When it comes to fantasy baseball, not all prospects are created equally. In keeper leagues and dynasty leagues it’s important to have strategies around your prospects; you don’t want to just randomly grab a Top 10 or 20 prospect and hope for the best.

Along with skill, knowing a player’s ETA is key. Is the player advanced enough to help in 2016… or is he headed for a 2019 debut? Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a talented dude but he’s not likely to visit the Great White North until 2020. Chicago (AL) drafted Carson Fulmer in 2015 with the eighth overall pick but he’s considered advanced enough to perhaps help the club in ’17. And then there’s Colorado’s Trevor Story, who is likely to turn the Jose Reyes soap opera and a strong spring into a ’16 starting gig.

As a result, your strategy around acquiring prospects should vary. If you’re grabbing a guy earmarked to help in 2017 or later, you should look at them like a stock — an investment that you hope to see increase in value before you cash out (either by adding to your active roster or by trading for an opportunity to win sooner). You also have to consider if you’re truly committed to a long-range prospect and willing to commit a roster spot to someone who may not help for three or four years — if at all. Prospects with a ’16 or ’17 should be viewed as players that can be valuable (albeit potentially inconsistent) contributors to the current makeup of your roster at a reasonable cost.

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Matthew Dewoskin and I are the hosts of the Field of Streams podcast that runs here Monday through Friday at RotoGraphs during the season, but we wanted to get in on the excitement that is Bold Predictions for the first time. We went halfsies though, so you get five from each of us.

1. Matt: Bud Norris will out earn every other Braves starter.

What this pick boils down to is Bud Norris will have a better year than Julio Teheran, which isn’t nearly as farfetched as their ages and draft status make it seem.

Norris has spent the majority of his career pitching for the Astros in full rebuild-mode, and the Baltimore Orioles. The same Orioles that have to face the Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays and Rays about 752 times every season. Norris has maintained his 93 MPH+ velocity into his early thirties, and now gets to face a pitchers’ spot and contend with the Marlins, Phillies, Mets and Nats. Norris has maintained a K/9 in the 7.5 range with a BB/9 in the 2.80-3.4 range for the past several years, while his GB% has increased every season since 2012. This adds up to a pitcher capable of posting quality numbers, but his situation had more to do with his mediocre results.

Teheran is coming off the worst season of his young career with 4.04 ERA with a 3.27 BB/9, but, more disturbingly, he’s coming off a season in which he threw his slider 23.2% of the time. On it’s own heavy slider usage isn’t necessarily a red flag, but combining his pitch mix with the drop in velocity and poor performance, it should raise a few eyebrows.

Teheran should be a stay away unless he comes at a steep discount, but Norris is worth a late round flyer for fantasy GMs looking to round out a pitching staff.

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At every level, Preston Tucker has hit.

From winning Freshman Hitter of the Year at the University of Florida to setting school returns in total hits to leading the Houston Astros organization in hits during his first full minor league season to producing over half a rookie season in 2015, Tucker has hit everywhere he’s gone. At no stop in the minor leagues did he produce below-average results at the dish, and he’s consistently – and quickly – adjusted to each new level.

Each season, he’s begun the year repeating his prior level, then advanced. After his successful major-league debut, the pattern calls for Tucker to repeat with the Astros, then ascend to some yet-to-be-seen level beyond MLB, perhaps beyond baseball. But not even Tucker, who’s hit everywhere he’s gone despite middling prospect status, can hit from the bench.
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3/24/16

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

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Strategy Section

• We dissect and review Jason’s AL Tout Wars Team for the bulk of the show and finish with some musings from the NL which he sat in on as the chat operator.
• Jason’s written review for Rotowire
• Tout Wars Auction Boards
• How to Create a Position Cheatsheet by Tanner Bell

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As usual, don’t hesitate to tweet us or comment with fantasy questions.

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Approximately 80 minutes of joyous analysis.

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• Tomorrow, March 25th, is the date when most players who start the season on the Disabled List get their DL stints backdated to. Being able to backdate the DL days means players can have shorter DL stints when the season starts.

• Andre Ethier will be out two to four months with a fractured leg.

Dodger’s outfielder Andre Ethier has a broken leg and will be sidelined 10-14 weeks. Ethier suffered the injury fouling a pitch off his leg on Friday.

Initial x-rays were negative, but continued pain led to a bone scan on Monday that revealed the right tibia fracture that the club announced Tuesday afternoon. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said the injury is not expected to require surgery.

“Obviously it’s a freakish injury,” Friedman said. “We’ll re-X-ray it in four to five weeks and to the extent it’s healing properly, it might be sooner. If not, it might be longer. The range is not incredibly precise.”

This move solidifies Joc Pederson in the outfield and may bring Carl Crawford and/or Scott Van Slyke off the bench.

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ZiPS hates him and Steamer thinks he will be exactly average, albeit in limited plate appearances, but signs are pointing in the right direction for Travis Shaw. Shaw is currently competing for regular plate appearances with Pablo Sandoval at third base. He was expected to get some work in left field but that has apparently either been halted or nixed as he continues his battles with Sandoval at the hot corner. While that can be seen as a negative in his overall utility, I see it as a positive in the likelihood of him taking plate appearances away from Sandoval.
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There is a time and place to be bold. Perhaps that time is now and that place is here. Perhaps not. It’s also said the meek shall inherit the earth. I’ve always taken that to mean you should hide in a bomb shelter during a nuclear holocaust rather than fighting and looting in the streets. It may also mean your best chance to win your fantasy league is to take no chances.

What follows are my 10 timid predictions for the 2016 season.

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I’ve been thinking about Wade Davis and Joe Kelly lately. Davis started 29 games in back to back seasons for the Rays in 2010 and 2011, striking out fewer than six batters per nine and putting up FIPs and xFIPs in the neighborhood of 4.70. The next season, the Rays moved Davis to the bullpen where he struck out more than 11 batters per nine and produced a 2.78 FIP. After trading for Davis that offseason, the Royals tried Davis at starter again for much of the 2013 season with poor results, and they’ve put him the bullpen ever since, where he’s again become dominant.

Davis and Kelly aren’t the same pitcher. Kelly throws much harder than Davis did as a starter and has a four-pitch repertoire that includes a change-up. However, both pitchers use a four-seamer, a slider or cutter, and a curveball and have most of their success with their fastballs. Meanwhile, Kelly shows similar and similarly underwhelming strikeout rates as Davis did as a starter. Kelly has had FIPs and xFIPs over 4.00 in each of his four seasons. That’s 461.2 innings of mediocre results, but the Red Sox seem to be planning to rely on Kelly as a starter again in 2016.

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I love Bold Prediction season here at FanGraphs. Everyday I am hit with dozens of interesting, exciting and unique predictions, almost all of which will be wrong, but almost all of which will contain a nugget of truth that will make me a smarter fantasy player. Plus, I get to make crazy predictions!

But in looking back, I realized I have a tendency to be overly positive. In four years doing Bold Predictions, I have put out 33 positive posits and only seven negative notions. This year, we restore balance! One other change this year – I have been tracking the Bold Predictions of my fellow Rotographers, and any player I am predicting that they already predicted, I will be bolder.

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Let’s go picking and panning once again, this time at the second base position. The updated RotoGraphs consensus rankings, from which I am comparing mine to the rest of the gang’s, are here.

For the second base position, my Picks will only include those in my top 20 and my Pans will only include those in the Consensus top 20.

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