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 the arms you need to target.

Jeff Clowers – Follow on X @EthosJeff

Brandon Pfaadt – SP

Even when factoring the normal growing pains of a young pitching prospect, the first two MLB seasons of Brandon Pfaadt’s career have been a fair bit more up-and-down than anticipated – but digging deeper into his 2024 stats, I’m beginning to think he’s primed for a third-year breakout.

First, let’s spin things back to what was expected of him prior to his disappointing rookie season. At the time of him losing prospect eligibility, Pfaadt graded out with three plus pitches; a 60-grade fastball, 60-grade slider, and 55-grade curveball. That’s more than enough arsenal to work with but, naturally, for a pitcher his age, he did not score highly when it came to his present grades in command and control (45-grade each). Even those grades were probably a little optimistic, as Pfaadt allowed a home run rate of more than two every nine innings, inflating his ERA to a bloated mark of 5.72 across 96.0 IP.  Nonetheless, FanGraphs did project him to eventually achieve an above-average mark for both with a 55-grade in each category, so there is reason to expect ongoing improvement. Though Pfaadt certainly did have battles with bouts of wildness over the past two years, he’s been excellent at maintaining a strong K/BB rate overall, pitching to a career figure of 4.10, while sitting in the 82nd percentile or better in BB% rate both years.

That’s given him a strong base skillset while he subtly makes improvements under the hood and three separate noticeable spikes have me particularly intrigued about a third-year breakout. Allow me to crib a chart I made for my NL West preview article:

Pfaadt was getting torched for 2.06 home runs every nine innings in 2023 but he managed to get that number all the way down to 1.19 HR/9 in 2024 and continuing those improvements will be the key cog in his success going forward. The decrease in long balls helped Pfaadt shave just over a full run off his previous year’s ERA, getting down to a mark of 4.71, but xERA suggests he was actually pitching to the true level of a 3.78 ERA. If he can continue tinkering and finally match his expected stats to his actual in 2025, he’ll be firmly on the breakout train and represent a nice draft day bargain.

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