We don’t do waves in the Midwest.
It’s caused a problem for me this week. Would be so much easier to just say there’s a wave headed straight for Kansas City.
In 2018, Royals’ General Manager Dayton Moore had a draft class that could define his organization’s decade. The pressure was on as he’d gained picks from the free agent core exodus, and the organization was staring into the abyss.
Premium college pitching was falling.
It didn’t seem to fit with Kansas City’s positional needs.
But Moore leaned in, took what fell, and built a wave of pitching talent that has succeeded so far. In Singer, Kowar, Lynch, Bowlan and Bubic, Moore might’ve built a full rotation in a day. Might’ve drafted the best pitching class in the club’s history.
Since that fateful day in 2018, the Royals have unearthed Adalberto Mondesi, Jorge Soler, and Hunter Dozier and might themselves be contending again way before anyone would have guessed.
Kansas City’s best prospects are mostly these recent additions that quickly leapt the names we’ve been accustomed to seeing on this list. Nick Pratto was the 14th overall pick in 2017, but he’s a first baseman who hit .197 in High A. He was young for the level, but I’m not pounding the table for a decent hit, decent power first baseman who hasn’t hit as a professional. Seuly Matias was somehow even worse, striking out 44.3 percent of the time while hitting .148 and slugging .307. They might both be decent free agent adds at the moment, but you can’t trade for them or trade them away.
For our game, the tacit appeal of Kansas City prospects remains Dayton Moore’s steadfast commitment to his guys. When/if they reach the majors, they will get a lot of opportunities to fail. Whit Merrifield wasn’t an accident to Moore. Drafted in 2010, Merrifield spent seven seasons in the organization before hitting two home runs and stealing eight bases in 81 games with a .323 on-base percentage as a rookie. Not a loud debut for a 27-year-old rookie. But then Whit got steady playing time in 2017 and went nuts: 19 HR 34 SB.
It pays to keep an eye on their upper minors, is all I’m saying, and their slow-burn youngsters. From Mondesi to Merrifield to Dozier to whoever might step forward in 2020, Kansas City has been a sneaky source for value these past few years. I’m worried about the role Ned Yost played in these Soler-ish breakouts. I’m just recklessly speculating from a distance here, but Yost seems like a major dude who exudes positive energy, while Matheny seems to prefer more of a flexed rectum lifestyle. Could be he’s loosened up some. Could be he was already loose, and my perspective is too distant to have any accuracy.
See all of today’s starting lineups
| # |
|
ARI | ATL | BOS | CHC | CLE | COL | DET | HOU | KC | LAA | MIA | MIL | NYM | NYY | PHI | PIT | SD | SEA | SF | STL | TEX | WSH | ATH | BAL | CHW | CIN | LAD | MIN | OAK | TB | TOR |
Don't think I or anyone else has ever written an Andrew Heaney sleeper post. Pretty sure I'm the first one ever to consider Andrew Heaney great value late in fantasy baseball drafts. *explodes in laughter* I'm just messin'. So, obviously, I write an Andrew Heaney sleeper post every year, and everyone likely does too. Just today, fantasy-baseball-were-geniuses-how-do-you-put-an-apostrophe-in-a-URL dot com posted their Andrew Heaney sleeper post, and tomorrow another three Andrew Heaney sleeper posts will drop, including one at fantasy-baseball-we-are-geniuses dot com and fantasy-baseball-wow-we're-so-good-at-this dot com. It's well-worn ground, which means we're all crumby in the head with crackers or we might be onto something. Like a teamster having a cigarette, I'm leaning on the latter. Last year, Heaney went 4-6/4.91/1.29/118 in 95 1/3 IP because my man can never stay healthy. He was promoted in 2014 and has had exactly zero years of 200 IP. Therefore, ergo, vis-a-vie, he has to stay healthy for value, right? No, if that was all there was to say, I wouldn't be here. Anyway, what can we expect from Andrew Heaney for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
This feels like a limb that could snap at any moment. Is Frankie Montas a sleeper? Yes. Do I 100% trust him? No, my Trust% is less than 100. (Baseball Prospectus has Trust% abbreviated as TrustFall% and FanGraphs has TrustFall% but doesn't include gravity, so people trust fall and then float about five inches off the ground. You can see TrustFall% graphs at Brooks Baseball too. Okay, stepping away from my Ted Talk about baseball stat acronyms...) Guess for my Trust% to be at 100, the sleeperitude of a player would tumble (unless there was no gravity--okay, really moving on now). Much like your great Aunt Gloria, who had her knee reconstructed, I'm going to recap. Last year, Frankie Montas was having a breakout year. Times were good. His friends and family threw him a ticker tape parade with torn-up lottery tickets. Montas was even asked to give a toast--Wait, I'm recapping an episode of Malcolm in the Middle with Frankie Muniz. Sorry. Montas was breaking out though: 9-2/2.63/1.11/103 in 96 IP. Best breakout since Benicio del Toro in Escape at Dannemora. But, much like the inmates at Dannemora, Montas was caught doing bad stuff, unlike del Toro, he wasn't mumbling. He was, "(S)uspended for using Ostarine, a selective androgen receptor modulator used in bodybuilding to increase strength and mass in lean muscles. It is capable of stimulating androgen receptors, steroid hormone receptors and mimicking testosterone." That's exhausting to just read! Do compound elements need to also be compound words? Discuss amongst yourselves! Anyway, what can we expect from Frankie Montas for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
Does anyone else feel like the Tigers have been tanking forever? I know it’s only been a few seasons, but they burned a couple years chasing the twilights of their veteran core. When you wait a long time to start the sell-off, the rebuild feels longer, I guess.
Detroit failed to get much for JD Martinez, Justin Verlander or Nick Castellanos when they finally did sell. They have very little positional talent in the system, which feels odd because they haven’t graduated anyone of note, so they don’t have positional talent in the majors either. It’s jarring to look around an entire organization and find zero long-term regulars. We can count Riley Greene if you want. Niko Goodrum, too, if you like.
Do you though?
CJ Cron was a good signing. Jonathan Schoop made sense. It’s smart for Detroit to be all over this corner of the market, but it’s even smarter to find the Travis Demerittes of the world. The 4A flier discount is a Dodger specialty that Farhan Zaidi has applied in San Francisco to decent effect already. I’d like to see Detroit exploit the AAA afterthoughts like all full rebuilds should be doing. It’s worth a lot more to unearth a player with years of cheap control than it is to give an average veteran a short-term gig hoping to flip him for low-level fliers at the deadline.
In my early days considering this system, I figured the Tigers would hold all their relevant prospects back until 2021, but after rolling around in the roster for a while, I decided that everyone who can help is probably coming up this year. It would be yet another narrative-leaning move rather than what seems best for winning in the long term, but it makes business sense. They risk losing fans if they play the timeline game on all their arms, and if they’re letting even one come to the big leagues, why not just bring them all up and enjoy the energy surge of having exciting young arms to watch every other day. If they fail, send them back down. The fans will be on board with the slow-burn at that point. Makes sense to dodge AAA with Mize, Manning and Skubal if at all possible, too. If you’re going to experience the juicy-ball confidence-death that awaits pitchers these days, why not let it happen at the big leagues to soothe the mind. Better to give up an oppo cheapie to Ronald Acuna Jr. than Yasmani Tomas, confidence-wise.
Generally, when it comes to closers I’m not interested in blowing too much draft capital. There are two reasons why. First, closers lose their jobs so frequently—by virtue of injury, poor high-leverage performance in small samples, or trade deadline deals—that it’s not worth investing too much draft capital in them. Second, because so many lose their jobs, others will always be available on the waiver wire at various times throughout the season. Look no further than 2019's top two closers who both lost their jobs: Edwin Diaz and Blake Treinen. They not only lost the closer role, but they also wasted top-75 picks for their fantasy owners.
Recently, I took part in a mock draft where I selected three closers:
Brad Hand,
Taylor Rogers, and
Ian Kennedy. I got them at picks 113, 176, and 224, respectively. After the draft,
I wrote about my picks, which required me to research them in greater detail. And diving deeper into Hand, Rogers, and Kennedy only strengthened my resolve not to draft closers early.
This Joe Musgrove sleeper is admittedly a bit of a stretch where some things just have to go right. Or rather, some things that have gone right in the past need to go right again in succession and just go ahead and name Shiv, you know you want to, Logan Roy. That's not a spoiler, because after a show ends, my brain wipes clean of everything that happened during a season like a specialized Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind if that's what it was and I haven't forgot that, as well. Just a cursory view of Joe Musgrove and you'll see a less than impressive starter -- 11-12/4.44/1.22/157 in 170 1/3 IP, and now that I spell it out like that, why again was I interested in Joe Musgrove? Now I'm having some Musgrovings about his ability to do the job. My first inclination was to write a Mitch Keller sleeper (and maybe I still will), but we're 150 words in and I'll be damned if I'm backtracking now. The Pirates got rid of Ray Searage and his special brand of coaching that managed to make every starter terrible. Don't worry about Searage; he quickly was hired by the SETI Institute. He will teach a whole new group of people on the best way to elicit contact. So, what can we expect from Joe Musgrove for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
At some point in the summer of nineteen after twenty, a young boy by the name of Grey Albright who often went by Fantasy Master Lothario and screamed at people to stop abbreviating it, came upon another boy by the name of Ryan Yarbrough. Monsieur Albright the Third didn't know much about The One Who Went By Yarbrough. He just grabbed him in a deep league and decided to make like a raft and ride him on a stream. Expecting a Level 5 rapids, Jeff Bezos, the name Grey Albright uses when he checks into hotels, clutched the straps and held on for dear life. How'sever, unbeknownst to Señor Albrighto, he was about to go for the ride of his life and like he told the concierge at the hotel where he was staying under the name Jeff Bezos, "This is prime, baby!" In May, Yarbrough had a 1.64 ERA, and we were riding high over those rapids! Then, in June, he had a 3.86 ERA and we were riding 'just okay' but not bad considering everyone else was a Cleveland Streamer. Then, in July, a 2.52 ERA and we started to soar again, but could it continue? Yes, rhetorical question, he could! In August, his ERA fell to 1.50 in 30 IP and we were floating off into the afterlife. Then he had a 7.52 ERA in September and we were in hell, but never the hoo! It was a great run, but who is Ryan Yarbrough really? So caught up in the four-month stream, I never even looked at this man who made me a raft of expectations and wonder. *opens player page* He throws 88 MPH?! Oh, Hayzeus Cristo, goodbye. Or...is it hello?! So, what can we expect from Ryan Yarbrough for 2020 fantasy baseball and what makes him a sleeper?
Once upon a time, Cleveland had too many catchers.
The fantasy baseball community knew just what to do in this scenario: throw a killer New Years party, trade Yan Gomes, start Francisco Mejia, and bench Roberto Perez.
Cleveland scanned this obvious play and disregarded it, attempting instead some inverse combination of the above by staying home to watch a movie, trading Mejia for Brad Hand and starting Gomes, who played well and endeared himself to a fan base that was frustrated to see Mejia go.
That off-season—last winter—fans were livid to see the club swap Gomes for Jefry Rodríguez, Daniel Johnson and Andruw Monasterio. Yanny G was set to cost about $7 million, and the inferior Roberto Perez was under contract for about two million. Nasty things were said. Baseball Universe decided Cleveland was cheap and dumb for how it handled the catching surplus.
One year later, Roberto Perez is a solid OBP source with excellent defense and plus power for the position, while Yan Gomes is a $7 million backup in Washington.
So my thinking in regard to this Kluber trade or any Cleveland move: que sera sera.
The Yandy Diaz trade for Jake Bauers did not go as well, but in general, Baseball Universe loved that one, and this team knows what it’s doing. I’m sure it’s depressing to lose the Klubot and Bauer in a matter of months, but if anyone can develop the pitching to make fans forget, it’s Cleveland. Maybe it’s not the perfect trade, but Emmanuel Clase is going to bring positive value across the life of his contract. Open-market relievers are pricey these days. And we have little reason for confidence regarding the state of Kluber’s health. Could be this one looks bad next New Year, but whatever will be, will be.
