Yoán Moncada headlines 2021 fantasy baseball bounce-back candidates

Yahoo Sports' Andy Behrens, Dalton Del Don and Scott Pianowski discuss a few players who struggled during the shortened 2020 season, including an infielder who's not far removed from smashing 25 HR.

Video Transcript

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ANDY BEHRENS: Welcome back to Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. We're talking bounce-back candidates for 2021. It was a weird mini season in 2020. Not everybody performed necessarily to the levels that we've come to expect. Scott Pianowski, who do you like to bounce back to their usual form?

SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Yeah, talk about getting a mulligan for the season, Yoán Moncada went into the 2020 season with high expectations, and COVID and the COVID hangover pretty much wiped all of that out. So now we have a wonderful opportunity to get back in. He was about a third-round pick in Yahoo ADP a year ago. You can get him around pick 77 into this fresh season. Just a year removed from a .315 average, 25 home runs, this is somebody who's always had a very high prospect pedigree. I think he's a-- kind of a sneaky MVP candidate, if you're wanting to invest over at BetMGM.

Yoán Moncada, excused absence. He's in a loaded Chicago lineup. I'm going to try to acquire many pieces of this lineup. He's the one guy I think you're getting maybe a two- or three-round discount on for something I have no problem giving him a pass for.

ANDY BEHRENS: Dalton, how do you feel about that take?

DALTON DEL DON: First of all, I agree with Pianow. Yoán Moncada, I snatched him up in my TGFBI league happily. Agree with Pianow there.

And maybe I'm cheating with mine here. It's another third baseman, Eugenio Suárez. Maybe I'm cheating because he was on a 43-homer pace last year, but he hit just .202, so I think this counts as a proper bounce-back. One season removed from hitting 49 homers, he's currently in the proverbial best shape of his life. You know, last year, he was following shoulder surgery, so it was that weird, you know, short season anyway, another obstacle for him. He plays in a great hitters' park. Great American Ball Park has increased homers for righties by an MLB-high 30%.

The last three seasons, he's the only righty in that lineup pretty much. A bunch of lefties hitting in between. Right behind Joey Votto, who's an on-base machine. So I have Suárez ranked ahead of Nolan Arenado, whose Yahoo ADP is about 60 spots higher.

ANDY BEHRENS: Leave it to Dalton to make a cowardly choice of somebody who wasn't even that bad last year. My guy was legitimately kind of trashy in 2020. It's JD Martinez. By his own admission, not even particularly ready for the season. It was obviously for a million reasons. It was a bizarre year.

Martinez is someone who had put together six consecutive, absolutely elite seasons-- high average, huge power, driving in runs, scoring runs. He had done that for more than half a decade at an elite level. He's only 33 years old. This is not a guy who's like in the twilight of his career and we would expect him to fall off a cliff.

Yes, it was a rough 2020. I think he's going to bounce back in a huge way and a better mindset in a more normal season in 2021. You're getting a huge discount on him. We're taking him like four rounds later than he was going last season. Love JD Martinez this year. He's going to be on a ton of my Yahoo teams.

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