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 Reds’ left-field picture currently looks like a dog’s breakfast and I remain (perhaps in the minority) a non-believer in Billy Hamilton as an impact starter in the outfield. The infield is more or less set for Cincinnati. No team has too much pitching, so there is always a need there…

1. Jesse Winker, OF: Missed time in 2014 slowed Winker’s timetable but he still has a shot at receiving meaningful at-bats for the Reds in 2015. The club currently has a gaping hole in left field and a trade of Jay Bruce could create another hole in right field. He offers strong on-base skills and solid power potential. A left-handed hitter, he handled southpaws very well in 2014, which bodes well for playing time projections.

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Two things make it hard for me to justify spending precious auction dollars on starting pitching. I touched on this topic in my conclusion to yesterday’s Madison Bumgarner post, so let’s just pick up where I left off.

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A 7.25 ERA in a season can do wonders for your sleeper status. Mike Fiers can attest to that. Fiers was limited to just 22.1 major league innings in 2013 after a batted ball struck and broke his arm, but that was enough time for him to allow eight home runs and 18 earned runs. It’s a pretty alarming streak, especially for a former 22nd-round draft pick who tops out just shy of 90 mph. Perhaps that’s why I can’t find Fiers in the top 250 for 2015 on ESPN or anywhere else I look.

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It was a tough year for my fantasy teams and various preseason predictions. But there was at least one bright spot and it came in the form of Carlos Carrasco. I had been touting him since April of 2013 and I proved to be a year early. We have written a lot of Carrasco this season, and for good reason.

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Episode 181

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

Eno Sarris and Nicholas Minnix talk about, among other newsy topics, the trade of Josh Donaldson for Brett Lawrie, Franklin Barreto, and others, as well as the Nelson Cruz, Kyle Seager, Yasmany Tomas, and Torii Hunter agreements. We also delve into end-of-season SP rankings, which went up on Monday. We discuss Julio Teheran, Andrew Cashner, Drew Hutchison, and the faulty top-25 pitchers on the list.

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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Lance Lynn did it. He held down left-handed batters a little more often in 2014. Those freaks hit .243/.325/.372 in 378 plate appearances, for a .314 wOBA (26 points better than last year’s rate, which was also an upgrade to the previous season’s), against the St. Louis Cardinals’ right-hander this year. That, my friends, is about league average for batters from the north. And that is really all this hurler needed in order for him to be good instead of fantasy-league-average, or even league-average. He overcame his fatal flaw.

As a result, Lynn was, for fantasy baseball players, a top-25 starting pitcher by the standards of Sr. Zach Sanders. Overall, the pitcher struck out men less frequently this year, but he still fanned more than 20% of those he faced, and, once again, he also walked them less often. These leaps forward helped him to post a 2.74 ERA, a 1.26 WHIP, and, yet again, 15 wins. He earned double-digit dollars in mixed leagues in a season for the first time.

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It is no secret around these digital pages just how big of an Andrew Cashner fan I am. That being said, yet again his season was cut short due to injury. This year it was elbow soreness that caused him to miss three weeks in late May and early June. Just two starts after being activated, Cashner once again found himself on the disabled list, this time with inflammation in his shoulder. Given his extensive history of shoulder issues, the San Diego Padres played it safe and kept him on the shelf for over two months.
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If you’ve had the misfortune to be stricken by amnesia, allow me to remind you – Madison Bumgarner was fantastic this postseason. Per a pet statistic called ChampAdded, he was responsible for about 90 percent of the Giants’ World Series victory. In a sense, I’ve already written about Bumgarner this winter. Now is a good time to share the results from the question I asked one month ago – how much would you pay for him?

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Oakland Athletics pitcher Scott Kazmir did it again. After an amazing comeback in 2013, Kazmir proved his gains were legitimate. Kazmir not only improved his ERA and FIP during the second year of his comeback, but managed to stay healthy enough to log 190.1 innings. The only time Kazmir have ever thrown more innings was back in 2007. On top of all that, Kazmir is 31, meaning he’s not necessarily a candidate for decline just yet.

We can’t just push aside Kazmir’s past, though. Injuries defined his early career, forcing him out of the game during the 2011 season. That year, he was topping out at 88 mph on his sinker, according to BrooksBaseball.net. While the comeback has been inspiring, Kazmir is still an issue with a lot of baggage. Can fantasy owners trust him moving forward?

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After undergoing Tommy John surgery over the summer of 2012, Drew Hutchison returned to the mound the following year, making 15 starts in the minors. Then in 2014, he arrived to spring training supposedly throwing harder. The positive news got me excited, and intrigued me to the point that I boldly predicted he would win a rotation spot and earn positive 12-team mixed league fantasy value.

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