St. Louis Cardinals’ Best Fantasy Draft Targets

Sleepers

The above players are the safest Cardinals to target in your fantasy draft, but St. Louis also has some great sleeper picks for those late rounds.

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The entire Cardinals outfield including Matt Holliday, Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty are all solid picks to target later in the draft. I didn’t include Grichuk and Piscotty in the above group because outfield is such a deep position in fantasy baseball and while the Cardinals young hitters should be productive, they likely won’t be real high draft picks.

Still, Grichuk and Piscotty are solid options because of their upside. If all goes well for Grichuk health wise, he could be a guy who hits 30 plus homers in 2016. Piscotty won’t quite have the same power but he should still provide about 20 homers with solid production in RBIs, OBP, SLG and OPS and a better batting average than Grichuk.

Holliday, in particular, is a fantastic sleeper option. After dealing with quad injuries and missing much of last season, Holliday will probably drop further in drafts than he should. He is ranked 42nd in Yahoo’s outfield rankings and all the way down to 69th in ESPN’s rankings of outfielders for 2016. Holliday is out to prove the critics wrong.

Not to mention, he is looking to have a great bounce back season so the Cardinals will pick up his option. Last season’s injury was really the first big one in Holliday’s career. He has been a very durable outfielder averaging 138 games played a season throughout his career. I expect the 36-year old to have a great season hitting about .290 with 25 homers and 90 plus RBI.

Jaime Garcia is probably the best starting pitcher sleeper option on the Cardinals. He’s ranked 55th in Yahoo’s starting pitchers rankings and 42nd by ESPN. But proceed with caution. As always with Garcia, injuries are a possibility so make sure you have a solid backup plan in case the lefty catches the injury bug again.

Last is Matt Adams. While I believe that Brandon Moss will win the first base job, it wouldn’t surprise me if Adams is able to get back in Matheny’s good graces and put together a bounce back season. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote last week that Adams has fine tuned his swing and believes he has his power back.

After being out most of last season with injuries and a rough 2014 performance, Adams can be a cheap first base option later in drafts. Adams is ranked 44th in Yahoo’s top 50 first basemen rankings and 38th on ESPN’s top 40 list. Adams has a lot to prove and if he can bounce back with a 25 plus homer campaign and flash that power that once excited Cardinals fans, fantasy owners will take that in a heartbeat for where you can get him in the draft.

Next: Center Field: Middle-of-the-Line Offense?

That about wraps up my take on Cardinals to target in fantasy baseball. Happy drafting to those who have drafts coming up soon.