Please see our player page for Gavin Williams to see projections for today, the next 7 days and rest of season as well as stats and gamelogs designed with the fantasy baseball player in mind.
by: The Itch
Chicago White Sox In 37 at bats this spring, Oscar Colas has struck out once and walked once. He’s hitting .324 and slugging .514 with two home runs. Even making plays in centerfield. Feels like he’s already made the team. Bryan Ramos has looked just about ready (.368/.429/.526 in 19 at bats), but Yoan Moncada […]
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: The Itch
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? by: The Itch
Even as 2022 was a great season for the Cleveland Guardians, their future looks brighter all the time. Nobody has more ready-soon, major-league-level starting pitchers in their system, which is a nice fit because you could make a case that nobody is better at developing pitchers, particularly in the early stages of their major league careers.
1. RHP Daniel Espino | 22 | AA | 2024
Injuries kept Espino sidelined for much of 2022, but he was around long enough to leave a loud impression, striking out 35 batters in 18.1 Double-A innings and posting a 0.71 WHIP across those four starts. He’s listed at 6’2” 225 lbs and looks like a bodybuilder. Upside is as high as any pitcher in the minors thanks to an 80-grade fastball and double-plus slider. I’ve got 2024 listed as the ETA just because he hasn’t thrown that many innings, and the team is deep in pitchers both in the majors and on the cusp, but Espino could almost certainly help the major league club this season if he’s healthy.
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: The Itch
Guardians OF Will Brennan fits beautifully onto a playoff roster given his contact-heavy approach and solid all-around game. In 129 games between Double and Triple-A, Brennen slashed .314/.371/.479 with 13 home runs, 20 stolen bases, 69 strikeouts and 50 walks. They probably could’ve used him sooner, which would’ve given him time to adjust before the playoffs. It’s just three games so far, but he’s got three RBI’s, two stolen bases, zero strikeouts and a .364 batting average.
As most MLB teams have moved ever closer to three-outcome lineups, Cleveland has traveled the opposite path toward roster construction, prizing low strikeout rates and all-field approaches. It’s working, and it could be a deadly brew to the fence-swinging clubs in October. Tampa gets a lot of love for maintaining a winner despite penny-pinching owners, but Cleveland is about to make its fifth postseason in seven seasons, and 2022 feels like the beginning of a dominant run through the AL Central. They’re up eight games ahead of the second place White Sox right now and eleven games up on the Twins. It’s not easy to see how those two bridge the gap next year.
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: The Itch
I was going to copy and paste the whole list here, but then I remembered last time I did that, I had to scroll forever to read the profiles on this group, which is arguably the most important group in the list for our purposes given that they’re the likeliest to be available in the most leagues. Anyway, the links are still here and the most streamlined way to build this out, I think.
Here’s a link to the Top 25.
Here’s a link to the Top 50.
Here’s a link to the Top 75.
76. RHP Gavin Williams | Guardians | 22 | AA | 2022
77. RHP Cade Cavalli | Nationals | 24 | AAA | 2023
78. C Tyler Soderstrom | Athletics | 20 | AA | 2023
79. OF Sal Frelick | Brewers | 22 | AAA | 2023
Gavin Williams threw six hitless innings his last time out, bringing his Double-A ERA down to 1.59 and his WHIP to 0.95. That’s in 45.1 innings across 11 starts. WHIP is 0.81 in eight starts since July. Cleveland is somehow getting better at pitcher development, partly because they’re applying their systems to better and better athletes. Williams is 6’6” and 255 pounds but repeats his delivery well. Two plus benders. Double-plus fastball.
Cade Cavalli is similarly enormous at 6’4” 240 lbs. You could convince he’s three inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than that. Looks like a linebacker pumping high heat with extreme run to the right-handed batter’s box. Bigtime tempo guy. When it’s going well, he’s back on the mound and firing in blinks. When it’s not, his whole game slows down. He’s been awesome for three months (2.12 ERA, 1.02 WHIP since May 22) and would likely be in the majors at the moment if the Nationals were.
I’ve never been a Tyler Soderstrom pusher. I think he can hit, and I’ll give him the high-probability big leaguer thing, but ours is a game of impact. Standout tools. Soderstrom’s best tool is hit, which is often what you’d like to see, but Oakland is not the best home for a hit-first catcher who might not catch but doesn’t have much speed to handle the outfield.
Get your money for nothing and your licks for free. Better Call Sal has a 200 wRC+ in 15 games at Triple-A. He’ll be on the next stash list.
Please, blog, may I have some more? by: The Itch
We don’t spend much time with the stragglers around Prospect World, but a lot of highly ranked guys have struggled this season. That sentence reads like a timeless nothing-statement when I see it on the page, but it’s a pretty accurate description of my thoughts as I scoured the landscape to find the best 100 minor league players for the fantasy game.
If you think of a name that you figured would be here, there’s a good chance they’ve scuffled to start this season. The Nicks, Yorke, Gonzales and Pratto, missed the list in surprising fashion. Perhaps I was more demanding of them because my human-person-walking-around name is also Nick, and I am subconsciously more disappointed with them than I would be with a non-Nick player. Seems unlikely, but you never know.
Also a pretty good chance the player(s) you’re looking for were covered:
either here in the Top 25,
or here in the Top 50,
or here in the Top 75.
I’ll try to stay concise in between the tiers here, but you can access a more in-depth consideration of each individual player by clicking on their names or skimming around in the 2022 Minor League Preview Index.
Anyway, the buns are in the oven. No changing the recipe now. Smells pretty good already, now that the prep’s done and the kitchen’s clean. Ish. Clean as it’s gonna get anyway. Let’s dig in.
Please, blog, may I have some more?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.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
by: Hobbs
Omaha! Omaha! Either Peyton Manning just put together a quick game of pick-up flag football in my backyard, or the College World Series is officially underway in Nebraska. *editor buzzes into my earpiece* Manning is in fact in Canton learning how to properly construct a Super Bowl trophy out of a Wheaties box for the next incredibly average Peyton’s Places segment, so it must be the latter — which is good for him, because my backyard is currently infested with slime mold and being treated for turf diseases, so that simply wouldn’t be advised for the local neighborhood youths. But alas, the CWS is here, and we have the luxury of scouting an excess of 2021 MLB Draft talent from June 19-30. Six players in my top 30 were able to advance to college baseball’s ultimate event, but countless others such as Arizona’s Ryan Holgate, Vanderbilt’s Isaiah Thomas and NC State’s Luca Tresh made the Omaha cut as well. This not only means that these rankings are fluid and will undoubtedly change prior to the July 11-13 draft, but also that I recommend taking the below intel and doing some of your own personal scouting over the course of the next week-plus. So, who has made the cut as we inch closer to the release of the complete college top 100? Check it out below, as there are a handful of new names previously excluded from the preseason list that utilized excellent 2021 campaigns to springboard their stock — such as Washington State’s Kyle Manzardo and Florida State’s Matheu Nelson. Where they’ll ultimately fall in the draft, nobody knows! For that reason, I like to refer to such players as this year’s “unsupervised children flying off trampolines at the annual Memorial Day reunion.” There’s always bound to be one or two.
Please, blog, may I have some more?
