Fantasy Baseball
The new minor league season is upon us and with it comes the hopes of finding the next breakouts. While ideally we’d love to wait and see which hot starts are real, in competitive leagues we’re not afforded that luxury, so we have to act sooner than we’d probably like. I wanted to break down how I go about finding the pop up guys and what traits a player has to catch my attention.
Straight talk - prospecting is hard. It is time for us to accept this truth - we want believe we know so much more than we do. It is really hard to predict the future, and we are going to fail a lot. This is why it should come as no surprise that every year low minors prospects emerge from relative obscurity to make top 100 lists.
JP details 6 guys that could make the leap into the 2020 Top100.
My favorite part of prospecting outside of going to games, and wearing sweatpants on Sunday afternoons is digging for deep league target years before they pop onto the radar of your league mates. Sometimes I’ll spend three days digging through scouting reports and videos from the far corners of the internet. Other times I ask Barry Baker. Not kidding, follow Barry about 27% of the stuff that comes out of his twitter fingers isn’t crazy. That’s an exact figure BTW. Today we take a look at a dozen such players with varying levels of hype. Only two of these players made our top 300 and just barely. But all of these players have the ability to break out in the coming months and years ahead. These are the players I’m targeting this season.
Kris Dunn hosts as Prospect Live’s Jason Pennini and Ralph Lifshitz argue for and against the Pirates Mitch Keller as a top 100 prospect.
There’s moments in your life where you remember exactly where you were and what you were doing. There’s others that go beyond that, there’s some that begin a journey of sorts, large chunks of moments that stick with you for eternity. I had one of those moments recently, and it was the kind that began a journey in some ways. It was atypical Tuesday afternoon at my desk, sorting through emails, responding to clients, sneaking the faint glance at a video, article, twitter, etc. I checked my personal email, and immediately my eyes were drawn to an email from Jeff Erickson of Rotowire. I hadn’t had any correspondence whatsoever with Jeff in the past, so it had to be one of two things, 1. Jeff was commending me on my handsomeness (unlikely) or 2. I was getting the invite to Tout Wars in New York City!
We’ve been planting our flags, hyping up sleepers and being aggressive on our lists all offseason long. Now let’s take it to another level. With the digital ink below, we’re looking at bold predictions for hitters. Theoretically, none of what you read below should be an easy slam dunk. It should be close to absurd but have juuuuust enough leeway to make you say “Maybe?”.
These two third basemen are trending in opposite directions, it seems. Ke’Bryan Hayes is having himself a fantastic spring, showcasing power that many wondered if he really had. He’s getting ready to make the jump to Triple-A in 2019 where he’ll be 22 all year long and could be the full-time starter in 2020. Riley is about to turn 22 but already has 75 games at the highest minor league level, an accomplishment hard to overlook. There’s a little fatigue on him because he struggled with strikeouts in Triple-A (29 K%) and the Braves signed Josh Donaldson, essentially quelling all hopes of a call up in the early going (though there are reports he’s going to be tried in the outfield). But at the end of the day, these guys are both top 30 prospects, so where do we stand on them?
Hot off the heels of a pitching battle last week between two near-major league ready arms, we’re back on the mound, this time with two electric righties that have a little more lead time. Sixto Sanchez got shut down early last season for elbow troubles but in parts of four seasons, the Dominican righty has a 2.48 ERA, a 1.7 BB/9 and recently has began approaching a strikeout an inning. He’s been a staple in the top half of Top 100 lists for the last two years. Matt Manning is a little newer to the scene, breaking out in 2018, climbing from the Midwest League to the Eastern League and posting a 3.29 ERA, 11.8 K/9 and 3.9 BB/9, all as a 20-year-old. Let’s see where the crew stands between these two advanced righties.
In spring training Padres RHP Chris Paddack has come out pumping gas, showing off his impeccable command and even prompting manager Andy Green to wonder if he could break the rotation. With a major league ETA not far off, how far off is he from A’s LHP Jesus Luzardo, who is also expected to make his debut this year and his also getting spring training reps?
Kris Dunn (@KRSDunn) hosts as Lance Brozdowski (@LanceBroz) and Eddy Almaguer (@EddyAlmaguer) debate the Dodgers top middle infield prospect Gavin Lux. Take a listen as the boys battle it out.
