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The Itch

Author: The Itch

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The Itch

Top 100 Prospects For 2023 Fantasy Baseball: Spring Training Snapshot

March 1, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 22 Comments

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76. Pirates 2B Termarr Johnson | 18 | A | 2025

A double-plus hit tool leads the way for Termarr Johnson, a 5’7” 175 lb left-handed hitter who calls Jose Ramirez to mind on a quick visual evaluation. The organization will be thrilled if Johnson follows a similar path, grinding his way up the chain before growing into power at the highest level. He’s off to a great start, slashing .275/.396/.450 with one home run and four stolen bases in 14 Low-A games. He also walked 18.9 percent of the time. Scouts have hung a lot of superlatives on Termarr. Some called him the best high school hitter they’ve ever seen. It’s a high bar, but I’m not going to bet against him.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top 75 Prospects For 2023 Fantasy Baseball: Spring Training Snapshot

February 26, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 36 Comments

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List season is tricky for me. I always forget somebody for reasons that remain mysterious to me. This year, it was Josh Jung. Sorry about that, Josh and the Jungs. I’ll clean it up in post, by which I mean I plan to collate the hundred in a long scroll here near the end of spring training, tweaking the sequence as the new information suggests. Jung would be 19th or 20th or 21st at the moment among Neto and Tiedemann. All three could move the needle in a significant way this spring. I’m sure it’s just the nature of my work and focus, but the minor leagues look absolutely loaded to me. There’s maybe four guys in my top 25 who won’t see the majors this season (Wood, Holliday, Jones, PCA). We had a great rookie class last year, and it’s natural to expect an ebb from that flow, but after my lap around the league, 2023 feels to me like a pandemic-slash-service-time backlog is still seething at the edges, bubbling over early before rushing into our lineups come summer. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top 50 Prospects For 2023 Fantasy Baseball: Spring Training Snapshot

February 22, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 26 Comments

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Here’s a link to the Top 25. 

That top 25 blends in pretty well with what you’ll see elsewhere, and so this group, mostly, but from here forward, my lists tend to be tilted toward near-term fantasy functionality, for what it’s Wuertz. 

I value the grind of the climb. Each level brings new separators, so guys like Maikel Garcia and Joey Ortiz have shown more, in my opinion, than a guy like Jackson Merrill. Nothing against Merrill or anyone in the lower minors. They’ll have their day. I just don’t see much value in jumping headlong on to Tom Smykowksi’s Conclusions Mat when we’ve got so many great prospects on the cusp who’ve earned their keep. If I get three seasons of useful stats out of a player before a higher-ranked teeny-bopper even gets started, that matters to me. I suppose you could cut it up differently for a rebuilding project, but I wouldn’t change much.

26. Guardians RHP Tanner Bibee | 24 | AA | 2023

Bibee’s currently my favorite of Cleveland’s pitching prospects for dynasty purposes in terms of cost v. value. That’s probably changing as I type, but for now it’s still cheap enough to at least ask about Bibee in your leagues. He’s coming off 73.2 innings in Double-A with a 0.88 WHIP. He allowed just four home runs there and wound up with a 1.83 ERA. He’s good enough to the naked eye that I think he’ll make waves this spring. His 122.2 innings pitched last year sets him up perfectly to step in whenever the Guardians need help. At 6’2” 205 lb, Bibee can sit comfortably in the mid-90’s deep into games and has that Cleveland specialty skill of commanding his off-speed pitches. In case you can’t tell from the blurb, I want him everywhere I can get him. You could more or less say that for every Cleveland pitcher, which I try to remind myself any time I’m making moves or building lists.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top 25 Prospects For 2023 Fantasy Baseball: Spring Training Snapshot

February 19, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 23 Comments

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1. Cardinals OF OF Jordan Walker | 20 | AA | 2023

At 6’5” 220 lbs with 80-grade power, plus athleticism and easy speed, Walker belongs to a rare class. No offense to Corbin Carroll or Gunnar Henderson, I’m just slightly more confident Walker will be an impact fantasy player. Check out Grey’s Jordan Walker, 2023 Fantasy Outlook for more. Fun videos in there. Really drives home how easy it can look for Walker when he’s on his game.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Texas Rangers Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

February 15, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 22 Comments

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Money talks, and the Rangers have had a lot to say these past two winters. The timing was connected to their new stadium but nonetheless ideal for a system stocked with ready-soon contributors. 

Format: Position Player | Age on 4/1/23 | Highest Level Played | ETA

1. 3B Josh Jung | 25 | MLB | 2022

Happy birthday week to Josh, who turned 25 on February 12. Fantasy baseballers (Grey’s mom’s term) probably shouldn’t penalize players on their way back from injury, but Jung feels underrated in the wake of an abbreviated 2022. When Jung had surgery for a torn labrum around this time last year, I expected him to miss the whole season, so getting 49 games across two levels feels like a win. Jung was a shadow of his 2021 self that slashed .348/.436/.652 for 35 games in Triple-A. The difference was most notable in his plate skills. His walk rate dropped from 11.5 percent to 3.8 percent and his strikeout rate spiked from 17.2 to 28.3 percent. Shoulder injuries can permanently lower ceilings and even ruin careers, but Jung has the talent to overcome it. He’s a target for me in the CBS AL Only auction tomorrow night.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Seattle Mariners Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

February 12, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 8 Comments

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Few teams are as adept at navigating the social media markets of our modern age. Invisible threads connect everything in the baseball world, and while it’s possible the Mariners would be able to trade Noelvi Marte and Edwin Arroyo for a big prize without the power of their brand, it certainly helps that nobody’s better at hyping their own than Seattle. The Yankees are great, too, and some of the fan bases do a lot of lifting for their organizations, but whenever Seattle isn’t posting a workout video or highlight reel, they’re handing their social media feeds over to their prospects to flash their personalities and connect to the fans. For years, the Yankees were able to spin their internal prospect praise to public-facing outlets and then flip almost all of these youngsters for big league pieces. 

When Seattle traded for Luis Castillo last year, the narrative was focused on how big a haul the Reds received. Some of that is just the moneyball-ization of the modern baseball fan, but a large portion is down to the power of marketing. No offense to Marte, a power hitter who slugged .462 in High-A, or Arroyo, a shortstop who hit .227 with a 28.4 percent strikeout in Low A, but the idea that these two plus reliever Andrew Moore and pitcher Levi Stoudt represent a huge haul in exchange for an ace-level starter is absurd to me. Castillo posted a 2.99 ERA and 1.08 WHIP across 150.1 innings last year and then signed a team-comfortable contract at $108 million through 2027 with a 180-inning vesting option for 2028. This will cover his age 31, 32, 33, 34, and age 35 seasons. If he’s healthy and good enough to throw 180 innings at 35, he’ll be a bargain at $20 million as a 36-year-old. Or he’ll be off the payoff before the tough seasons start. I guess it’s not fair to compare the under-contract Castillo to the trade return he brought as a soon-to-be free agent, but I have to think everyone who said the Reds did great in this trade would feel a little differently if he’d been traded with five-plus seasons of affordable team control. Feels to me like a master-class from Jerry Dipoto, sending far-away prospects to pull a great pitcher out of a numbers-inflating environment and then signing him to a long-term contract before his statistics better reflected his pitching-friendly new home. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top 30 For 2023 First-Year-Player Dynasty Fantasy Baseball Drafts

February 8, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 15 Comments

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Here’s a link to the Top 15. 

Around this point in the draft, you should probably be checking the free agent pool. You never know who can slide through the cracks created by transaction freezes, roster limitations, football season and the general malaise that sometimes accompanies late-summer rotisserie baseball.

16. Mariners SS Cole Young | 19 | A | 2025

Cole Young looks like the early win of last summer’s draft. He wasn’t especially late at 21st overall, but he might go inside the top ten if the draft happened tomorrow. A 6’0” 180 lb left-handed hitter, Young features plus bat-to-ball skills and an all-fields approach that plays beyond his years. He graduated the complex league in seven games and got even better in Low A, slashing .385/.422/.538 with two home runs and a stolen base in ten games. In the cold light of dawn between publications, this ranking feels a little low.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Top 15 For First-Year-Player Dynasty Fantasy Baseball Drafts

February 5, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 32 Comments

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1. Orioles SS Jackson Holliday | 19 | A | 2026

The number one overall pick in 2022’s amateur draft, Holliday is a 6’1” 175 lb left-handed hitter who appears to have inherited his father’s all-out approach to baseball. He’s probably in a batting cage or a weight room right now. Everyone works hard at this level, but Holliday’s had access to baseball resources for a long time, and you can see the results in his game and his build. He dominated on the complex for just eight games before the team had seen enough and sent him to Low-A for the final two weeks of the season, where he posted a .439 on base percentage. He’ll likely head back there to open the year but should be able to force a promotion at some point. I suspect we’ll see more aggressive timelines with this next cohort of young Orioles in general. Holliday could be a nice bellwether for that. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Oakland Athletics Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

February 1, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 30 Comments

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Tough sledding ahead for Oakland. Might feel like the worst is behind you at first after your team tears down, but I don’t think that’s the case. The worst part is three seasons later when you still can’t see any daylight and just keep losing every day. I don’t think that’ll be the case for Oakland. Billy Beane is probably not a full-tanking type, and I’m happy for that. Off-season signing Aledmys Diaz, Jace Peterson and Jesus Aguilar have all proven to be major league regulars at times in their careers. Signing these types is often the best use of roster spots during a rebuild in my opinion. You get a better product early in the season, perhaps somebody really pops (Peterson and Diaz are both sound bets imo), perhaps you can only trade one of them for anything at the deadline. The point is you tried. Made sharp plays on interesting angles. They should write a book about that kind of thing. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Los Angeles Angels Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

January 29, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 14 Comments

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Get it at Home Depot. 

Unless “it” is a major league baseball team with a divine team theme. 

The Angels are no longer for sale, as of this week. 

I’m about 99.9 percent sure the non-sale is not connected to the club’s minor league system, but I can say this group was a pleasant surprise late in the process. Best system Los Angeles of Arte-time has seen in a long time, and the best part is that the best players look like high-probability major league hitters. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Prospect News: Big Moves For The Royals, Marlins and Twins

January 25, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 38 Comments

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I have a confession to make, dear reader: I’m glad my wife doesn’t read my work here because I simply cannot stop thinking about . . . . Maikel Garcia. 

We’ll be having dinner, and she’ll be talking about her day, and I’ll be nodding along, or maybe even asking a follow-up question or two, but really all I’m thinking about is Maikel Garcia. 

Well, Nate Eaton, too. And Michael Massey sometimes. This week, Kansas City opened up 1,000 or so hypothetical plate appearances by trading center fielder Michael A. Taylor and shortstop Adalberto Mondesi. Word is the White Sox checked in on Nicky Lopez after that, and the Royals told them they view him as key depth. Sigh. Just when things were getting good. Roster resource plugged Hunter Dozier in at third base, and while that’s certainly plausible, how cool would it be if KC just kept trading these prospect-blockers? An infield of Witt, Garcia, Massey and Vinnie P looks like a lot of fun. So does an outfield of Edward Olivares, Drew Waters, and Nate Eaton with MJ Melendez at DH. Kyle Isbel and Samad Taylor factor in here somewhere, too. The club also signed Johan Camargo, so there’s no real reason to stop trading now. Can just play Camargo if they get scared of the youth movement.

Let’s build an ideal May 1 lineup.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
The Itch

Houston Astros Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

January 22, 2023 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 17 Comments

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Houston prospects tend to get a little extra bump up the lists from me. My first year doing these, some readers on Reddit came at me for having Jeremy Peña too high (fifth) on the list. I might never forget it: my first time getting cooked in the comments. I wasn’t familiar with the ways of Reddit yet, and to be fair to the Redditors, I wasn’t particularly adept at writing these blurbs to reflect my reasoning yet either. The other comment-cooking that comes to mind was Houston related as well. I had ranked Alex Bregman 9th among third basemen for dynasty leagues coming off his 41 home run season. I think Astros fans were especially salty because this happened during those early pandemic days when the trash-can hate was still fresh, and there was no baseball on the field to distract us or force them to pay the full-stadium consequences for their fuckery. 

Sorry for the jaunt down memory lane. It’s just, both of these memories wound up being foundational for me as a baseball writer. Something might look wrong to most readers today, but that doesn’t mean you should hesitate to say it. This gig requires a fair amount of future-casting, and that requires a fair amount of confidence on top of the competence. Mostly I just want to say thanks to all of you who’ve read my work between there and here. Thanks to all of you who chat it up in the comments. And thanks to the Houston Astros for developing good baseball players. The automatic bump to a Houston prospect has been useful since Yordan Alvarez was left off the Top 100 lists heading into his rookie year. It’s helped us to roster Luis Garcia, Jose Urquidy, Cristian Javier and Jeremy Pena among others. Decent chance a couple people from this group vastly exceed their present perceived value in a similar fashion. 

 

Format: Position Player | Age on 4/1/23 | Highest Level Played | ETA

1. RHP Hunter Brown | 23 | MLB | 2022

Can Jose Urquidy hold this freight train off for the fifth starter spot? Hunter Brown is the most chamber-approved pitching prospect Houston’s had since Forrest Whitley. At 6’2” 212 lbs, Brown maintains impeccable balance throughout his delivery thanks to elite posture and strong legs. His ability to repeat has improved year over year to the point that his control is finally trending toward command. Hitting spots is still not his long suit, but Brown’s stuff is so dynamic, he’ll never have to be especially fine to retire big league hitters. In 20.1 MLB inning in 2022, he posted a 1.08 WHIP after recording a 1.08 across 106 Triple-A innings. The Houston development plan of piggy-backing mixed with starting all the way up prepares these guys for the life they’ll face as an Astro, waiting sometimes multiple seasons to truly crack the rotation. Whether or not Brown can buck that trend will come down to health across the roster, the club’s commitment to Jose Urquidy, and how Brown handles the back-and-forth role in which he’ll likely open the season.

Please, blog, may I have some more?
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