Minor League Sleeper Bats with Pop
I look into minor league exit velocity data to spot which prospect hitters could make a power impact in 2025
Drafting rookies in fantasy baseball usually doesn’t work out very well. It’s really hard to hit Major League pitching successfully in your first go at it. The “can’t miss” prospects miss all the time.
My general advice in redraft leagues is to let other people take the risk of using a roster spot on a rookie. But if you’re in a different league type (a very deep one or a league with keepers), you might have to dip your toes into that pool. I’m here to (try to) help.
If you’re going to invest a roster spot on a prospect bat, I would advise you that you use it on a player that we know can hit the ball hard. Very few MLB players are able to put up solid fantasy production without the ability to hit the ball hard, so it’ll help us to filter down our list to guys who we know can do that.
We still don’t have publicly available exit velocity data from AA, so unfortunately, we have to stick to guys who have played a good bit in AAA. There are surely some AA gems that I’ll miss here, but we have to make do with what we have. I’m also using NFBC ADP data to help me. I’m looking at hitters who are getting drafted in the top 750 picks in Draft Champions drafts. That also means we could miss out on some super-sleepers that nobody is noticing, but I trust the high-stakes drafters to guide us here. Here we go.
Data Explanations
When I write “EV 90” below, that refers to “90th-percentile exit velocity”. Using the 90th percentile is preferred to using average or max, as it is more correlated with future power production. I will also give the max EV for each player.
What we’re looking for is an EV 90 above 105 miles per hour. As for the max, we are generally looking for the ability to exceed 110. That doesn’t mean you can’t hit a decent number of homers without that ability, but it’s worth noting that of all of the hitters who hit 25 homers last year, only Alex Bregman failed to reach 110 miles per hour.
Roman Anthony, Boston Red Sox
Pos: OF
ADP: 266
EV 90: 108.4
Max EV: 112.5
Anthony is the Red Sox #1 prospect at the age of 20. You don’t see a ton of guys getting the call-up under the age of 22, but Anthony seems primed to do it. He got the call to AAA in August of last year and had no trouble at all there, so there’s nowhere else for him to go but into the outfield at Fenway Park. Here’s what he did in the minors last year:
540 PA, .291/.396/.498, 18 HR, 21 SB
He smashed at both levels. The K% was short of elite (23.5%), but he took a lot of walks (14.6%) to balance that out. He could very well have trouble making contact against MLB pitching out of the gate, but the bat speed and raw power is not in question with what we see here.
Deyvison De Los Santos
Pos: 1B
ADP: 460
EV 90: 108.0
Max EV: 116.0
De Los Santos did have the advantage of playing in the Pacific Coast League prior to being traded to the Marlins (and the AAA park for the Diamondbacks adds to that), so we see a little bit of a split. He slugged .635 with Arizona and then .459 with Miami. He also had a slightly concerning strikeout rate at 25% (that could easily end up in the 28-30% range in MLB), but we do know the guy can hit the ball very far. He reached 116 miles per hour in the minors. By my count, only 21 Major Leaguers reached 116 last year.
My guess is that De Los Santos comes up and strikes out a bunch, but I do think he’ll hit his share of dingers with the raw power that he clearly has.
Kristian Campbell
Pos: 2B
ADP: 338
EV 90: 105.2
Max EV: 111.2
Campbell is the other top ten prospect in baseball in the Red Sox organization. He is a second baseman, and like Roman Anthony, he reached AAA at the end of last year. His minor league slash line was one of the best you’ll see:
517 PA, .330/.439/.558, .997 OPS, 19.9% K%, 14.3% BB%
He hit 20 homers in that time and added 24 steals. That combination, plus the strong plate discipline indicators, suggests he has a pretty good chance at contributing right away.
The raw power isn’t quite to the levels of his future teammate Anthony, but he got over the thresholds we’re looking for (105 90th-Percentile, 110 max).
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