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Nick Mariano's 2026 fantasy baseball late-round draft fliers and lotto tickets. His favorite upside fantasy baseball sleepers and values to target late in drafts.
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Much is made about your first few picks, with screenshots of those original five picks setting social media alight, but we can't pass up the value found with a good run of late-round lotto tickets! This exercise sets out to identify players with 12-team appeal that tend to be around in the final rounds.
There's going to be some crossover between "fliers" and "sleepers," but the idea that you are winning with late picks persists. For my articles, a sleeper tends to be one that you hold more belief in, while fliers should give us early indicators to judge whether they're holds or our drop for early waiver priorities.
This could take the form of spring training reps or proving their health throughout February and March. It's all relative, so you must go into this with your league's parameters in mind as we aim for a minimum ADP of around 200 according to recent consensus ADP data from Yahoo and NFBC as of March 7.
Late-Round Draft Fliers - Hitters
Catcher: Kyle Teel (C14, CHW) – ADP: 208 (Shame about the hamstring. Still a fine waiver stash with a mid-April return, but we'll pivot.)
After a strong .886 OPS shown over 50 Triple-A games for the White Sox, Teel was promoted, only to hit .232 with a .290 slugging percentage over 87 plate appearances. He did prove to have an MLB-caliber eye, logging a 16% walk rate in that span for a .372 on-base percentage. The youngster rebounded with a .288/.376/.457 over 210 PAs after the All-Star break.
He also posted 12 steals in 112 minor-league games for the Red Sox in 2024, which he followed up with seven swipes in those 50 games for the White Sox before the call-up. This led to going 3-for-4 on attempts in the majors, which has room to grow with experience. They appear to have both C and designated hitter spots for Teel, Edgar Quero, and Korey Lee.
Bonus Catcher Who Isn't Hurt: Dillon Dingler (C16, DET) - ADP: 193
Dingler flexed tremendous defensive value behind the dish for Detroit while making serious strides in the batter's box. In his first full season, Dingler's .290 expected batting average was in the top 3% of MLB hitters (.278 AVG), and this followed his .308/.379/.559 slash line at Triple-A in 2024.
MLB saw 215 hitters with at least 400 plate appearances last year, with Dingler's 30.4% line-drive rate coming in second, just behind Jonathan Aranda. Someone flashing that kind of tool as a rookie becomes intriguing, especially if he builds on the above-average ~20% pull AIR rate and ups the power output a touch.
First Base: Jac Caglianone (1B22/OF56, KC) – ADP: 196 / Bryce Eldridge (1B35, SF) - ADP: 319
Caglianone’s red-hot ascension at Double-A and Triple-A (.337/.408/.617 with 20 HRs through 66 games) ran into a brick wall upon reaching the majors. The star rookie ran an icy .172 BABIP en route to a miserable .157/.237/.295 slash line, but the .237 xBA and .431 xSLG were more forgiving.
He also hit the IL with a hamstring strain in late July and got the rest of August to reset at Triple-A after the tough-luck start (he hit .385 with five HRs and five doubles in 16 games there). The guy even had to make history just to clear the fence for the first time!
Jac Caglianone crushed the highest pitch a player has hit for his first career home run in the Statcast Era (since 2015).
(MLB x @GoogleCloud) pic.twitter.com/WomUaKYaEC
— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) June 20, 2025
Even with the rotten luck, Cags generated a 12% barrel rate and flashed a top 10% maximum exit velocity of 114.1 mph. Of 348 batters with at least 200 PAs, Caglianone held a top 50 EV50 rate (102.9 mph), the seventh-fastest bat speed (77.4), and had the largest negative gap between his BA - xBA (80 points) and SLG - xSLG (136). Brutal.
He and Nick Kurtz had drastically different rookie experiences after crushing the minors, as the Athletic phenom is a second-round pick, and here we are in the 200s. I’m not writing off the Kansas City top prospect after a relatively short period of turbulence, especially with Kauffman Stadium’s walls coming in.
