Fantasy Baseball Rankings 2012: Joe Mauer and Top Buy-Low Candidates to Target

In fantasy baseball, like the stock market, the best model to follow is usually "buy low and sell high." While that might seem to be a more useful rule to live by during the season when it comes to trades, it is also a useful strategy in the draft itself.

When a player is coming off his best career season, it isn't in your best interest to jump on them necessarily because you're not maximizing value. Conversely, when a good player is coming off one of their worst statistical seasons, grabbing them later than they would normally be taken can be a major coup.

Here are the top buy-low candidates you should target in your fantasy baseball draft.

Joe Mauer (MIN)

Perhaps the biggest question fantasy players were asking last year was "What happened to Joe Mauer's power?" After a 2009 season in which he clubbed 28 round trippers, the Minnesota Twins catcher has just 12 combined over the past two years. Aside from 2009, Mauer has never hit more 13 homers in a season, so that year may have been an aberration. That being said, he certainly has more muscle than he flexed last season when he hit a mere three bombs.

Injuries had a lot to do with Mauer's struggles last season. Indeed, he missed half the year and was able to catch only 54 games. His batting average was still solid at .287, and he had a respectable on base percentage of .360, but both were well below his career totals.

If Mauer can stay healthy, he should regain his form as far as getting on base goes. He reaches base over 40 percent of the time and has a career batting average of .323, so anything near those marks will make him a great fantasy player. The move to target field really hurt Mauer's power as he hit just nine home runs with 43 doubles two seasons ago. If some of those doubles start to go out of the park, though, it isn't a stretch to think that Mauer could return to fantasy prominence.

Carl Crawford (BOS)

It's funny what a fat contract and big-market pressure can do to a player. Outfielder Carl Crawford left the friendly confines of Tropicana Field last season in favor of the Boston Red Sox. What ensued were career lows in batting average (.255) and on base percentage (.289), as well as a career low in steals over the course of a full season with only 18.

Basically, 2011 was disastrous for Crawford and the Red Sox as a whole. To make matters worse, Crawford may miss a couple of weeks to begin this season as he had surgery to repair cartilage in his wrist. While that may make some owners shy away from nabbing Crawford, it should intrigue you since Crawford's draft value will be far lower than his potential suggests it should be.

Crawford doesn't walk much, so one school of thought is that the odds finally caught up with him last year. His batting average on balls in play was just .299, which was the second lowest of his career. At the same time, though, Crawford's speed alone allows him to reach base more often than most players. Provided Crawford's BABIP returns to his normal career levels and he is given the green light on the base paths, he should be in store for a bounce-back season.

Adam Dunn (CWS)

When a player has a poor season, fans tend to over exaggerate by saying something like, "He had the worst season ever!" While that is normally just a figure of speech, it may very well be the truth if you're talking about Adam Dunn's 2011 season. In the first year of a four-year, $56 million contract with the Chicago White Sox, Dunn played more like a Single A player than a former All Star.

It's hard to imagine that there has ever been as sharp of a drop off in production in the history of baseball as the one Dunn experienced last year. In the previous seven seasons, Dunn hit at least 38 home runs every year. He also never had fewer than 92 RBI, and his on base percentage was always somewhere between .360 and .400. Last year, however, Dunn tanked to the tune of 11 homers, 42 RBI, a .159 batting average and a .292 on base percentage.

Dunn's walk rate wasn't much lower than what he has harbored over the course of his career, but his batting average on balls in play of .240 was over 50 points lower than his career average. Sometimes stats aren't enough to tell the story, though. Perhaps the big contract and move to Chicago placed too much pressure on Dunn. He comes into this season with low expectations and plays in a home-run friendly ballpark, so there's no harm in taking a late flier on him.