2018 Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep: Ranking the Fantasy assets for the Dodgers with Yasmani Grandal again penciled in as the starter

• Draft Prep Tiers: C | 1B | 2B | SS | 3B | OF | SP | RP
  
• Heath's Sleepers | Breakouts | Busts 
  
• Scott's Top 100 prospects | Sleepers | Breakouts | Busts | Dynasty Top 100 
  

The Dodgers may not be World Series champions, but they are a marvel. It's one thing to win 104 games by bludgeoning your opponents with superior talent, which at some positions they have. It's quite another to do it by upending many of the game's longest-held beliefs, potentially reshaping the way every team employs its 25-man roster in the process.

Of course, some of the depth that allowed them to cycle starting pitchers through the new 10-day DL, keeping their most impactful arms at peak condition instead of losing them to attrition, is gone now, with Yu Darvish and Brandon McCarthy being the chief examples. But they still have the best starting pitcher in Clayton Kershaw and three others with All-Star ability in Rich Hill, Alex Wood and Kenta Maeda, not to mention one of the top pitching prospects in Walker Buehler. Yeah, they'll be OK.

And that's what's scariest about the impending Dodgers dynasty: how they don't have to trade away their best prospects to sustain it. With the way they mine data, they'll just uncover a Justin Turner, a Chris Taylor or a (now departed) Brandon Morrow for cheap, allowing them to introduce a Corey Seager or Cody Bellinger to an already formidable core.

The well isn't about to run dry.

Dodgers in Scott's top 300

Player	Roto Rank	H2H Rank	Roto Pos Rank	H2H Pos Rank
Clayton Kershaw LAD SP	#10	#9	#1	#1
Cody Bellinger LAD 1B	#24	#25	#5 (at 1B)	#5 (at 1B)
Corey Seager LAD SS	#27	#27	#4	#4
Justin Turner LAD 3B	#49	#51	#8	#8
Kenley Jansen LAD RP	#62	#81	#1	#1
Alex Wood LAD SP	#120	#80	#29	#29
Chris Taylor LAD CF	#127	#142	#31 (at OF)	#31 (at OF)
Rich Hill LAD SP	#130	#109	#34	#36
Yasiel Puig LAD RF	#137	#159	#34	#35
Yasmani Grandal LAD C	#205	#215	#10	#10
Austin Barnes LAD C	#206	#216	#11 (at C)	#11 (at C)
Kenta Maeda LAD SP	#242	#188	#68	#66

Players in Scott's Top 100 Prospects

Things to Know

• While Clayton Kershaw is still the No. 1 starting pitcher in Fantasy, it's an increasingly tenuous distinction. He has missed time with a back injury three of the past four years, so you can no longer expect him to measure up to Max Scherzer, Corey Kluber and Chris Sale in terms of innings. Start for start, though, he'll still give you the length of an ace, which is uncommon among Dodgers hurlers.
• The biggest question is at catcher, where Austin Barnes overtook Yasmani Grandal in the postseason and may overtake him again despite manager Dave Roberts' claims to the contrary. And it's easy to see why. He's an on-base machine with above-average power for the position -- numbers that have translated almost seamlessly from the minors -- and going by only his starts, he averaged as many Head-to-Head points per game as Gary Sanchez last year. Grandal is productive in his own right, so you're rooting for a trade here.
• Whether or not you buy the sustainability of Chris Taylor's .361 BABIP, the guy upped his power enough to become a legitimate offensive weapon. Where he'll ultimately play -- be it in center field, blocking prospect Alex Verdugo, or second base, blocking one of the few misses of the Dodgers' 2017 campaign, Logan Forsythe -- remains to be seen, but he will play.
• After spending the postseason in the bullpen, Kenta Maeda is pretty much a lock for a rotation spot, but part of the reason the Dodgers shifted him to the bullpen in the first place is because they don't seem to trust him to pitch a third time through the lineup. Even if his percentages are more in line with his rookie 2016 campaign, he may be a fringy mixed-league option.

Lineup & Rotation