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The great thing about studying relievers is you only have to focus a half-inning at a time, if you’re watching the games as you go. The bad thing about studying relievers is you can only do so half-inning at a time, if you’re watching the games as you go. 

This year’s relief article involved more legwork than any before for a number of reasons, one being the void where pro baseball used to be. But it’s more than just the lockout, of course. My processes in general have evolved over time, and now I’m fast enough moving in and out of the game logs, finding the right inning to jump toward on the time scroll. I’m better at eyeballing what inning looks like it might be the sixth, just given the size of that time-scroll along the bottom. I feel like Dr. Who. Time and space are limitations of the past. I watched three weeks of Indigo Diaz’s career the other day, just in between and alongside doing other stuff: making bacon for my daughter, jotting down the bones of a lesson plan, writing a relief pitcher article in a separate window, doom-scrolling the socials on my phone, flipping the eggs, clicking back in as Diaz encounters some early wildness, digging for the next game, three days later in a different city, finding where he entered the game, and zooming to that moment in my tardis (laptop). 

Yes, dear reader, it’s a brave new world out there. Some of these MILB.tv feeds are terrible, mind you. Blimp view. My 2D video game brain is okay with it, like playing an RBI Baseball match-up on Nintendo: Clemens v. Tudor, but that’s so much more than I could’ve seen 25 years ago when I was 13 and burrowing deep into the baseball universe for the first time. Really seeing it from the ground up for the first time. My dad took us to see the Clinton Lumberkings when we were very young. Got some cards signed. And I guess the dig actually began in 1989, when my brother and I traded the Upper Deck Rookie Cards of Ken Griffey Jr. and a Gary Sheffield for the Upper Deck Rookie Card of . . . drumroll . . . Jerome Walton. I was six. I would, obviously, remember it forever. 33 years later, here we are. Sorry for the old-guy anecdote. It’s just, I couldn’t believe the breadth of my powers this week, compared to my powers then. I am defeated by time in so many other, very real ways, and yet, here I am, farting in its general direction as I prepare what has become my favorite article to create every year. 

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Woe be to ye who love pitching prospects in dynasty baseball. Seriously. No fun to learn the hard way how tricky it is to trade a big-named pitching prospect in a strong dynasty or keeper league. Even tricker to graduate them as mainstays of a winning staff. 

I already discussed a fair bit of this in the Top 25 Starting Pitcher Prospects for Dynasty Fantasy Baseball in 2022Hitters fail, too, but they can typically be traded earlier and later than pitchers in their minor league career arc. Pitchers can be traded the week or month they get called up and then again if they’ve been really good as rookies. If you’re lucky enough to land an Alek Manoah type, you probably don’t want to trade him anyway. The Daniel Lynch types can still be moved for pennies on the dollar, but they’ve have lost at least half the perceived value they had as top 25 prospects, which, again, isn’t much in a real strong dynasty league where everyone has been burned by enough pitchers to recount the scars. 

I really should be more positive in this intro, but honestly a lot of this group is made up of players I’d trade away in a heartbeat yin my leagues. Let’s look ’em over. 

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To win most dynasty leagues, especially ones that have been around for a few years, you need elite pitching. In my experience, farming prospects is not the most efficient way to accrue elite pitchers. It can work in fits and starts, but you’ll probably need to supplement your staff via the trade market, swapping sizzling young bats for established WHIP suppressors. This winter I saw Elly De La Cruz and Andy Pages traded for Tarik Skubal, and that’s a fun version of this kind of trade: huge upside all around, good chance both teams are happy with it in two years. In my spot on the win curve, I prefer Skubal, but I see the rationale for getting two topside hitters, who you could argue should be swapped instead for an older arm with a better WHIP history. Gotta throw them bones sometimes to win it all. No such thing as a risk-free trade. 

A third way is to never pay for pitching. I’ve yet to put it into function, but I’d like to try it someday. I’ve developed a skill (or perceived skill, anyway, good fight confidence in the words of Shea Serrano) for scooping the Quantrills and Gausmans of the world at the right moment. I also like looking for the Luis Garcia types. This year’s candidates include Cody Morris, Jayden Murray, Jacob Lopez, and Matt Canterino, among others, and I’m holding last year’s versions like Peyton Battenfield and Joe Ryan. I think maybe this is the way, especially in deep leagues where it’s exceptionally hard to build a well-rounded offense, but I’d be nervous to try it in full. Probably I’d break down and start looking for veteran arms on the cheap. Adam Wainwright has been ridiculous the past two seasons, for example, though you could mark him as yet another reason to never really pony up for the big arm when a team in your league decides to shop Gerrit Gole or Max Scherzer. 

It’s hard for me to ignore that kind of moment. Feels like dynasty leagues are often decided in tiny windows when someone decides to make a big sell-off. Typically worth your hustle to get an offer in, even if just to provide some kind of competition in the pricing. This is in an ideal world where you have any idea such a sell-off is happening. In my experience, it’s often kept secret until suddenly Trea Turner has been dealt for Blake Snell a half hour after the midnight trade deadline. Circling back the original thought, it might be better to just let it go. Over the past few years in a 15-teamer, I have traded for Justin Verlander, Chris Sale, Shane Bieber, Chris Bassitt, Blake Snell and Yu Darvish, all shortly before their injury or, in Darvish’s and Snell’s case, their dip in production. The Buy High-Priced-Pitching strategy has not been kind to me. The toll of talent lost is incredible: Vlad Junior, Bo Bichette, Ozzie Albies, Julio Urias, Will Smith the Dodger and Byron Buxton (who also brought back Lance Lynn). Brutal. I still won the league in 2021, but that was due to Quantrill, Ranger Suarez, Walker Buehler, Lance McCullers, and some clutch relief help from Kendall Graveman, Paul Sewald, Dylan Floro, Joe Barlow and Jake McGee. I only lay all this out to explain why I’m more in the pan-for-pitching camp than the pay-for-pitching one, so let’s grab our gear and start sifting through the waters. 

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This post picks up where we left off Sunday when I posted the Top 25 Outfield Prospects for Dynasty Fantasy Baseball in 2022. While we’re here, I might as well include a quick link to all my work this off-season: 2022 Fantasy Baseball Prospects, the Minor League Preview Index. It’s been fun to explore the game system by system then position by position. Starting pitchers are coming up next, followed by relievers in one of my favorite articles to build every year (I’ve been working on it for weeks) before we ring in the new minor league season with a fresh list of Top 100 prospects. Can’t wait! This particular list could’ve gone on forever (in the sense that “forever” refers mostly to a pretty damn long time), but I stopped at sixty to avoid overstaying my welcome (I hope). If someone you expected to see isn’t on here please drop a line in the comments section.

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A few years ago, I joined a CBS dynasty league in motion one year after it had begun. The team owner quit mid-April after some sort of rules dispute. My entry fee was paid. I started trading. I cannot remember all the moves because I am an incrementalist on the market, for the most part. I do remember trading Yu Darvish and more for a High-A hitter named Juan Soto, which made someone else quit the league, so foolish was I to have done so. Soto got promoted to AA shortly after that, played eight games there, then jumped to the major leagues. 

This is not what I came here to discuss, but it’s hard for me to think about that league without rolling through its gruesome history. I joined in 2018, won the league in 2019, and it dissolved before 2020. I loved the team I’d built there by buying early on Soto and Tatis (two of my first three trades). 2021 would have been a blast. But I gained a ton from that league. I know to pump the brakes sometimes if my play style is tilting a league, for one thing. But most importantly, I learned the value of collecting impact outfielders. When I looked around to add speed or outfield help, I always came back to the same team because they had all the upside. Their minor league system was just outfielders with some shortstops sprinkled in. Every single guy had speed. And I learned something: Power/speed combo outfielders are a finite resource. 

No shit, right? Well, if we have a look around the prospect lists, we’ll find corner bats everywhere. Speed-free profiles are everywhere. Pitchers and catchers are everywhere. I’m not saying they have no place; I’m just saying it’s easy to wind up with a team peppered with all sorts of players. Might even be preferable. Not so easy to hold ten of the best power-speed outfield prospects at a given time. If you can pull that off, you’ll be on the rich-folks side of the supply/demand curve. Thus far, I’ve found the strategy a bit less profitable in practice than in theory because the people who aren’t focused on speed tend to want it cheap, and the people who collect speed already have enough to get by. That’s fine though. I’ve been running away with the stolen bases category in my four dynasty leagues for years now, and I’ve cashed in all four, so even if I’m not regularly charging rent on Boardwalk anytime someone wants stolen bases, I’m ringing the register in other ways. 

That intro got long in a hurry. Always dangerous when a writer veers anywhere near their own leagues, I think, but here’s hoping we came through it okay and that it made connective sense to the focus point today: Outfielders: What do they steal? Do they steal things? Let’s find out.

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Some of these guys will have to move off the position, either because they’re blocked by a star-level regular or because they lack the hyper-elite twitch, reflexes, hands and arm required to make it as a big league shortstop, but for the most part, these guys will man their middle infields for the next decade or so. Some dynasty league veterans build minor league rosters populated almost exclusively by shortstops and outfielders. Solid plan, really. Shortstop might be the game’s deepest position at the moment, and it’s only getting deeper. 

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Dynasty drafts come in several shapes and sizes. Some leagues break the player groups into veterans and prospects. Some leagues let you draft 34-year-old relievers right alongside 16-year-old little brothers. I don’t really have a favorite way to cut it up. I just love the game. Though I will say the Razz 30 has something special going on with a prospects-only draft and a vets-only auction that becomes, at its core, a bums-only auction. It’s about two weeks of slow-bidding Steven Brault up to $21, and it’s a treat like few others in the fantasy realm. Jose Martinez once sold for $96. Michael Pineda went for $62. Zach Davies for $36. Two of those are purchases of mine! The fun never ends! Well, except when you ask MLB owners if they’d rather make money or take all the different balls and go home.

Anywho, I’ve broken this year’s First-Year-Player Draft rankings down into tiers and included some snippets about where my head would be during those spots on the draft board.

You can find most of these guys in the 2022 Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Minor League Preview Index

If not, feel free to drop a question in the comments so we can talk some baseball, pass the time.

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Thirty third basemen thumping? What is this the Twelve Days of Christmas?

Well, yes and no. The gifts in that song, except for the golden rings, seem awful, and the third base position has gone down something of a  barren road the last few seasons. Vlad Jr. wound up at first base. Nolan Arenado wound up in St. Louis. He’s still fine, and Anthony Rendon is still good, probably, when healthy, and there’s still elite bats at the top, but in general, this position needs a talent infusion from a fantasy baseball perspective, and it might be about to get just that. Are there five golden bats in this group? We’ll have to peel our way to that truth one day at a time. 

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Last week in the Top 20 First Base Prospects for 2022 Fantasy Baseball, I dubbed first base the Island of Misfit Toys for its tendency to collect prospects who fail out of other positions. 

Welcome to the sequel! It’s untitled at the moment, so chime into the comments if you’ve got thoughts. Once upon a time, a guy had to be pretty quick to handle the keystone, but advances in defensive positioning have mitigated that need for speed and opened the spot to some slow-moving bats looking for a place to sit and wait for their turn to hit. 

If a guy is a plus defender at shortstop, like CJ Abrams in San Diego, I left him there for the purposes of this list. I know he’s blocked and likely to play somewhere other than short, but he profiles as a plus defensive player at the infield’s toughest non-catching position, so he’s earned that spot. Some of the guys here can still hack it at shortstop, but they’re trending toward a future elsewhere on the diamond.

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Welcome to the Island of Misfit Toys!

That wannabe dentist elf is plucking the bumble’s teeth in the igloo over yonder. Rudolph’s in the corner puking his guts out (crying his eyes out). Except igloos don’t have corners. 

And just like the Island of Misfit Toys, First Base Archipelago seems like a pretty cool place to end up after a journey around the diamond looking for a place to fit in. Players wash up here for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s just a depth chart issue. Cody Bellinger, for instance, could play anywhere in the outfield. More often, it’s a last-chance stop for players who’ve proven themselves below replacement level everywhere else on the field. If they hit enough to keep their head above water where bat-first prospects go to drown, they can find their way home in time for the big Christmas party at the end of the movie/season.

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Like much of the Reddit world, I’ve been thinking a lot about the show Yellowjackets this week. At its core, Yellowjackets is a wilderness survival show hinting at cannibalism while juggling multiple timelines. It’s a lot like dynasty baseball leagues that way, which is where we’re going today: into the wilds of dynasty baseball strategy to hunt and gather six tips to survive and thrive. 

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