Fantasy Baseball 2019 Spring Training Surprises

Fantasy baseball owners are scouting players during Spring Training. Who’s been the surprising names so far?

Spring Training is two weeks old and Opening Day is just three weeks away. This is not enough time for fantasy baseball owners to scout players and make a list of who they will move up or down in their rankings. That’s why I’m here.

In this post, I will scour the stat sheets to see which players are looking good or bad in Spring Training. Some of the players may not see an MLB field this season but it does give us a snippet of what we could see in 2020.

Teams are not using their pitchers as often as they are hitters. This skews the results a bit when trying to find out the next sleeper pitcher. Whether it’s because of injuries or trying to prevent them, the star pitchers, both starters and relievers, are not getting enough playing time.

Regardless, the pitchers that are throwing more often could be someone we add in a couple of months after your whole pitching staff goes down with an injury or struggles out of the gate. We all know who the big names are. This is a good time to build that reserve list for the final picks of your draft.

Before I get into the individual stats, looking at the league standings, there are a couple of surprises. The Baltimore Orioles are 7-4, second in the Grapefruit League. The Los Angeles Angels are 9-3 in the Cactus League.

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The Orioles haven’t done much in the offseason to improve their roster. The Angels, on the other hand, added veterans Trevor Cahill and Matt Harvey to the pitching staff and Justin Bour as a middle-of-the-order power bat.

Now, let’s take a look at who is playing well or poorly two weeks into Spring Training.

Hitters

Colorado Rockies first baseman Ryan McMahon (one of my 2018 sleepers) is leading all qualified hitters with a .476 average. He has 10 hits in 21 at-bats with four doubles, one triple and one home run. He is also second in on-base percentage.

My biggest surprise was seeing Lewis Brinson leading all hitters with five home runs. The 24-year-old outfielder hit just 11 home runs last season. If he can carry this power into the regular season, then he would be a valuable outfielder.

If not, his projected .215 average will belong on the waiver wire.

Outfielder Byron Buxton leads hitters with 11 RBIs. He played in just 28 games last year but is projected to start in center field for the Minnesota Twins. As the No. 9 hitter, though, his opportunities to drive in runs will be less than hitters towards the top of the order.

The Twins offense is one of the most improved, adding Nelson Cruz, CJ Cron and Jonathan Schoop. They could be the surprise team in the AL Central and scoring runs will be a part of that. Buxton could act as a “second” leadoff hitter for the Twins.

Joey Gallo is tied for second with 10 strikeouts. He’s also hitting .167 in 18 at-bats. He’ll have a lot of power but expect a lot of strikeouts as well.

Kyle Schwarber leads with nine walks. He’s always had good plate discipline so seeing pitches better should lead to a better batting average this season.

There are eight batters with at least 10 hits, as of this writing.

Pitchers

As I said in the intro, pitchers are not being used deep into games. This could be to prevent injury or it could be a sign of things to come as more teams try to shorten the innings for their starters. Jon Gray of Colorado and Nick Kingham of Pittsburgh lead with 9.0 innings in three starts.

Jack Flaherty leads with 14 strikeouts. Robbie Ray is right behind him with 13. I drafted Flaherty in my mock draft and this is a good sign for his 2019 projections.

Gray also leads all qualified pitchers with a 1.00 ERA and 0.33 WHIP. He’s allowed just two hits and one walk in his games. Pitching in Coors Field has its disadvantages as the Rockies pitching staff had a 4.33 ERA last season, 20th in the league. Though, the league average was 4.14.

Saves in Spring Training are finicky. None of the team’s closers are being used in these situations. Looking at the list of relievers that have recorded a save, 68 in total, not one is projected to be their team’s closer.

Dietrick Enns of the San Diego Padres leads with three saves.  His teammate Eric Stout is behind him with two. The Padres closer, Kirby Yates, has just 2.0 innings of action this spring.

On the negative side, Max Scherzer had a 6.48 ERA in 8.1 innings, allowing six runs on eight hits and two walks. Now that he’ll have to face Bryce Harper this season, we could see a slight increase in his ratio stats. Then again, 8.1 innings is a small sample size compared to 220 innings.

This is where we are just two weeks into Spring Training. By the time Opening Day comes around, there will likely be a different group of players atop the leaderboards. Will Brinson hit 20 home runs or Scherzer post a 5.00 ERA this season? Likely not, but this is all the action we have right now.