Donaldson’s numbers as a major leaguer look mediocre overall. It would be pretty easy for a fantasy owner to overlook a player with a .232/.280/.386 slash in 328 plate appearances. But if you look at Donaldson’s entire history he becomes a bit more interesting. Last season after his 3-for-32 start he was optioned to the minors. He was called up again in May to cover for Yoenis Cespedes’ first DL stint but was, again, rather useless at the plate. He was sent back to the minors in June and stayed there until Brandon Inge went on the disabled list in August.
This is where it gets interesting. He hit a very solid .290/.356/.489 with eight homers, 26 RBI and three steals in 47 games after returning from Triple-A. Just 27-years old, general manager Billy Beane has declared that Donaldson will be the starter at third base in 2013. While 47 games is just a small sample of Donaldson’s season – his line at AAA Sacramento was .335/.402/.598 with 13 homers and five steals in 234 plate appearances. Donaldson has BABIP issues. Last season in the majors it was just .278 (far below average) and an indication that his poor start to the season was at least to some degree bad luck.
UPSIDE: .280/.350/.450 with 15-20 homers and 5-10 stolen bases.
Really quite a good sleeper pick...I immediately wrote him down in my Word document. Third basemen are difficult in my opinion...on the one hand you have sexy names like David Wright and Miguel Cabrera, and then further down the list you have questionable production players in Chase Headley and Brett Lawrie...and then the consistent 30HR 90RBI Aramis Ramirez...and then you enter the David Freese's and Michael Young's of the world. I'm never quite sure where and when to draft one of these guys. If I get too far down I might definitely consider him. I write a couple sleeper articles too (I write for http://baseballrethought.com). I'm relatively new and have only gone on Carlos Gomez, Mark Reynolds, and Rickie Weeks, which are by no means sleepers of the capacity that you're talking about here - I'm more interested in the 10th-14th round areas I think.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, thanks for the tip!
-Steve
Thanks for the comments. Good luck with your site!
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