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The Itch

Author: The Itch

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The Itch

Top 100 Prospects For 2024 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

February 21, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 25 Comments

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76. Reds RHP Chase Petty | 20 | AA | 2024

The 26th overall pick in 2021, Petty enjoyed a breakout season in 2023, recording a 1.73 ERA in 68 innings across two levels where he was younger than his competitors by 3.1 years and 4.3 years on average. At 6 ‘1” 190 lbs, Petty features a wipeout slider and demonstrates an aptitude for spin that portends well for his year-over-year development.

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The Itch

Top 75 Prospects For 2024 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

February 18, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 36 Comments

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Please clap for Busch’s slash line of .323/.431/.618 with 27 home runs across 98 Triple-A games in 2023. Now that he’s out of Los Angeles and being all but handed the first base gig in Chicago, he can finally stop faking second base and fully flower as a hitter. Or so goes the thinking that led the Cubs to acquire him, anyway. 

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The Itch

Top 50 Prospects For 2024 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

February 14, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 24 Comments

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26. Padres C Ethan Salas | 17 | AA | 2025

I’ll never have Salas on a roster. Nothing against him, really, just a matter of public-facing, real-baseball lists running him so high up the rankings that there’s no road back to dynasty baseball value. He’s already a top ten prospect in most places, and he’s just nowhere near that for our purposes. He’s in Double-A at 17, but he hit just .200 for nine games in High-A, so that’s an artificial placement to say the least. He’ll likely open back in High-A and should have to hit his way out. There’s absolutely no rush. At 6’2” 185 lbs, Salas moves smoothly behind the dish and receives and frames with a deft touch that’s a decade beyond his years. With a bat in his hands, he’s a dangerous lefty power hitter with a discerning eye. An elite prospect to be sure. Just not an ideal building block for our game.  

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The Itch

Top 25 Prospects For 2024 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

February 11, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 18 Comments

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1. Orioles SS Jackson Holliday | 20 | AAA | 2024

Baltimore’s final big prize for super-quitting, Holliday traversed four levels in 2023, climbing all the way to Triple-A for a few weeks and posting a 109 wRC+ there with 16 walks and 17 strikeouts in 18 games. He’ll begin 2024 with a chance to claim the opening day shortstop job.

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The Itch

Texas Rangers Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

February 7, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 28 Comments

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1. OF Wyatt Langford | 22 | AAA | 2024

A Texas-sized gift at the fourth pick in a loaded draft class, Langford laid waste to the minor leagues one level at a time, stopping at the complex league for three games before moving along to High-A for 24 games, Double-A for 12 games, and Triple-A for five games. He dominated at every level and might force an opening day debut with a good showing in spring training. He’s listed at 6’1” 225 lbs and doesn’t have much (if any) physical projection remaining, but that’s mostly irrelevant for a guy who has plus power and speed generate elite outcomes as is.

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The Itch

Seattle Mariners Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

February 4, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 18 Comments

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1. OF Lazaro Montes | 19 | A | 2026

At 6’4” 256 lbs with a picturesque swing from the left side, Montes invites visual comps to Yordan Alvarez and embraces them, incorporating regular video study and modeling his own game after the Houston slugger’s. He cut his strikeout rate by eight percent between the Dominican Summer League (33.2%) and the Complex League (25.3%) then maintained the gain with a 25 percent strikeout rate in 33 Low-A games. He slashed .321/.429/.565 with seven home runs and a 165 wRC+ in that month-plus of full-season ball. There’s plenty of reasons to rank other guys higher than him on this list, especially on the probability or speed fronts, but I just kept moving Montes up this totem pole and couldn’t really convince myself that I’d take any of these guys over him in a dynasty league I thought would last a long time.

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The Itch

Los Angeles Angels Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

January 28, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 12 Comments

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1. 1B Nolan Schanuel | 22 | MLB | 2023

The 11th overall pick, Schanuel dominated his competition at Florida Atlantic, especially in a preposterous junior season that saw him slash .447/.615/.868 with 19 home runs and 14 stolen bases in 59 games. The team sent him to the complex for three games then to Low-A for two games. What he showed at those levels with a smattering of singles and walks is probably what he’d shown before they drafted him. Bit of travel for puzzling reasons, is all I’m saying. Then he went to Double-A for 17 games and slashed .333/.474/.467 with twice as many walks as strikeouts. That’ll probably be that for his minor league career: 22 games across three levels. There’s just not much argument for him to spend any time in Triple-A this season after he posted a 112 wRC+ and .402 OBP in 29 major league games. Sure, he didn’t get to his extra base power, and he might benefit from some low-stakes opportunities to focus on that, but spring training should offer that. In a loaded first-year dynasty class, Schanuel is a steal in the middle of the first.

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The Itch

Houston Astros Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

January 24, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 2 Comments

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1. OF Joey Loperfido | 24 | AAA | 2024

A seventh round pick in 2021, Loperfido produced better than average lines at each step along the way until a difficult 32-game stint in Triple-A to close out the 2023 season. In the box, he’s a 6’3” 230 lb lefty with power. In the field, he’s a right-handed thrower with enough athleticism that he’s a real option in center field. In 84 games at Double-A, he slashed .296/.392/.548 with 19 home runs and 20 stolen bases. I’m pretty bullish on his chances to carve out a role for himself in center or a corner outfield spot or at first base.

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The Itch

Minnesota Twins Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

January 21, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 10 Comments

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1. OF Walker Jenkins | 19 | A | 2026

In some draft classes, Jenkins would’ve been a contender to go first overall. In a class with Crews, Skenes and Langford, Jenkins and fellow high school outfielder became windfall profits for teams with lottery luck. A left-handed hitter at 6’3” 210 lbs, Jenkins hit .333 with power for a couple weeks on the complex then looked like Chuck Norris in Low-A for 12 games, slashing .392/.446/.608 with six strikeouts and four walks. The fifth overall pick appears likely to sprint through the system.

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The Itch

Kansas City Royals Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

January 17, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 16 Comments

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1. 2B Nick Loftin | 25 | MLB | 2023

The 32nd overall pick out of Baylor in the 2020 draft, Loftin plays all over the field, logging eight games at first base, seven games at second base, and four games at third base in his 19 games with the major league squad in September. He hit .323 over that stretch and has a chance to beat out Michael Massey for the primary job at second base after slashing .270/.344/.444 with 14 home runs and six stolen bases in 82 Triple-A games. He’s always controlled the zone well and struck out just 13.1 percent of the time in those 82 games.

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The Itch

Detroit Tigers Top 10 Prospects For 2024 Fantasy Baseball

January 14, 2024 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 22 Comments

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1. RHP Jackson Jobe | 21 | AA | 2024

Hey all you cats and kittens. These tigers are so loaded that you can pick any of three guys to lead off their prospect list. I’ll bet their top three lands between 15th and 35th on just about every public-facing list. Jobe gets the opening chapter here because he pairs impeccable command with incredible spin rates. His four-pitch mix is headlined by a slider he revs up over 3000 RPMs. In 64 innings across three levels in 2023, he posted an ace-level 0.98 WHIP and a preposterous 84-to-6 strikeout-to-walk rate. He took just one turn at Double-A but threw six shutout innings. He’ll probably look ready for the rotation in spring training but will probably wind up taking ten or fifteen turns in the minors before a mid-season debut.

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