Mike Zunino (C, TB) - Fantasy Baseball Draft Sleepers

BALLER MOVE: Draft target ~500s

CURRENT ADP: ~629 overall

ANALYSIS: There is no hidden meaning to find in his .165/.232/.312 slash line; Mike Zunino was very bad at the plate last year. However, two things are working heavily in his favor in 2020, with the first being that 2019 seemed more like an aberration for the veteran backstop.  Zunino has never made a lot of contact, but what contact he did make was usually hard. His 36.9% hard-hit rate was his lowest since 2015 and represented an eight-point drop from 2018.  His barrel-rate was also down after being in the 94th percentile in both 2017 and 2018.

His 19.2-degree launch angle wasn't out of line with previous seasons but Zuninio exchanged too many lines drives for pop-ups in 2019. While his overall fly-ball rate was up two points, Zunino's line-drive rate dropped five points and his 18.2 % infield fly-ball rate was a five-point increase from 2017.

This brings us to the second thing working in his favor; while Tampa Bay may have a lot of moving pieces and flexibility in their lineup, the catcher position is not one of those areas. With Travis D'Arnaud now with Atlanta, no other Rays catcher on the 40-man roster outside of Zunino has more than 46 major league games played in his career. He should see the field more than he ever has before - relative to the percentage of games played in a shortened season. With there being a good chance of a bounce-back coming at the plate and oodles of playing time likely in store, Zunino is in prime position to flourish as a deep sleeper.