This 30-part series will look at the projected Top 5 freshman contributors for each big league club for the year ahead. The rankings take into consideration a mixture of ceiling, readiness and potential playing time allocation, which is to say some players with lower ceilings may be ranked ahead of others with higher ceilings because they project to have a greater impact in the coming season.

In a Nutshell: The third base and second base positions likely represent the biggest holes. The Marlins have some intriguing catchers coming up through the system.

1. Andrew Heaney, LHP: The Marlins will, at some point in 2015, receive ace Jose Fernandez back from Tommy John surgery. However, the rotation is young and relatively unproven meaning there could be plenty of opportunities for inexperienced but promising pitchers like Heaney. The left-handed starter isn’t flashy but he operates a three-pitch mix that plays up due to his above-average command and control.

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Episode 178

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is live!

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix talk strategy; the re-signing of Victor Martinez; the Devon Travis–Anthony Gose trade; Yoan Moncada; Kwang-Hyun Kim; a Twitter question about head-to-head leagues; and, of course, outfielders! The end-of-season OF rankings went up this past Monday. Under discussion: Michael Brantley; Charlie Blackmon and Corey Dickerson; and Matt Kemp, for starters.

As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions so that we may answer them in our next episode.

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• MLB and USA Baseball finally came out with their PitchSmart program for high school age and younger kids to help prevent future pitcher injuries especially Tommy John surgery.

Through decades of research, experts have gained insight into the behaviors that put amateurs at an increased risk of injury. In the most recent nationwide study of youth pitchers, research found that youth pitchers were still exhibiting many of these risky behaviors, all of which were associated with increased likelihood of pitching with arm tiredness and arm pain.

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This 30-part series will look at the projected Top 5 freshman contributors for each big league club for the year ahead. The rankings take into consideration a mixture of ceiling, readiness and potential playing time allocation, which is to say some players with lower ceilings may be ranked ahead of others with higher ceilings because they project to have a greater impact in the coming season.

In a Nutshell: The rope that’s tying B.J Upton to the Braves’ center-field gig has to be thinly frayed at this point. As well, you have to figure the club isn’t 100% sold on sophomore-to-be Tommy La Stella and his ‘meh’ defense at second base.

1. Jose Peraza, 2B/SS: This young Venezuelan’s game took a big step forward in the second half of 2013 and he earned the No. 3 ranking on the Braves’ pre-2014 prospect list at FanGraphs. The middle infielder’s strong play continued into 2014 and he is now the best prospect in the system and could push incumbent second baseman Tommy LaStella (a rookie himself in ’14) to more of a part-time role. Peraza, 20, has a chance to develop into a top-of-the-order threat with a strong batting average and 30+ steals.

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Allen Craig stunk in 2014. We all saw it. He stunk for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stunk even more for the Boston Red Sox. He stunk all season for fantasy baseball players, for whom he lost money, and ended up in the hundreds among outfielders. A regular. The only guy who accumulated 500-plus plate appearances this past season and finished ranked in the hundreds.

Is that it, then? Does he just stink now? It’s possible. Maybe even likely. Perhaps close to definite. But we don’t know. I don’t think that we can know. At least not yet.

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I remember walking into a Phoenix area bar to meet my FanGraphs colleagues last spring. It was a convergence of baseball nerdery rivaled only by the SABR conference across town. Someone started talking about J.D. Martinez. He had changed his swing over the offseason and could tap into his latent power with a clean, easy stroke. The Astros were going to be pleasantly surprised.

It turned out that the Astros had already moved on internally. They weren’t willing to give Martinez another shot, but they were nice enough to grant his release rather than force him to drown at the bottom of the depth chart. And that’s how he latched on with the Tigers.

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Because I’m apparently a fan of writing about high upside young outfielders whose seasons were marred by injuries, I have to discuss another one in Wil Myers. We all knew about Myers shooting up the prospect lists based on his minor league performances through 2012. But he became much more of a household name after being traded from the Royals to the Rays after the 2012 season in a blockbuster for James Shields. He continued to mash at Triple-A the following year with his new organization, which earned him a promotion to the Majors, debuting in mid-June.

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Despite playing his age-35 season, Jayson Werth posted another strong fantasy season. His .292/.394/.455 line equated to a 141 wRC+ and he posted the fifth highest qualified on-base percentage in the league. Unfortunately his days of 20 steals are probably gone, but Werth did chip in nine steals and was only caught once. Rather than his speed deteriorating, the most alarming issue may be that even though he appeared 147 games, Werth managed just 16 home runs. Even without his normal 20+ dingers Werth managed to finish in the top-20 of Zach Sanders’ 2014 outfield rankings.
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For those rare few of you who follow me personally, you may have noticed that I’ve written an ottoneu topic about once a week. This is, in fact, by design. Presently, the topic du jour is “arbitration,” which ends on Friday, November 14.

However, I appear to have exhausted all topics related to arbitration – at least those that interest me. Fortunately, I am a fan of omnibuses (omnibi?), and it seems like the perfect time to create one for ottoneu arbitration. If you still need to make or tinker with your arbitration choices, the following content should prove educational.

There are two systems of arbitration: voting and allocation. Most leagues use allocations. An asterisk indicates that the article is intending for voting leagues. I’ve organized the omnibus into sections: intro, intermediate, and advanced.

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I was wrong about Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Starling Marte. Last December, I wrote up Marte, and determined he “may be in for a precipitous fall next season.” Boy, was I wrong on that. Marte had the finest season of his young career, solidifying himself as one of the better young outfielders in the game. Looking over that article now, I realize that while the research seemed to fit, I let my personal biases color my evaluation of Marte. So, consider this an apology if you avoided Marte on my recommendation. Let’s try to avoid this mistake again.

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