On Wednesday, the Angels signed Justin Bour to a one-year deal. After a mini-breakout in 2017 when he hit .289 with 25 homers, his batting average dropped to .227 with only 20 home runs in more plate appearances last season. This signing made perfect sense for the Angels who will have Shohei Ohtani rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and Albert Pujols being a member of the walking dead. Overall, this move just about killed what little value any fantasy the three had in weekly leagues but could make them sleepers in daily lineup leagues.

The biggest key is to understand the risk behind each player and let’s start off with the one who has the most questions surrounding him, Ohtani. He’s also considered a safe pick by some analysts. According to reports, he should be able to contribute sooner than the normal nine to 10 months timeline for most hitters returning from the surgery because he’ll only DH.

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We didn’t get a lot of earth-shattering moves at the Winter Meetings, but there was impactful activity, including a host of starting pitchers on the move. Al Melchior will be covering Lance Lynn’s deal with Texas soon and Mike Podhorzer had a piece on Tyson Ross, Ivan Nova, and Tanner Roark, so I’ve got the Charlie Morton and J.A. Happ signings for you.

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12/12/18

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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• Original Tweet and Comments

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The current fantasy focus is evaluating the top-100 or so players, especially the first couple rounds. I’m going to deep dive and investigate some later round values.  I will group 10 players together and pick which one I would take earlier than the others.

201: Arodys Vizcaino
202: Jonathan Schoop
203: Kevin Gausman
204: Luke Voit
205: Chris Taylor
206: Jake Arrieta
207: Forrest Whitley
208: Ross Stripling
209: Odubel Herrera
210: Yusei Kikuchi

There are several players I really like in this group like Taylor, Stripling, and Herrera but easily the best bargain is Kikuchi.

Kikuchi isn’t on par with Asian imports Ohtani or Darvish but he’s still extremely talented. He’s considered to be a better talent than Miles Mikolas and Mikolas is going 86th overall. I believe once Kikuchi signs and everyone gets to know him, his ADP will be cut in half and around a top-100 pick, if not double digits.
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I’m a little weary of the Hot Stove season until about 80% of the free agents have signed. Team compositions change so fast that research done one day is irrelevant the next. Instead of wasting my energy, I normally focus on other topics and wait for everything to settle down and come into focus. Like, how much will Manny Machado’s value change if he signs with the Phillies or the Yankees? Or even the White Sox? Not much if his profile was written now or right after his season ended. He’s still going to be valued in the top-20 picks.

It’s hard sometimes for baseball fans, who play fantasy baseball, to differentiate the general excitement around a baseball move to one that makes a legitimate change in value.

That being said, some free agent signings do have a little more variance depending on where the player signs Jonathan Schoop and Nathan Eovaldi are two such players. Both maxed out their value with their recent signings. Here are my two cents on each.
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12/07/18

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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• Paul Goldschmidt trade to STL (9:00)
• Patrick Corbin to WAS (26:50)

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This study came about from a comment made in passing by Jeff Erikson and Scott Jenstad in a RotoWire podcast. They were discussing how they were worried more about hitters who were striking out on fastballs instead of breaking balls. They figured it was worse to strikeout on fastballs and it showed the hitter was in decline. I don’t remember the exact show but I agreed and now have time verify. And as usual, the pair was right with three-hitter groups differentiating themselves from the pack.

The first key was that I wasn’t interested in the batter ability to tell balls from strikes. Instead, I wanted to focus on pitches right down the heart of the plate while keeping the strike zone as big as possible to increase the sample size. In the end, the taken pitches in the zone used were called strikes 97% of the time.

Next, I found the swinging strike rate for pitches in the strike zone. I grouped the pitches into several groups.

• All fastballs
• Fastballs > 94 mph
• Fastball < 94 mph
• All non-fastball
• All changeups including splitters
• All breaking balls

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Paul Goldschmidt is off to the Midwest!

Source: Arizona Paul Goldschmidt has been traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. Luke Weaver, Carson Kelly, Andy Young and a draft pick are headed back.

Quite a haul for Arizona.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 5, 2018

The 31-year old first baseman is being dealt for Luke Weaver, Carson Kelly, Andy Young, and compensation pick as you can see in that Passan tweet above. Once the rumors started, this made a ton of sense to me. Goldy just feels like a Cardinals player. So much so that I wouldn’t even be surprised if they re-sign him after this season.

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Merrill Kelly

The Diamondbacks signed Merrill Kelly after Kelly spent four years in the Korea Baseball Organization. I never heard of Kelly until the signing some it’s time to put together a profile for him.

First, here’s a tweet from Homin on Kelly’s profile:

KBO season ended. Merrill Kelly, former #rays prospect will play MLB next year. 92-94 mph FB, cutter, two-seam, CH, CV. Various pitches. No plus pitch, but reliable pitcher. Could be good long RP at mlb level. #rays are scouting him heavily.

— Homin Lee (@Homein22) November 13, 2018

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Reports are out that Patrick Corbin has pulled a stunner and will sign not with the Yankees nor the Phillies, but the Washington Nationals in a six-year, $140 million dollar deal (with no opt-outs):

Source confirms that Patrick Corbin's six-year deal with the Washington Nationals is for $140 million.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 4, 2018

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