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The Itch

Author: The Itch

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The Itch

Chicago White Sox Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

January 4, 2023 | 2023 Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 25 Comments

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The south side features an underrated system for fantasy purposes with plenty of openings on the big league side for the intrepid young hitters. 

 

1. OF Oscar Colas | 24 | AAA | 2023

I suspect you’ll see Colson Montgomery in the one spot everywhere else, and that’s cool if you’re not in any rush to collect stats from your prospects. I’m open to the case that Montgomery is the buzzier prospect stock at the moment, but Colas has dominated every step of the way and finds himself on the escalator this winter, by which I mean he could start the season hot and cruise right up the lists. Montgomery could climb quickly as well, but he’ll be doing so in Double-A, which won’t help us win in 2023 unless we can flip him for a redraft asset. How long will it take the dynasty world to notice if Montgomery comes roaring out the gate? Not long, probably, but Colas could open a sell-high window early in spring training with just a few good games. And even then, with offers raining down on you after Colas hits his second spring home run, you might struggle to move the 6’1” 209 lb left-handed bat with a chance to make the opening day lineup. He hit 23 home runs in 127 games across three levels last year, batting above .300 at every stop. Chicago has been tough on hitters the past few seasons, but Colas has enough thump to threaten 20-plus bombs if he gets the gig early. 

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The Itch

Toronto Blue Jays Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

December 28, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 32 Comments

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Timing really worked out on this one. This system lost some shine when it shipped out Gabriel Moreno the other day, and to a lesser extent, Jordan Groshans to Miami last season, but neither makes a dent in the long-term build of the organization, which remains impressive from top to bottom. 

1. LHP Ricky Tiedemann | 20 | AA | 2023

At 6’4” 220 lbs with an upper-nineties fastball, Ricky Tiedemann has been bullying batters throughout his baseball life but took it up a notch in 2022, traversing three levels of minor league play (78.2 innings) with 117 strikeouts and a 0.86 WHIP. He was every bit as dominant in 11 Double-A innings (0.82 WHIP) as he had been in 30 Low-A innings (0.80 WHIP). The only real worry here is that he won’t get tested until the majors, but as bugaboos go, that’s a preferable one. He’ll likely need better command, especially off-speed command, to survive big league lineups a couple times through, and he won’t need either of those traits in place to dominate again in the minors. The Jays put him on an aggressive timeline seeking someone to challenge him in 2022 and might do the same this year if they decide he’ll need to develop in the majors anyway. He’ll turn 21 in August and is on track to celebrate that milestone in Toronto. 

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The Itch

Tampa Bay Rays Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

December 21, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 16 Comments

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The devil is in the details. Since dropping the hellish adjective, the Tampa Bay Rays have etched their way into the baseball zeitgeist by being better than anyone else at squeezing every last drop of value out of every single roster spot throughout the entire organization. They’ve made their fair share of mistakes skating at the edges of 40-man roster management, particularly off-loading Nate Lowe and Joe Ryan for little return, but it’s a difficult balance to strike, and I’d rather a team remain aggressive than disappear into their own silo. Tampa initiates a lot of transactions, and most of them work out to their benefit. 

On the other hand, they’ve been so good throughout the system that you could make a case for the club to stop trading for a season or two just to see how it looks for them to field a whole team of their own prospects. It’s not an option, of course. When you’re developing as many prospects as this team, you stand to lose them in 40-man waves every winter, so you reshuffle the deck, moving some ready-now players running out of minor league time for some far-away prototypes who’ll comprise another roster-crunch wave a few years down the road. 

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The Itch

New York Yankees Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

December 18, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 14 Comments

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The shortstop question has hovered over this organization since Derek Jeter retired. That can’t be right. They’ve had a real shortstop since Jetes, haven’t they? Can we count Tulowitzki? 

A quick giggle search brought me to a New York Post article from 2021 titled “Yankees Still Searching For Derek Jeter’s Long-Term Replacement at Shortstop.” A year and change later, the search continues. 

The word “search” feels a little aggressive to describe how this has looked in the real. 

Nobody’s gathering groups with flashlights to comb the forests of upstate New York. Instead, they’re hoping a shortstop emerges from atop this list. 

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The Itch

Boston Red Sox Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

December 14, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 15 Comments

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Remember when you could play as Yoshi for the first time in a Mario game? Maybe it was Mario Tennis. Maybe you could count riding him in that first SNES game? Remember how great it felt to win a Mariocart race as Yoshi? 

Boston members. 

Though they lack a truly elite prospect, the Red Sox have assembled an exciting group of hitters that should matriculate to Fenway in waves over the next few seasons. Best system I’ve seen here in four years doing these lists. Took me a long time to whittle down to these top ten. 

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The Itch

Baltimore Orioles Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

December 11, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 19 Comments

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Selling Trey Mancini to Houston during the club’s one competitive season in years might have karmically doomed the franchise, but if Baltimore can avoid the hex, they should be in for a steady run of good rosters. This list will only scratch the surface on how much talent this team has accrued through aggressively tanking then gaming the draft-pool system and slow-playing every prospect so they’d all be on the cusp at the same time. 

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The Itch

San Francisco Giants Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

December 7, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 15 Comments

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They might be Giants again in 2023, but 2022 was a weird year by the bay. Buster Posey is the best defensive catcher I’ve ever seen. Easy to underrate his value on a day to day basis. His absence was felt in the win/loss column. Still, they’ve got a smart front office with plenty of money to spend, so it shouldn’t be long before they’re pushing the Padres and Dodgers again. 

 

1. SS Marco Luciano  | 21 | A+ | 2023

Luciano has lost some of that new-car shine over the years as people settled into the reality that he was unlikely to steal many bases, but I think 2022 was his most encouraging season as a pro. Nothing was particularly loud (.263/.339/.459), but his plate skills looked okay (9.6% BB, 22.2% K) and he was 20 percent better than league average against older players during something of a grind-it-out season with a two-month injury slicing it down the middle.

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The Itch

Off-season Deals Shuffle the Deck in Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

December 4, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 13 Comments

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With the signings of Jose Abreu and Jacob deGrom, the off-season feels officially underway, and I feel like I’m falling behind on some general moves and shakes around the game.

We’ll get back to the lists and cover the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday. 

The Abreu signing is unique for our purposes in that it creates value for the team he leaves behind and the team he’s joining. If the team lets Eloy Jimenez DH and installs Andrew Vaughn at first base, both youngsters get a glowing arrow up. No longer condemned to wander the outfield, they can finally settle into everyday roles. The club has been batting Tim Anderson at the top for a long time, but his high-contact, low-walk approach would be better employed in an RBI spot. Trouble is that’s true for several White Sox. A healthy Yoan Moncada could lead off, but he was awful last season, posting a .273 on base percentage in 104 games. But let’s just pretend he can bounce back to something like the .367 OBP he posted in 2019 or the .375 from 2021. 

I’d probably lay it out like this: 

1. 3B Yoan Moncada 

2. OF Luis Robert 

3. DH Eloy Jimenez 

4. SS Tim Anderson

5. 1B Andrew Vaughn

6. C Yasmani Grandal 

That’s a compelling top six. Could arrange the top five in any sequence. What happens with seven through nine is anyone’s guess.

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The Itch

San Diego Padres Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

November 30, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 9 Comments

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Despite trading away everything from last year’s top prospect group, AJ Preller’s cupboards are not bare. He won’t have the talent to make moves for Juan Soto or Josh Hader this summer, but Preller himself is an elite scout who has little trouble adding new waves of gifted young players every year. It’s a skill that builds itself out across time. Preller probably had good vision for the game as a young person, but as a long-time executive who makes more trips to the field than anybody, his eye has been honed the hard way: 10,000 hours at a time. Malcolm Gladwell, eat your heart out. 

One way you know Preller is good is James Wood. Another is Jarlin Susana. How anyone else looked at these guys and said “meh, no thanks” is beyond me, but it’s a complicated game. You can’t just target giants and hope to thrive, but if you do see a giant who happens to move like a meta-human, trust your eyes and run, don’t walk, to add them to your squad. 

This trust-your-eyes talent likely provides him an edge in building a scouting department, too. Talent or skill in a craft doesn’t always equate to skill at teaching that ability, but it’s certainly better than being clueless about scouting and then interfacing with a scouting director. All this is to say I spend a lot of time watching young Padres squads and give the team all the minutes I can find before publication day. 

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The Itch

Los Angeles Dodgers Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

November 27, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 27 Comments

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One thing you notice following the Dodgers’ prospects over the years is that they’re always on time. Some teams are slow to promote their players. Some teams are quick. Los Angeles is typically right on time.

 

1. 3B Miguel Vargas | 23 | MLB | 2022

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of reports that downplay the physicality Vargas brings to the game as a 6’3” 205 lb right handed hitter with baseball bloodlines. He’s not some contact-only, right-center slap-hitter and he’s not a mess on defense. He’s been underrated for a long time in prospect places, and he slashed just .170/.200/.255 in parts of 18 major league games. but his time is coming. The plate skills have always been elite. He’s struck out somewhere between 8.1 percent and 26 percent in all his extended stays: seven levels across four seasons. He’s settled in around 15 percent the past two seasons in Double-A and Triple-A. In 113 AAA games, he walked 71 times and struck out 75, slashing .304/.404/.511 with 17 home runs and 16 stolen bases. The team could bring Justin Turner back for another year or so, but that’s probably not the right play for where they’re at as an organization. They don’t need Turner to make the playoffs or probably even to win the division. Vargas turned 23 last week. There’s no reason for him to play any more minor league games.

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The Itch

Arizona Diamondbacks Top 10 Prospects for 2023 Fantasy Baseball

November 20, 2022 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 16 Comments

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The snakes have a strong system with several waves of help on the way. They have a lot of pieces to sort through and just this week designated OF Stone Garrett for assignment, trading for Kyle Lewis in a separate move that feels connected. Third base could be a platoon between Josh Rojas and Emmanuel Rivera. Roster resource has Pavin Smith penciled in at Designated Hitter, but I imagine that spot’s earmarked for Kyle Lewis or Rivera. Smith slugged just .367 last year as a rag-ball casualty. Lewis would have to get healthy and stay that way to make the lineup, where he could be a key right-handed cog amid a lot of promising lefties. I still think they should find room for Garrett and suspect he’ll clear his own path unless someone else claims him. You just don’t see many weak-hitting teams releasing power hitters who post a 131 wRC+ in their first 27 games as a major leaguer. 

 

1. OF Corbin Carroll | 22 | MLB | 2022

A lightning-quick lefty, the 5’10” 165 lb Carroll calls Mookie Betts to mind for his surprising core strength and plus barrel control. It’s a lofty thought, but Carroll warrants the optimism, cruising through the minors despite losing a season to a major shoulder injury. His all-fields power and double-plus speed helped him to 15 extra base hits in 32 big league games. In 93 games across three levels, Carroll slashed .307/.425/.610 with 24 home runs, 31 stolen bases, 22 doubles and eight triples. I’m not sure how high is too high for redraft leagues, but I suspect his ADP will rise month-over-month from here through April.

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