Now that we’ve hit the holidays and fantasy owners may be staring at a couple of four-day weekends so it might be time to cozy up with your favorite e-reader and bang out the 200+ pages of The Process. As memorable and life-altering as bowl games sponsored by credit unions, auto parts stores, and baked cheese crackers can be, this is a great time of year to take on such a project.
One of the biggest outfield chips on the market has landed as the Houston Astros inked Michael Brantley to a 2-year, $32 million dollar deal this week. Kiley nailed the AAV, but had Brantley getting 3/$48. The crowdsource also had him down for three years, but at $15 mil per. Brantley slots right into the left field opening, pushing Tony Kemp to the bench and clouding the outlook of prospect Kyle Tucker. More on that later, let’s look at Brantley first.
12/18/18
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PitcherList Mock Draft (#PLExpertsMock)
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The Indians, Rays and to everyone’s surprise, Mariners made a trade last week with the following final results:
For my analysis, I’m going to focus on just Diaz and Bauers. Both have shown great potential but their minor league results have not yet translated to the majors.
With Jason Kipnis and his $17M contract likely to play second and Jose Ramirez at third, Diaz wasn’t guaranteed to play in Clevland. He is now in Tampa.
A few days ago, I examined some later round NFBC picks trying to find players I prefer over others. I did rank 201 to 270. Today, I’ll continue the search from rank 271 to 350 with a later surprise.
Note: I don’t like the starters after Urias (#281) but many hitters are still interesting. If I’m in a deeper league, I may try to stock up on pitching before I get into this section of the draft.
271: Isiah Kiner-Falefa
272: Michael Wacha
273: Teoscar Hernandez
274: A.J. Minter
275: Jed Lowrie
276: Marco Gonzales
277: Trevor May
278: Drew Steckenrider
279: Adam Jones
280: Daniel Palka
12/14/18
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Notable Transactions/Rumors/Articles
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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.
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.
12/12/18
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CALL YOUR SHOT
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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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