Fantasy Baseball: 10 Players Who Surprised Us in 2017

Zack Cozart, SS, Cincinnati Reds

Preseason ADP: 378.47

The 2016 season was a noteworthy one for Cincinnati Reds shortstop Zack Cozart. While his 91 wRC+ was still below average, it was the highest mark in his career when receiving a full season's worth of plate appearances. Furthermore, his 16 homers and .172 ISO were both new career highs. What was unfortunate about this campaign, though, was that he completely fell off after the All-Star break.

He had a 106 wRC+ and .215 ISO heading into the midsummer classic, but his season-long numbers took a hit once those numbers fell to 62 and .089, respectively, in the second half.

With an even better first half of play in 2017 (143 wRC+ and .231 ISO), it was easy to be a little skeptical of his value moving forward because we just saw what happened the year before. However, all Cozart did was basically duplicate those numbers (138 wRC+ and .277 ISO) off the strength of an increased fly-ball rate (37.6% to 48.1%) and pull rate (47.0% to 51.2%) while maintaining a similar hard-hit rate (31.2% to 30.3%).

This all sussed out to a 5.0-fWAR season, which was twice as valuable as his 2016 campaign. Cozart slashed .297/.385/.548 with 24 homers, 63 RBI, and 80 runs scored. And considering he was basically free on draft day, he managed to either perform just as well or better than a majority of the dudes that got selected before him at his position.