Every manager, every draft season, is looking for the best value they can find late in their drafts. But, it is not always obvious. Which is why we call them sleepers.

If they were obvious, then they would be going higher in drafts and they wouldn’t be sleepers any more.

Let the staff here at Sports Ethos guide you through some key names to target late in your drafts to help you maximize the value of your picks.

This article will focus on sleeper bats as we also will be doing sleeper arms, followed by the busts.

Scott Burks – Follow on X – @oregondux2

Jo Adell – OF

Adell, the Angels right fielder, is one sleeper I am in on. A swing change he made in the middle of the last season is the reason he takes the next step. Just 25 years old, Adell is coming off a 20 homer, 15 stolen base season, finishing with a .207 batting average (.224 xBA) as a low BABIP (.244) did not help the average. Adell slumped in May, June and July, hitting .144, .139 and .211, respectively.

During the last game of July, he ditched his leg kick in his swing to cut down on the strikeouts and put the ball in play more often.

And it worked.

He hit in 20-of-27 games in August, hitting .277 with four home runs and 14 RBIs. During the three-month slump, his strikeout rate was 33.2%. After ditching the leg kick, his strikeout rate dropped to 22.8% in August. A left oblique strain in the first week of September ended his season while he was on the hot streak.

The signs of a breakout are there with a career-high walk rate of 7.8% while his strikeout rate dropped to a career low 27.9%. He hit the ball harder than any time in his career with an 11.7%-barrel rate (7.8% league average) and a 44.5% hard-hit rate (31.28%). Projections on Fangraphs have him repeating the 20/15 season with a batting average around .230.

In 24 NFBC Draft Champions Drafts since January 1, his ADP is 291, the 72nd outfielder selected. If he can pick up where he left on in 2024, I think he can make his way into the top 40, which is pick 175, where players like Lane Thomas, Brandon Nimmo and Nick Castellanos are being drafted.

I have been picking him up around pick 250 in a lot of 2025 drafts.

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