steals. ZiPS likes him a little bit more and has him projected to hit .270 with 17 home runs, 66 runs, 70 RBI and 15 steals. These are the projections for a 21-year old middle infielder who was a top-50 prospect just a year ago and has over 400 major league plate appearances under his belt! I think steamer’s projection provides a nice floor for Odor in 2015 and given his age and pedigree he certainly has upside beyond that.

I like Odor over Brandon Phillips, Asdrubal Cabrera, Martin Prado, Chase Utley and Jean Segura; and ten times out of ten I’ll snag Odor in the 24th round rather than Dustin Pedroia in the 10th or Alexei Ramirez in the 11th. Don’t overpay for a middle infielder in the middle rounds of your draft; there is value to be found at the end, and it comes from Texas.