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Please see our player page for Gunnar Hoglund 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.

Rangers 1B Blaine Crim (28) signed for $5,000 after Texas took him in the 19th round of the 2019 draft, so it’s nice to see him working toward his first big league game check while Jake Burger tries to recapture his flavor in Triple-A. A right-handed hitter at 5’10” 200 lbs, he’s far from the prototypical first baseman and has had to smash his way through any number of questions blocking his path. He’s always had power but has fine tuned his plate skills throughout his journey and was striking out at just 16.7 percent clip through 28 games. His walk rate is down a tick, but the aggression is paying off, leading to seven home runs and a slash line of .313/.365/.565. Has kind of a Christian Walker vibe. Better to add him now and ask questions later, I think. 

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Oakland Las Vegas Sacramento Athletics starting pitcher Gunnar Hoglund was firing on all cylinders Friday night (no scope!) in his MLB debut pitching six strong innings, allowing six hits and striking out seven Marlins for his first career win. Gunnar going whole Hoglund! You might remember Gunnar as the primary return piece in the Matt […]

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I’m working on a Top 100 update right now, and I’m struggling to make a case for anyone above Pirates RHP Paul Skenes. Sure, Jackson Holliday is a safer bet given the reality of every pitcher who’s ever thrown this hard getting hurt, but Skenes is such a unicorn, I’m inclined to stop treating him like a regular human baseball player. Part of it is the struggle to keep my brain functioning exclusively in the fantasy baseball realm, where of course it makes sense to pick the hitters over the pitchers 99.9 percent of the time. I just think this feels like that 0.1 percent of the time, and it’s hard to imagine any real baseball teams would prefer another prospect to Skenes. A guy like him can carry you through the playoffs, if you happen to make the playoffs, especially if he’s paired with another dynamite young arm like Jared Jones. I ranked Skenes 12th in my Top 25 Fantasy Prospects: Opening Day 2024, and I feel pretty foolish about that today. I had some worries about his health given how long it had been since we’d seen him pitch and how he finished 2023, but that’s a distant memory now. 

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I’ve been thinking about the pitch clock a lot this week. Went from a huge, over-the-line-smoky deal to oh-yeah-the-pitch-clock in record time. Been wondering if the clock could take center stage again for a moment or two during the playoffs. Also been thinking about what other rule changes could follow that path. The extra inning runner should move to first base, particularly in the new steals-happy paradigm. Fans remember big postseason steals because they’re fun. Dave Roberts spun a whole managing career out of knowing how to snag that key bag. Even if we wind up with a couple more 14-inning slumber parties, the game would feel more just, which I think fans would appreciate over the long haul. I don’t mind the idea of a shootout type scenario and understand how we got to the ghost runner, but people might prefer a home run derby if we’re doing that, which feels pretty far from quote-unquote real baseball. 

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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.

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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. 

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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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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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It’s tough to see how things get better than they were in 2021. Robbie Ray and Marcus Semien were grand slam one-year signings. Vladimir Guerrero chased a triple crown. Alek Manoah dominated as a rookie. Jose Berrios pitched well down the stretch after the club swapped two top prospects to get him. And therein lies the upside. The club was able to sign Berrios to a long-term deal, and I have a hard time imagining Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson outproducing him over the next few seasons. Another plus: this organization knows what it’s doing. This system remains solid despite the recent graduations and trades with another couple potential-star-level prospects in the pipeline and several interesting upside and depth pieces behind them. All the team’s best players are young, and the ownership group is rich enough to push anytime it wants. Perhaps Kevin Gausman will adequately replicate Robbie Ray. Perhaps Teoscar Hernandez and Vladimir Guerrero will hold serve at the levels they established in 2021. And perhaps the top guy on this list will inject enough life into the lineup that they’ll rarely miss Marcus Semien. 

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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.

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Sam Houston State. South Alabama. Miami (OH). Just a short list of all the top Division I programs that you typically find first-round talent at, right? Either every premier Power Five program completely whiffed on these guys, or head coaches are scurrying around the recruiting grounds like a bunch of half-blind moles trying to find their own siblings. As I unveil college prospects 6-10 in my rankings for the 2021 MLB Draft, you’ll find players from each of the above mid-major programs entrenched in the top 10. We all know young players develop significantly while playing the college game, but it’s downright incredible to see this many top prospects coming from such schools. Last year, the top pitcher in the draft came out of the University of Minnesota and the No. 7 overall pick came out of New Mexico State — further evidence that you can’t live and die by the blue blood programs when assembling your prospect pool in dynasty leagues. In this edition, we’ll go in-depth on players 6-10 on my list while providing plenty of links to previous college prospect coverage to assist you in putting together the best first-year player draft board as possible. So take a seat in the optometrist’s chair, make like a cartoon mole with bifocals and check out the rest of this year’s top ten.

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