MLB

Fantasy Baseball: 10 Players Who Surprised Us in 2017

Yonder Alonso wasn't on many fantasy baseball radars prior to the 2017 season, but a completely revamped approach help him drastically outperform his draft-day cost.

So much blood, sweat, and tears go into fantasy baseball draft-day prep. We spend our free time throughout the winter -- you know, when we're not managing our fantasy football teams -- trying to figure out which studs are the right ballplayers to trust and which sleepers could come out of nowhere to fortify what we're convinced will be an already solid squad.

As we all know, though, uncovering those sleeper picks is just as important as nabbing the right studs. And even if it doesn't happen on draft day, watching certain early-season trends like a hawk and capitalizing on the waiver wire can make a tremendous difference in a fantasy performance.

None of the following 10 players were taken within the first 150 picks prior to Opening Day, and all but one fell outside the top 300, according to National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) data. That didn't stop each of them from having a great season.