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The Itch

Author: The Itch

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The Itch

Prospect News: NL Only Auction Recap: CBS Analysts League

March 2, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 5 Comments

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Here’s a link to my write up of the American League version of this league: 

In that article, I discuss my approach to this league: specifically, that I try to get money spent in smart places early, sit through the middle, and battle it out for every dollar in the end game. That’s kind of my general approach in auctions but especially in this one because the money is twice as fake here. Once you’re full at 2B, SS, MI and U, you cannot nominate or bid on a middle infielder. Oh and something I forgot to mention last time is the reserve draft. The auction only covers the starting lineups, then we switch to a seven-round reserve draft to close out the night. This creates something of a false auction that leaves value pools commensurate to the depth at each position. 

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

Prospect News: Early Spring Thoughts or Who Needs A Holliday?

February 26, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 21 Comments

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Orelvis Martinez hit a homer. I have a hard time believing he won’t be part of that infield this year. I know wins and losses matter, but giving 900 plate appearances to Ernie Clement and Davis Schneider is not a viable long term approach, and with Vlad potentially on the way out, the team needs to look toward its next wave. 

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

Prospect News: Dynasty Draft Season Review Volume Two

February 19, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 9 Comments

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With three first-year-player drafts behind me and one underway as I type, fantasy baseball is officially back in the Itch household. I covered my Razz 30 draft in Volume one and will share the results of two 15-team league drafts in this article. 

I’ll start with the Ditka Sausage Razznasty League, a daily lineups league that’s been going for about seven years. I’ve made some good moves in this league and just as many bad ones because I feel the race against time most acutely here, meaning the crunch to maximize my daily lineup drives a lot of my decision making. I say all this to explain in part why I didn’t pick until the fourth round in this draft. I did still have my third round pick (3.43), but I moved back a few spots to add a fourth-rounder in 2026 and slide up from 5.67 to 5.61 in the fifth round this year. 

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The Itch

Prospect News: Dynasty Draft Season Springs Eternal

February 16, 2025 | 2025 Fantasy Baseball | 11 Comments

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With two first-year-player drafts behind me and two underway as I type, fantasy baseball is officially back in the Itch household. Today I plan to share my early takeaways with you, dear reader, starting with the guys I actually selected.

I’ll start with the Razz 30: a 30-team league filled with skilled players. We can keep as few as seven minor leaguers and as many as 18 major leaguers, so the draft is 13 rounds across a couple weeks, adding up to 320 total picks this season. 2B Cesar Prieto of the Cardinals was Mr. Irrelevant, a solid selection in a league where playing time is king and low-minors lottery tickets tend to end up back in the draft pool. I like this about the league. The free agent pool gets a full scouring in comparison to the new guys coming in from the draft, and the two pools get well shuffled up and mixed together. Phillies RHP Moises Chace, for example, went 1.19. I was disappointed because I wanted him at 1.30. He went undrafted in the 15-team FYPD I completed this week, which made sense. Pitching is a lot easier to find in that league, and proximity is almost a punishment because each team has 30 MLB roster spots, and players are exceeding their minor league eligibility all the time. 

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The Itch

Prospect News: Dynasty Rankings: 2025 First-Year-Player Drafts

February 12, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 19 Comments

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1. Dodgers RHP Roki Sasaki 

He’s alone in this year’s class. I saw the 1.1 pick get traded for Logan Gilbert in a 15-team dynasty league. Other pieces were involved, but nothing to make the previous sentence untrue. Seems like a bit much for me. I prefer Gilbert by a long way and struggle to see how Sasaki could get even close to Gilbert’s 208.2 innings from 2024, never mind his 0.89 WHIP. This kind of trade is what makes dynasty leagues go round: sex v. substance. Door number three v. a car you could drive on the autobahn right now. Shop Sasaki if you have the chance to do so, is what I’m suggesting.

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The Itch

Top 100 Prospects For 2025 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

February 9, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 11 Comments

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76. Mariners SS Colt Emerson | 19 | A+ | 2026

After the success of Cole Young, the Mariners went for a similar prospect at the 22 spot in the 2023 draft: Colt Emerson, a left-handed hitting middle infielder at 6’1” 195 lbs with excellent hands in the batter’s box. He came roaring out of the gate in his draft season but battled injury in 2024, missing two stretches and playing 70 games total, the final 29 coming at High-A, where Emerson was overmatched for the first time as a pro, slashing .225/.331/.317 with two home runs and nine stolen bases. If you’re looking at this ranking and thinking he’s way better than most guys you find in the sixth spot, you’re right. The Mariners have a handful of 50’s here; you could toggle them three-through-six to your specifications.

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The Itch

Top 75 Prospects For 2025 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

February 5, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 12 Comments

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51. Rangers RHP Alejandro Rosario | 23 | A+ | 2025

At 6’1” 182 lbs, Rosario throws some of the easiest 100 mile-an-hour heat you can find. He mostly lives between 94 and 98, and the balance throughout his simple, from-the-stretch delivery allows all of his offerings to look the same, something that’s particularly devastating when paired with his 90 mph splitter. He can spot the slider well enough to bury or steal, and I’m not sure he’s going to find much resistance at Double-A after posting WHIPs of 0.87 and 0.99 at Low and High A ball.

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The Itch

Top 25 Prospects For 2025 Dynasty Fantasy Baseball

January 29, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 27 Comments

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1. Red Sox IF OF Kristian Campbell | 22 | AAA | 2025

Thanks in part to Campbell’s cooking in 2024, Boston has baseball’s best collection of position-player prospects right now. A fourth-round pick in 2023, he’s not exactly found money, but it’s not common to see a college hitter go from the 132nd pick to a consensus top five prospect in a calendar year, and a glow-up like that can alter a whole organization’s outlook. A right-handed hitter at 6’3” 191 lbs, Campbell worked with Boston’s coaches to alter his swing and unlock bat speed and generate a little more loft, and Soup responded by slashing .330/.439/.558 with 20 home runs and 24 steals in 115 games across three levels. He closed the season with 19 games at Triple-A, where he posted a .412 on base percentage with four homers and four steals. He’s listed here at all the positions he’s been playing in the minors, and while it seems likely he’ll settle in at second base or left field, it’s hard to put a ceiling on someone we just saw make a developmental leap on the other side of the ball. And for what it’s Werth, I wouldn’t quibble if anyone flipped Campbell and Anthony on any list. I swapped them back and forth a few times.

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

Prospect News: Cue The Synthesizer or The Price Of Valor

January 26, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 15 Comments

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I went as fast as I could this winter. Faster, sometimes. Last year, I completed the top ten lists when Razzball published the Rangers on February 7. This year, Razzball the Rangers’ list went live on January 22. No trick to it, really, just grinding it out, learning on my own in the fresh powder of rankings season. One of the true joys of this gig is having a reason to watch six-month-old minor league baseball games when it’s below zero around here. 

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The Itch

Texas Rangers Top 10 Prospects For 2025 Fantasy Baseball

January 22, 2025 | Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Featured | 9 Comments

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1. SS Sebastian Walcott | 19 | AA | 2026

Here’s what I wrote for last year’s list:

“An extreme athlete at 6’4” 190 lbs with double-plus power and easy plus speed, Walcott has a path to becoming baseball’s top prospect by this time next year. He’s smooth enough on defense to project a future at shortstop and jumped Low-A to join the High-A team as it headed toward the playoffs. In 35 games on the complex, Walcott slashed .273/.325/.524 with seven home runs, nine steals and 51 strikeouts. Anyone pumping the brakes on him is especially concerned with this last piece because Walcott has some swing-and-miss in his game that could become an issue if the contact skills don’t make a leap as he ages up.”

I dropped that in here because it’s pretty close to what I’d write about Walcott this winter, particularly the number one prospect part, the best argument against which might be that he’s there already. In 121 games, the final five in Double-A, Walcott slashed .265/.344/.452 with 11 home runs, 27 stolen bases and a 25.6 percent strikeout rate. He was 4.1 years younger than the average at High-A and 6.2 years younger than the average in Double-A. 

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