SPECULATOR: Avoiding this year's Ketel Marte
Feb 17 2021
We put a ton of effort into unearthing the next late-round "sleeper", but there's an underappreciated part of player evaluation that can be even more important: avoiding landmines, particularly early in drafts.
Ron Shandler's research in the 2020 Baseball Forecaster noted that the early rounds are littered with landmines. His key finding: in the first five rounds of drafts over the last two years, nearly half of our picks have been full-on "busts" (player returned a 4+ round loss vs. his draft round), while another 25% were a mere "loss" (a 1-3 round loss).
One of those landmines entering 2020 was Ketel Marte (2B, ARI). We actually panned Marte as an avoid in last year's version of this column—he came with several landmine-worthy traits...
Almost!
You’re just a few clicks away from accessing this feature and hundreds more throughout the year that have a singular goal in mind: Winning your league. Subscribe to BaseballHQ.com here!
Already a subscriber? Sign in here
More From Speculator
With skills so bad, we can only speculate on an underlying injury. We hope we're wrong!
Apr 29 2026 3:05am
Apr 29 2026 3:05am
Our annual "draft skills, not roles" using projected skills and year-to-date playing time.
Apr 22 2026 3:05am
Apr 22 2026 3:05am
With most pitchers 3-4 starts in, we dive into the sub-indicators to see who's rising and falling.
Apr 15 2026 3:06am
Apr 15 2026 3:06am
Using our Quality of Batted Ball (QBaB) metric to make some speculative hitter snap judgments.
Apr 8 2026 3:06am
Apr 8 2026 3:06am
Baseball is back, and it's time to overreact... because what else are we supposed to do?
Apr 1 2026 3:08am
Apr 1 2026 3:08am
