MLB: Milwaukee Brewers at Philadelphia Phillies

How does a 15-team Rotisserie team turn out when you punt saves? Fear not, our very own Scott White has you covered. Scott participated in the Tout Wars draft Tuesday night, which features a collection of the best Fantasy Baseball minds in the world. Scott is one of them. In fact, he's the defending champ. You can find his write-up on the draft here, but we spent about the first quarter of the podcast covering that.

Then we hit on some rankings debates. This is the time of year where there are many moving parts when it comes to rankings. You're following spring training lineups to see where certain players are batting, velocity for pitchers and much more. Nonetheless, there will always be discrepancies when you have three different people doing Fantasy baseball rankings. Who are some of ours? Brandon Woodruff, Ke'Bryan Hayes and Charlie Morton to name a few. Oh, and if you ever wondered what Chris Towers sounded like while imitating Lady Gaga, we have that, too.

Rankings debates!

H2H

  • Round 1, Brandon Woodruff (SP): Chris (11) vs. Scott (16)

Chris: "He gets a lot of whiffs, he gets a lot of strikeouts. The concern I had about him last season is that he is bucking the trend of throwing fewer fastballs. Last season, a lower rate of fastballs were thrown league-wide. Woodruff throws a lot of fastballs, but he gets a lot of whiffs with his fastball. Last year, he upped his spin rate by about 200 RPMS. Spin rate is positively correlated with whiff rate for fastballs. This makes me think he can be an elite strikeout guy without elite breaking pitches. That makes his whole profile seem sustainable to me."

Scott: "The counter is he hasn't thrown more than 120 innings in a season since 2016 because of injuries. It does seem possible at some point they'll have to pull back on his usage. It's a mild concern there." Scott has Zac Gallen, Kenta Maeda and Jack Flaherty over Woodruff in his rankings.

  • Round 2, Ke'Bryan Hayes (3B): Scott (15), Chris (22)

Chris: "I'm more skeptical than most people on the 2020 breakouts  -- especially when it comes to guys who saw a significant jump in production. He played at a much higher level than he ever had in the minors. For me, it's just a little bit of a let's see you do it again kind of thing."

Chris thinks the sleeper in that late 3B range would actually be Brian Anderson and not Hayes. That's his arbitrage play on Hayes.

Scott made his case for Hayes and several other players you should move up your targets list in his Breakouts 2.0.

Roto

Scott: "I just don't know that he has the potential to ascend to be a high-end option. It might depend on his ability to develop a breaking ball this spring, but considering he doesn't even have a name for his breaking ball -- whether it's a slider or curveball -- I'm not willing to trust it's going to be an actual weapon for him. As things stand now, I look at his numbers and see a limited ceiling there."

His changeup is very good. I have compared it to a Luis Castillo-light changeup. But unlike Castillo, Pablo Lopez doesn't have a slider to mix in. Why I like him is that if he gives you a 3.75 ERA and a 1.20 WHIP with a K per inning, that's basically Jose Berrios and you're getting him 50 picks after him.

  • Round 4, Charlie Morton (SP): Chris (29), Scott (38)

Scott: "I'm due to move him up if he continues to look good and draw rave reviews in the spring, but I have a difficult time moving him up ahead of Jesus Luzardo, Lance McCullers and Sixto Sanchez -- these are really good pitchers to move him ahead of."

Chris: "I think the best version of Charlie Morton is better than the best version of Lance McCullers." 

Dominate your Fantasy Baseball draft with our free Draft Kit, which gives you must-have sleepers, breakouts, busts, and rankings. Plus see the top players at each position, complete with winning projections. Get your guide now!

Scott's Tout Wars Team

As defending champion, in a small league twist, Scott was afforded the choice of having any draft slot he wanted. So he took the No. 1 overall pick, right? Wrong. Scott picked eighth. And he said that after he picked eighth, those who earned the right to choose wherever they wanted after him, essentially went in order from first and so on. So why did he do it?

Scott: "My philosophy is if you value a bunch of players more or less the same, take the pick at the end of that run of players. I also don't love picking on the end in general because it requires you to forecast so far ahead that you end up reaching and missing out on important runs because it's so long between picks."

I can't argue with Scott on that one. In general, picking toward the middle of snake drafts affords you the opportunity to more rarely miss out on position runs and to find better values that fall to you.

Scott has Shane Bieber ranked as his SP1 -- and that's not similar to consensus. With both Bieber and Jacob deGrom on the board, he stuck to his big board and drafted the Cleveland ace. And it's Scott, so of course he went with another SP in Round 2 on the comeback. 

Scott's strategy went haywire in Round 3 when none of Corey Seager, Alex Bregman or Anthony Rendon wasn't on the board at his pick. "While I knew it was a possibility this would be the one draft where they might not fall, I thought if it didn't happen somebody else obvious would fall and I'd take the obvious player. That's not what happened at all."

Scott broke down his entire adjusted-on-the-fly draft strategy, his entire team and what rounds he got each player at, what he likes about his team and what he dislikes about his squad. Ultimately, the tough decision he faced in the third round led to less power than he would have liked out of the hitters and SP staff that looks good on paper but doesn't exactly fit Scott's prestigious requirements for his pitching staff.

But we're not going to let him off that easy. Scott did not draft a single closer. That's not a typo. There is not a single currently-projected closer on his roster. Having said that, Scott had a pretty solid defense for his strategy and how things played out.

Scott: "I didn't want to invest in closer. I wanted the cheapies like Daniel Bard and Joakim Soria, but it just didn't work out. I went back and looked. I finished first in saves in this league last year and the only draft pick of mine who made a significant contribution in saves was Brandon Kintzler. Just in those two months, I picked up Trevor Rosenthal, Stefan Crichton, Greg Holland a couple times. This year, I have six months to do it. I think I can do that again and at least be competitive in the category."

Everything we've preached this draft season has been consistent with Scott's strategy -- you can outwork your league for saves and it's a better plan to paying premium assets for them in your drafts -- this is where opportunity cost factors into your overall roster-building approach.

Email of the day

We want to hear from you so what better way to do it than to feature the best emails we get during the week. Ryan brought to us a really interesting talking point in his email of the day. 

I was listening to the baseball tonight podcast and Buster Olney is talking about a new baseball potentially having a MASSIVE impact on the game, increasing strikeouts and decreasing hitter stats. What do you know about this and how will it change how you value players in fantasy baseball? - Ryan

I retweeted Alden Gonzalez, who covers baseball for ESPN, and also tweeted this yesterday: Padres starter Blake Snell has noticed the laces are thicker in the new baseball, allowing him to dig in his fingers so he can more easily throw breaking balls. He also noticed fly balls not carrying as much as they might have previously. "It's definitely a different ball," Snell said.

The problem with trying to adjust our rankings and draft approach to account for the deadened ball is that we don't have much data to work with. We just don't know what kind of impact this is going to have on power, specific things like breaking ball pitches, but we're going to keep you updated on that. As we get more data, with more innings, we'll have a better idea of how this will impact the season.

Right now, the best bet is that some of those middle infielders could see their power dip. It's part of why we're worried about a power dip for Cavan Biggio. Looking at average home run distance, anyone who has a lower average home run distance from the past couple of years, you might want to devalue them a bit. Guys that we know hit absolute bombs -- hit the ball extremely hard -- they're probably still going to be great bets for power. Players like Pete Alonso and Matt Olson come to mind as fitting the latter.

We break down Carlos Carrasco, Sixto Sanchez and other spring training updates on the Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast embedded below. Make sure you subscribe at Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcasts for more of our comprehensive draft prep coverage:  

News and notes

  • Another day brings more Carlos Carrasco news. Mets manager Luis Rojas said Wednesday that Carrasco is dealing with some soreness in his elbow and won't throw for several days. My initial reaction was that the sky was falling and I wanted to cry. Then a gentleman named Caleb Phillips sent me an article about how Carrasco has dealt with this in the past. We're far from being in the clear, but it made me feel a little better. 
  • Scott made the case for this to be a buying opportunity on Carrasco with the chance for his ADP to slide: "He's already a guy who slips beyond what I think he should. If this causes him to slip further, I'm going to be very excited. I haven't heard any talk of him going in for an MRI so it doesn't sound like anything to really worry about."
  • Astros pitching prospect Forrest Whitley will have Tommy John surgery. He will miss all of this season and likely part of next season plus he was quite bad the last time we saw him back in the minors in 2019.
  • Chris thinks the Whitley situation is starting to feel like the Alex Reyes situation, but on the flip side, Towers is now excited about Reyes in his potential new role for 2021. And that's exactly why we can't close the door on Forrest yet. Scott brought up the example of Lucas Giolito looking like a total dud after coming up as the top prospect and then figuring it out. 
  • Marlins starting pitcher Sixto Sanchez will have an innings limit this season. Sanchez has been delayed getting to camp following a false positive COVID test. There has been talk he won't be ready for Opening Day. Craig Mish reported that an innings limit is likely set at 150 and that Sanchez should be ready to pitch in season by April 12, which would be the Marlins' 10th game of the season and against the Braves. 
  • Joey Votto has tested positive for COVID. He'll be away from the team for at least 10 days while he waits to clear MLB's COVID protocols.
  • Luke Voit was scratched from Tuesday's Grapefruit League lineup due to right knee soreness, but manager Aaron Boone wasn't too concerned about the issue.
  • Astros manager Dusty Baker said Wednesday that Myles Straw and Carlos Correa are the leading candidates to begin the season as his leadoff hitter. All aboard the Straw bandwagon as THE Myles Straw podcast in 2021! The hype will continue to build so long as we can expect him to bat leadoff.

Here's what to look out for today

If you're starting your day off -- and you've caught this far -- you're just like us. You're a Fantasy baseball junkie and you want more. With that said, we want to make sure you don't miss any of our best stuff. This Thursday afternoon Chris is going to be busting out his bold predictions for every single team in the AL and every single team in the NL! He got ridiculously bold on some of them so make sure you head over to his mentions on Twitter and let him know how they made you feel. He'll love that!

So which Fantasy baseball sleepers should you snatch in your draft? And which undervalued first baseman can help you win a championship? Visit SportsLine now to get Fantasy baseball rankings for every single position, all from the model that called Will Smith's huge breakout last season, and find out.