Chris Iannetta

Have your sleeper picks fizzled out? Al Melchior says it may not be too late for these four hitters to reward your faith.

Sleeper lists are a staple of each year's draft prep, and so are the discussions and debates about what a sleeper is. It seems only fitting to get my feet wet here at Fantrax by writing my first column about my top sleepers for the coming season. While I'm at it, I will explain what I mean when I label a player as a "sleeper."There are bargains, late-round fliers and deep sleepers, and as far as I'm concerned, they're all sleepers. However, I think the most generally understood definition is the middle one -- players who…

After six seasons with the Angels, Mariners, and Diamondbacks, Chris Iannetta is back where his career started. Iannetta spent the first six years of his career with the Colorado Rockies and had some moderate success. In each season that he had 200+ at-bats, Iannetta bopped at least 14 home runs and drove in at least 52 runners. I know those numbers don’t exactly stand out, but those were serviceable for a catcher at the time.Whether it’s juiced baseballs or not, offense is on the rise across baseball, and that includes…

It can often be difficult to place into context how well (or how poorly) certain players have performed recently. A glance at ESPN’s Player Rater, which attempts to quantify a player’s overall fantasy value by analyzing their performance in each facet of the game, can focus targets for fantasy owners looking for help on the waiver wire. Of course, when dealing with small sample sizes, a player’s results can be fluky, but placement at or near the top of these lists could be indicative of a substantive change to a player’s…