Fantasy Baseball Sleepers 2012: Lucas Duda Is Player to Watch in NL East

When drafting fantasy sleepers, you’re expected to look for the obscure and the unexpected. In 2012, there are few out there better to fit this mold than New York Mets slugger Lucas Duda.

To make it explicitly clear in my preface: Duda is not someone that I would pick especially early in any fantasy draft. I would, however, look at Lucas Duda as someone to be incredibly excited about for a late-round flier pick. If nothing else, he can be a great name to draft due to the pun potential in utilizing his last name for your fantasy team name. At the very best, he could emerge as one of the sleepers to watch out of the NL East.

With minimal playing time last season, Duda hit .273 with 14 home runs.   

As of late, however, Duda has made a bit of a splash in the Sabermetric community. He has become one of the most searched players on FanGraphs.com, with hits as popular as 2011 standouts Brett Lawrie and Cory Luebke.

Still young, Duda is now entering the point in his career where many hitters begin to explode. At 26 years old, Duda is also an ideal size for a slugger in the MLB. At 6’4” and 254 pounds, his power comes from natural body strength and sheer size.

Last year, the New York Mets called him up midway through the season and were thrilled with the production that they saw. He worked his way up towards the middle of the lineup, and hit 10 home runs in 347 plate appearances.

As a lefty, Duda has an interesting situation in the NL East, which is such a pitcher-friendly division as it features Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Josh Johnson.

Experts seem to believe in Duda. The Mets hitting coach has called him a young Jason Giambi, and GM Sandy Alderson has tweeted that Duda’s biggest asset is his power and high OPS. For Carlos Beltran’s apparent replacement, there are worse things for the fanbase to hear.

Luckily, very few know about Duda. FanGraphs projects his numbers to be at .280 with 21 home runs and 81 RBI this season. I think that if we really look at his production, we can go even higher than that.

In 2010, Duda hit 23 home runs in only 115 minor league games. In 2011, the Mets had no choice but to call him up after hitting 10 home runs in a brief 38-game stint.

There are also external factors that may influence a rise in Duda’s numbers besides maturity and age. For instance, after being criticized for being too much of a pitcher’s park, Citi Field officials have decided to move the fences in. This study suggests that the New York Mets should benefit with an extra home run every three games. Duda will reap many of these benefits with his powerful swing.

While the Mets may also suffer from losing Jose Reyes to free agency, the rest of the team will be forced to compensate on the offensive side of the ball to keep them active and in games. Duda may see a new leadership opportunity in the clubhouse now that Reyes is gone.

If he were to lead by example, it would be behind the power of his bat.

One of my favorite statistics that backs up Duda’s projected success is his fly-ball rate. While 44 percent of the balls that he makes contact with are fly balls, only 9.3 percent of those turned into home runs. According to MrCheatSheat.com, he can raise his home run rate to almost 30 HRs over a projected 600 ABs if he was able to bring his HR/FB ratio to only 13 percent (his 2010 numbers) without changing his fly-ball rate.

In a typical 12-team league, Duda is being drafted in the 19th round with the 277th overall position.

His isolated power suggests that his power is legitimate, as his ISO was .265 in 2010 and .295 in 2011 in the minor leagues.

A Star-Ledger report says that he is improving his swing, and spring training has only confirmed that. He homered yesterday against the St. Louis Cardinals and has also recorded home runs in spring training against the likes of Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg.

For someone who could very easily hit 30 home runs this year and won’t kill you with his batting average (Duda is hitting .292 in the MLB), this is a sleeper definitely worth taking.

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