The sleeper tag is one that can be applied to any player, depending on the context of how that player might be “sleeping”. I wrote earlier this month about what constitutes a sleeper for these Saturday articles. For me, it’s largely a prospect who falls outside of the top 30, though that isn’t universal.
Not everyone follows the minor league system. There are a large majority of Pittsburgh Pirates fans, and fans of every other Major League team, who can’t name a single prospect. They couldn’t even do it before Paul Skenes arrived in the majors. As such, a “sleeper” to these fans could be any prospect who turns into a Major Leaguer.
This is a prospect site, and if you’re reading this, you dive deeper in knowledge than the majority of fans. Especially if you’re one of the site’s Patreon supporters who gets to read this full article. Your version of a sleeper is likely to fall outside of the top 10, top 30, or further down, depending on how deep of a dive you take.
When does a player stop sleeping? That’s the question today.
Charles McAdoo is a great player to start to formulate an answer. I wrote about McAdoo as a sleeper last month, while he was crushing the ball in High-A. He ended up batting .336/.415/.561 with nine homers in 258 plate appearances. The Pirates promoted him to Double-A, and in his first six games, McAdoo is batting .292/.393/.708.
I’ll have updated prospect rankings next week, and McAdoo is likely to jump from his spot already inside my top 30. I had him in my “System Depth” tier, as a guy who could one day serve as MLB depth. McAdoo gets the sleeper tag on hopes that he can be more than a depth option, emerging to a future regular in the majors. He also gets the tag because he’s a 13th rounder out of college, so expectations were much lower than what we’ve seen from him so far.
Watching McAdoo hit in Double-A is encouraging. As a 13th rounder out of college, the results against upper level pitching provide more comfort in projecting his future. He’s still a sleeper in terms of projecting him as a future starter in the majors, but every hit at this level and beyond causes him to wake up a bit more to that future possibility.
Luis Peralta is another player I’ve written about in the last month.
