| | | | Friday, February 2, 2024 | | This MLB offseason has been weirdly stagnant so far, especially for teams not named the Dodgers. But things have been starting to heat up with a few weeks to go until pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training, and we got a massive, unexpected jolt Thursday night when the Orioles and Brewers agreed on a deal sending Corbin Burnes to the upstart AL East contenders. | | It's a massive move for a ton of different reasons, not least of which because it comes just a few days after a new ownership group agreed to purchase the Orioles. The Orioles have seemed primed for a big move after their rebuild came together quicker than expected in 2023, and now they've acquired one of baseball's best starters, a Cy Young winner and three-time All-Star for … Joey Ortiz, DL Hall, and compensatory draft pick? | | Wait, really? That's all it took? | | Ortiz is a decent prospect, but one who was completely blocked in Baltimore and doesn't exactly seem like a future star. Similarly, Hall is a talented pitcher, albeit one whose continued struggles throwing strikes have him looking more like a multi-inning reliever than a starter. As for the pick? It'll be No. 34 in the draft, where Mark Gubicza and Todd Frazier are the best players ever selected. Both Hall and Ortiz enter the late-round sleeper conversation for Fantasy, but both feel like long shots to turn into must-start players. | | Again, that's all? For Corbin Burnes? Yep, the Orioles just got the ace they need, and given the success they've found with the likes of Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells in recent years, you've gotta be pretty excited about what this means for Burnes' value. He's already one of the best starters in Fantasy, and now he's getting a pretty significant park upgrade. Camden Yards has become one of the best pitchers parks in baseball in recent years; their pitchers have a 3.77 ERA at home since they moved the fences back, compared to a 4.11 mark on the road. | | Burnes will find himself pitching in a tougher division, but I think he still comes out as a clear winner in this deal thanks to the park shift. Burnes was already a top-five starter in Fantasy for me before this deal, but I'm moving him up to No. 3 in both H2H points and Roto scoring formats – still in the tier behind Spencer Strider and Gerrit Cole , but the gap is starting to shrink, that's for sure. | | Scott White wrote about the Burnes trade Thursday night, so head here to get his perspective, and that's not the only recent move you need to know about. Scott has been keeping track of the moves that have gone down in our offseason tracker column, with Justin Turner's signing with the Blue Jays, Jorge Polanco's trade to the Mariners, and Rhys Hoskins' signing with the Brewers the latest news to digest. Make sure you check that out here for the latest, and head here to see my thoughts on what Corey Seager's hernia surgery means for his value – shorter version: I moved him down about two rounds in my rankings as a result of this news. | | | | Of course, there's plenty still unresolved around the league. Four of CBS Sports' top-10 MLB free agents – Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, Blake Snell, and Jordan Montgomery – remain unsigned as of Wednesday afternoon, and there really doesn't seem to be much momentum toward getting a deal done with any of those four. And then there's the seemingly inevitable Dylan Cease trade we're waiting for, too. | | The good news is, as a subscriber to this newsletter, you're going to get our best analysis and reactions to all of that news, whenever it comes out, whether it's about the latest transactions from around baseball, or, as in the rest of today's newsletter, our flag-plant takes on the 2024 Fantasy Baseball season. | | The Fantasy Baseball Draft Prep page is live on CBSSports.com, and if you head there you'll find Sleepers, Breakouts, and Busts 1.0 columns from Scott White, Frank Stampfl, and I, plus Scott's positional tiers, top prospects, and a whole bunch more, all in one convenient place. You'll want to bookmark that page as you begin your prep for the 2024 season, for sure, because it's also the spot to find our rankings, all of our mock drafts, and a whole bunch more between now and Opening Day. | | In today's newsletter, we're focusing on sleeper picks from Scott, Frank, and I, and before we get to some of our individual picks, I want to highlight the five players who made it on at least two of our three sleepers lists. That's out of 37 players total across our three sleepers columns, so this isn't just group think. We'll spend the next few months podcasting five times a week, and by the time we get around to our second round of sleepers, I'm sure we'll have even more we agree about. But for now, here are the five who made at least two of our three lists: | | Jeimer Candelario, 3B/1B, Reds Vaughn Grissom, SS, Red Sox Tyler O'Neill, OF, Red Sox Carlos Rodon, SP, Yankees Cristopher Sanchez, SP, Phillies | | Are these the FBT team's official sleeper picks for 2024? I wouldn't go that far, for a number of reasons, most notably, because we're using different standards for how we pick them! I like Rodon and Candelario plenty, for example, but because I was focusing just on players with an ADP outside of the top 250 in NFBC drafts, they weren't eligible; Rodon's ADP is 172.5, while Candelario's is 230.6. | | However, Grissom and O'Neill both qualified for me, with O'Neill fitting in under my "bounce-back candidates," while I've got Grissom listed as a "classic late-round targets" category. Both should benefit from their move to Boston this offseason, and while I think O'Neill's got more upside (30-plus homers and double-digit steals isn't just a fantasy for him – he did it in 2021!), both should be on your late-round radar. | | In the rest of today's newsletter, we've got more sleeper picks from Scott, Frank, and I, and we'll have busts for you Monday, with our position preview series starting after that. Let's get going. | | | | My Sleepers | | | | Head here for my full list of sleepers. Here's a sample: | | Post-hype prospects: Alex Kirilloff, 1B, Twins | | Staying healthy has been a real issue for Kirilloff, who, of course, enters 2024 coming off shoulder surgery. However, that surgery was reportedly just a clean-up procedure that didn't find significant damage, so hopefully it's a minor issue for a young player who has had a very tough go of things since emerging as a top prospect a few years ago. Kirilloff did finally start producing at the MLB level last season, hitting .270/.348/.445 with underlying stats that largely backed up his 20-homer pace. He'll need to be even better in 2024 to be more than a fourth or fifth outfielder for Fantasy, but it may not be asking too much from a career .324/.381/.525 hitter in the minors – if he can stay healthy. That's always going to be the key for Kirilloff, so hopefully we get some good news out of Spring Training on that front. As a late-round outfielder, Kirilloff could emerge as a really useful four-category contributor. | | | | Classic late-round targets: Chris Paddack, RP, Twins | | We got a microscopic sample size from Paddack last season, as he pitched just 18.1 innings between the minors and majors (playoffs included) in his return from Tommy John surgery. But what we saw was pretty promising, as he struck out 41% of the 32 batters he faced in the majors. Obvious caveats apply since Paddack was pitching out of the bullpen, but his fastball velocity was up to 95.5, 0.7 mph up from his career high, and he was racking up big whiff numbers with both that pitch and his changeup. Paddack's career has been defined mostly by disappointment, as he has struggled to find a consistent third pitch, and we don't really have any evidence that the time away helped him find that third pitch. But he's an obviously talented pitcher who showed enough in his very small sample size last year to be worth placing a cheap, late-round bet on. | | Bounce-back candidates: Luis Severino, SP, Mets | | Severino was pretty much hopeless last season. He managed to stay mostly healthy after coming back from a lat strain to open the season, but the Yankees might have wished he hadn't, because he rarely gave them a chance to win when he pitched. The weird thing was, there wasn't an obvious physical explanation for his struggles – his velocity and movement profiles were similar enough to 2022, when he was pretty much as good as ever. That's not to say Severino just got unlucky last season – he wasn't fooling anyone, and he was getting crushed as a result. He earned every bit of that 6.65 ERA. But it does suggest the possibility of an explanation for his struggles that goes beyond the physical. The mental side of the game is awfully tough to prognosticate, obviously, but there is one potential explanation for Severino's struggles: What if he was tipping pitches? A piece from The Athletic in early January cited at least one scout who believed Severino was doing exactly that. The Yankees weren't able to fix that issue, but if the Mets can, it could help Severino get back on track. I'm not necessarily expecting that, but just like it made sense for the Mets to make a one-year bet on Severino at $13 million, it makes sense to throw a late-round pick at him, just to see if he can rediscover his former form. | | Scott White's Sleepers | | Head here for Scott's full list of sleepers. | | Cole Ragans, RP, Royals | | Our first clue of what was coming for Ragans was the 4 mph velocity bump last spring. A 1 mph increase can be enough to transform a pitcher completely, but 4 was almost too much to process at the time and soon forgotten anyway because he became buried in the Rangers bullpen. It was the Royals, of all teams, that had the good sense to free him, acquiring him in the Aroldis Chapman trade, and with a few tweaks to his arsenal, he was off to the races, putting together a 2.70 ERA, 1.06 WHIP and 11.6 K/9 in 11 starts from Aug. 2 on. | | But maybe you know this already. Maybe everyone who plays Fantasy Baseball does. Judging by early ADP, though, knowing is not the same as believing, and it's on these grounds that I call Ragans a sleeper. Him going 30th (or thereabouts) at starting pitcher is the sort of weak tea that won't hold up in our current pitching landscape. Between the shift ban, the increased base runner activity, the sticky substance crackdown and the continued inconsistencies with the ball itself, there are simply too many ways a start can go bad now, and time and time again last year, we saw things spiral out of control for even some of the best pitchers in the game. In such an environment, the only surefire way to avoid getting burned is to avoid contact altogether. | | Chris Sale, SP, Red Sox | | Another year, another chance for me to tell you that Chris Sale, despite any evidence to the contrary, is still good. I was tempted to back off that position until the Braves decided to deal their No. 1 trade asset, Vaughn Grissom , for him in December. Few things are as validating in the Year of Our Lord 2024 as Alex Anthopoulos backing your play. He sees what I also see, which is that, for all the injuries of the past several years, Sale remains a bat-misser of the highest order. His 11.0 K/9 last year would have ranked fifth among qualifiers, and his 13.2 percent swinging-strike rate would have ranked ninth. At a time when more contact is leading to more baserunners leading to more activity on the base paths, missing bats is the safest way forward. | | But there's the rub. How is Sale, a pitcher who has thrown a total of 151 innings over the past four years, anyone's idea of safe? OK, so he's not, but it's more a question of what sort of profile is the safest bet to deliver in this new world for pitchers. Sale has it in a way few pitchers do. | | Erick Fedde, SP, White Sox | | Did you see the numbers Fedde put up in 2023 in Korea? 2.00 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, 209 K in 180.1 innings of work. Not the Erick Fedde you remember, right? No, that one compiled a 5.41 ERA in six years with the Nationals, never making good on the potential that once made him the 18th overall pick in the 2014 draft. All it took was one year overseas to transform him into an absolute world-beater, winning Korea's equivalent of both the Cy Young and MVP. | | He wouldn't be the first no-name to use a successful stint in East Asia as a springboard to major-league prominence -- one of the most notable being Merrill Kelly, who also pitched in Korea. But what Fedde did was next level and actually began before he even set foot in Korea. He spent the offseason prior working at the PUSH Performance facility to remake his mechanics and arsenal, adding a sweeper and split-change that White Sox pitching advisor Brian Bannister compared to Logan Webb's. And you know what makes that comparison apt? Webb led all the majors last year with a 62.1 percent ground-ball rate. Fedde's rate in Korea was 70 percent, which is unheard of. The strikeout and walk rates were also unlike what we've seen from Fedde before. | | Frank Stampfl's Sleepers | | Head here for Frank's full list of sleepers. | | Bailey Ober, SP, Twins | | This one seems about as straightforward as they get. All Ober has done is perform. In 57 career starts with the Twins, he has a 3.63 ERA and 1.11 WHIP. He's averaging over a strikeout per inning, which is supported by a 13% swinging strike rate. Among pitchers with at least 250 innings since 2021, Ober ranks 22nd in K-BB rate (19.8%) and 24th in swinging strike rate (13%). Even with that, he's currently the SP42 in ADP. Ober has great command, limits walks and generates whiffs, all key ingredients in a successful starting pitcher. | | Carlos Rodon, SP, Yankees | | Everything about Rodon's first season in New York was a disaster. The final nail in the coffin was a horrendous start where he was charged with eight earned runs without recording a single out against… the Royals ? What I truly believe is that Rodon was never healthy last year. Let's run through the laundry list of injuries he dealt with. First up, Rodon was diagnosed with a left forearm strain just days before the start of the season. As he was ramping up his rehab from the forearm, his back flared up, which eventually required a cortisone shot. Rodon would finally make his Yankees debut on July 7 but missed two more weeks in August with a hamstring strain. | | Trevor Story, SS, Red Sox | | From one bounce-back sleeper to another. Much like Rodon's tenure with the Yankees, it's been a rocky one for Story and the Red Sox. I do think there are built-in excuses for Story, however. He didn't have a normal offseason with the Red Sox until this one! If you remember, Story signed with Boston in late March, 2022. That was a result of the lockout, which delayed signings and, as we all know, the start of the regular season. Then in January 2023, Story underwent an internal bracing procedure on his right ulnar collateral ligament. He returned in August but was a shell of himself, admitting he was just trying to survive up at the plate. | | | | | | | | College Basketball on CBS | | PGA Tour on CBS | This weekend, back-to-back days of college hoops are on CBS. We begin on Saturday at 1 PM ET with Wichita State meeting Memphis. Then on Sunday at 1 PM ET, it's an enormous top-ten matchup when #2 Purdue goes on the road to take on #6 Wisconsin. Watch all weekend on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
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| | This weekend on CBS, the PGA Tour heads to one of golf's most beautiful courses. Defending champion Justin Rose headlines a fantastic field including Homa, Fowler, Scheffler and Wyndham Clark competing at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Live coverage begins Saturday and Sunday at 3:00 PM ET on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
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