Felipe Paulino 2010

This guy is one of the true sleepers of 2010. I actually feel a little bit guilty writing about him, since I'm sure there are some other people out there who have him on their radar and have been keeping him secret. That said, I've found that no matter how convincing the evidence that a player should do well, a 6.27 ERA general does a good job of limiting his popularity on draft day. Add to that the fact that Paulino may have to compete for a spot in the rotation for a team with a bad offense, and it's easy to see why Paulino is not currently ranked in the Mockdraftcentral.com ADP rankings. They go down to #390, and guys like Homer Bailey and Aroldis Chapman, both of whom Paulino should easly outperform are ranked at least 100 spots earlier in the 290s.

So why am I so high on Paulino? For starters, he struck out 8.57 batters per nine innings. He combined that with ok control (BB/9: 3.41) and an average groundball rate of 42.2%. That's good for an xFIP of 4.10. And at 26 years old, Paulino definitely has a reasonable chance of further improvement. If you're in a deep league, Paulino will make a great late round pick, and even in shallow leagues he's someone you should keep an eye on.