Brian Dozier entered the 2018 season as one of the most stable power-speed options in the game. Among the 17 players with at least 50 HR and 50 SB from 2014-17, his 194 HR+SB placed him fourth behind only Jose Altuve (226), Mike Trout (216), and Charlie Blackmon (204). He only hit .254 during that four-year run, but 2016-17 were his two best seasons during the run and he actually hit .269 in those two seasons.

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11/16/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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PitcherList Mock Draft (#PLExpertsMock) – (2:30)

• Draft Board

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11/15/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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PitcherList Mock Draft (#PLExpertsMock)

• Draft Board
• Round by Round Review – First 9 Rounds

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Last week I wrote up the first 8 rounds of my NFBC draft from the Arizona Fall League and I did say rounds 9-23 would come on Wednesday… it is technically Wednesday so even though I clearly meant last Wednesday, let’s count it. It’s not like I didn’t write in the meantime, I did profiles on David Dahl (here), Harrison Bader (here), and Ronald Acuña Jr. (here), so feel free to check those out, too. At any rate, it’s time to finish up this draft recap so let’s roll!

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Ronald Acuña Jr. won the NL Rookie of the Year on Monday evening. That isn’t much of a surprise, but the fact that he ran away with it was kind of shocking. I didn’t see a major difference between Acuña and Juan Soto and could’ve truly seen the award going either way, so I was a little taken aback when Acuña nabbed 27 of the 30 first-place votes.

It wasn’t always a foregone conclusion that Acuña would be a ROY frontrunner this year as he had a .779 OPS in 129 PA before a left ACL sprain shelved him for a month. He took off when he returned, meeting and even exceeding the lofty expectations placed upon super-prospect. His numbers in the 82 games post-injury were probably good enough for the Rookie of the Year on their own and it’s why he has surged into the top 20 of early 2019 drafts.

Acuña put together a blistering .304/.380/.589 line with 21 HR, 51 RBI, 59 R, and 14 SB in 358 PA. Pace those out to a full season and you’re looking at 42-101-117-28. I’m not saying you should pace those numbers as a 2019 expectation, but rather I’m just showing how insane he was over the second half of the season.

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When tonight’s NL Rookie of the Year award is announced, Harrison Bader’s name will be mentioned in passing, if at all. The finalists are Ronald Acuña Jr., Juan Soto, and Walker Buehler so guys like Bader, Brian Anderson, and Jack Flaherty will likely only get a hat tip for their seasons before the winner is crowned.

In late-August, Jeff Sullivan did a great job highlighting Bader’s case for ROY based primarily on his excellent defense. That piece is definitely worth a look as Bader finished with 3.5 WAR, just behind the 3.7 that both Acuña and Soto logged, but I’ll be looking at his season from the fantasy angle and looking ahead to 2019.

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11/12/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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11/09/18

The latest episode of “The Sleeper and the Bust” is brought to you by Out of the Park Baseball 19, the best baseball strategy game ever made – available NOW on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms! Go to ootpdevelopments.com to order now and save 10% with the code SLEEPER19!

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• @sporer – Host
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Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles

• Mike Zunino/Mallex Smith trade (3:00)

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David Dahl first appeared on prospect lists back in 2013 as a top 60 entrant across the industry. Injuries limited him to just 10 games that year so he fell back to the bottom 30 on lists, but then inched back up for the 2015 and 2016 seasons, settling firmly in the top 50 before expiring his rookie status in the summer of ’16. He was again cut down by injuries for almost an entire season when he played just 19 games in 2017. He found his way back on the MLB roster this year in late-April, but again found himself bit by the injury bug as a fractured foot ate up two months in the middle of the season.

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Can you believe it’s already November? I always lament the end of the season, but the gold lining is my annual trip to the Arizona Fall League for BaseballHQ’s First Pitch Forum event. This was my 10th year attending, and I absolutely love it.

Not only do we get to watch live baseball from some of the best prospects in baseball, but there’s also nonstop fantasy baseball talk as well as the beginning of a 50-round draft and hold NFBC league. We run the first 23 rounds live in Arizona and then pick it up in January online for the final 27. Let’s take a closer look at the team I put together on Friday night.

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