- Ichiro Suzuki - His contact rate was in line with his career average (90 percent), and he stole 40 bases in 47 attempts. He's in no danger of losing playing time, and he?s completely healthy.
- Derek Jeter - Jeter was actually better in 2011 than he was in 2010, but no one seems to notice, as he's fallen off so much from his monster year in 2009. It's easy to call the 37-year old a player in decline, but his 2011 rate stats (.297/.355/.388) are just about the same as they were in 2008 (.300/.363/.408). People were saying he was on an irreversible downward slope then, too. The bottom line - he hits at the top of the best lineup in baseball in a hitter's park and has no chance of losing his job. He also qualifies at shortstop.
- Justin Morneau - He may not ever make it back, but he's finally healthy (aside from the concussion), and his cost is minimal. The cost/benefit in most cases makes him a good gamble.
- Alex Rodriguez - He fell off the map last year, then went to Germany to get an experimental procedure done on his knee. The treatment worked for Kobe Bryant, and like Jeter, Rodriguez benefits from the players around him, his lock on a starting job and his home ballpark. This is the first year you can get one of the all-time run producers at a serious discount.
- Jason Heyward - He was one of the best prospects of the last five years, and delivered an .849 OPS at age 20 as a rookie despite playing through injuries. Those injuries derailed him completely last year, but he's mostly healthy now, and there's no reason to discount him much beyond last year's 4th-round price.
Other players:
Phil Hughes, Rafael Furcal, Alex Rios, Ted Lilly, Jake Peavy, Joe Nathan, Brandon Belt, Chone Figgins, Adam Dunn and Martin Prado.
Not all of these players will pan out of course, but if you were to invest in all of them as a portfolio across several of your leagues, I'd expect you to make a significant net profit, simply because players coming off bad years tend to be disproportionately discounted relative to their current abilities. After all, you're not paying for last year's numbers - you're paying for what the guy who happened to have last year's numbers will do in 2012.