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Wallet 2015: Buying in on Michael Brantley, Jose Altuve, Jimmy Rollins

Wallet 2015: Buying in on Michael Brantley, Jose Altuve, Jimmy Rollins

I thought I’d be jostling for room on the Michael Brantley bandwagon this year, fighting for a comfortable spot. But it's more like a ghost town, all sorts of room available.

No one missed Brantley’s wonderful breakout 2014 season, which pushed him into the MVP discussion. He finished the year as the No. 3 batter in Yahoo fantasy leagues, off a .327-94-20-97-23 campaign. You name it, Brantley improved at it. He walked more, struck out less, spiked his power rate, improved his outstanding line-drive clip. He handled righties and lefties, no problem. And he came to play just about every night, missing a mere six games.

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I thought Brantley would be on the cusp of the first or second round in most fantasy leagues this spring, but it didn’t go down that way. His Yahoo ADP checks in at 25.7, outside the Top 2 rounds in a 12-team league. The public at large would rather have Yasiel Puig, or Adrian Beltre, or Troy Tulowitzki, or Stephen Strasburg. Heck, Brantley isn’t even on Yahoo's can’t cut list.

I guess it comes down to how much you trust last year’s growth. Brantley was a solid but unspectacular fantasy option in 2013, when he posted a .284-66-10-73-17 line. Sure, that’s ownable, but not in the blue-chip rounds.

Here’s why I was fine to make Brantley my most important fantasy commodity for 2015:

— Batting average is generally underrated. You can attack the counting stats and pass over the August and September give-ups merely by staying engaged. The ratio categories are trickier, as an early-departure team doesn’t get penalized in those areas. I like to have a base of batting average from the first day of my team building.

Maybe Brantley won’t hit .327 again, but every logical projection system calls for .290-plus, which is going to help you. And given his growth against left-handers and his elite level of contact and hitting the ball hard, I’d bet he’s over .300 again.

— I’m not sweating the homer dip in the second half. While Brantley only clubbed five homer runs after the break, he still slugged .488 and hit 23 doubles in 65 starts (along with a .335 average and .388 OBP). He was still crushing the ball and hitting it with authority. Some of those doubles will be homers this year. Brantley isn’t likely to hit 30 homers in any season, but I’ll expect something in the 17-23 range, along with the rest of stats he provides.

— His batting slot protects his run production. While a good batting slot won’t help you see better pitches - that myth has been debunked in many areas - it is important for counting-stat protection, the type of thing fantasy owners care about. Brantley spent much of 2013 batting fifth or seventh for the Indians, but he captured the No. 3 slot last year. That’s the sweet spot for fantasy, the cushy place to be.

— The career arc is in a good place. Brantley turns 28 on May 15, so he’s still in the fun years.

Here are some other hitters who are common profile players for me this year:

-- Nolan Arenado: He was in the midst of a breakthrough 2014 before a finger injury ruined the story. I thought Arenado would become annoyingly-pricy this spring, but it didn’t happen in my pools. I paid a round or two for the plausible upside, but I didn’t feel I was fully charged for it. Colorado, here I come.

-- Jimmy Rollins: He’s in the Ibanez All-Star years, a boring veteran who no one is excited about anymore. Fine with me. Shortstop is a minefield all over the place for fantasy this spring, but the price for Rollins’s pop-speed combo (ADP 145) seems reasonable to me.

-- Jose Altuve: He’s never going to be a major power source, but he’s not a zero in that column, either. And like Brantley, I don’t mind that Altuve doesn’t walk a ton - it allows him to get more at-bats and make a bigger impact on my batting average.

I love what my good friend Gene McCaffrey wrote on Altuve (I didn't read it until mid-March, but Gene is a very good person to agree with): Yes, regression, to about .315 with 40 SBs. The Astros had a bad offense which should get better and get Jose over 100 Runs, with 65 RBIs. He'll hit more home runs than the other 40-SB guys unless you count Ellsbury as a 40-SB guy. He'll go in the 1st round in most drafts, and should he fall to the 2nd I will own him. $32

-- David Wright: I have no cute angle here, I just get the idea rooms are sick of the way his career has leveled off and I kept looking at Wright as a mid-round value play.

-- Martin Prado: I thought Josh Harrison would be my legos player, one of those multiple-position guys who can cover several roster spots, moving where needed. I love those guys, perhaps to a fault. But while Harrison’s been cheap in general ADP, he’s been chased in my leagues. Prado turned into Plan B, a versatile and underrated vet who’s going to bat in the middle of a sneaky-good Miami lineup. You can use Prado at second, third or the outfield, and his cost is outside Pick 220.

-- Yadier Molina: Maybe this is heart-over-head, because Molina’s been one of my favorite players for a solid decade, and routinely one of the best places to shop at catcher. No one ever seemed to lose money on this reliable rock, until last year, when he finally encountered a major injury (though Molina still found a way to recover quickly and log 110 games). He’s never going to be a major power source, but Molina’s average season from 2011-13 reads this way: .313-63-16-74-6. If he can get even 80 percent of that back, I’m in for a profit.

-- Brett Gardner: I was shocked when I counted up all my Gardner shares, but that’s what happens when you fade the Regression Police for a living. No one expects Gardner to match the 17 homers he surprisingly hit last year, but most projection systems at least put him in double digits. Gardner is going to bat second for a Yankees lineup that surely can’t be as bad as it was last year, and he’s an affordable source of 20-30 steals and 80-90 runs.

Tuesday, I’ll talk about the Wallet Arms, though if you want the names right now, they’ve been leaked to the Twitterverse.