Fantasy Baseball Today - Sleeper Prospects to Stash in Dynasty/Keeper Leagues! (Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 Podcast)

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Download and follow Fantasy Baseball Today in 5! You can find FBT in 5 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the Audacy App and wherever else podcasts are found. The Yankees have two names in Drew Thorpe and Ben Rice. Lazaro Montes is drawing Yordan Alvarez comps. Thomas Saggese has raked for the Cardinals following the trade. Xavier Isaac is a name you need to know! Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Get Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today in 5 podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've got 16 sleeper prospects for Dynasty Leagues up next on Fantasy Baseball today in five. Welcome into FBT and 5 on Saturday, September 9th. I am Frank Sample, joined by Scott White, and these are sleeper prospects that you can look to pick up in your Dynasty Leagues for next season. We're going to do it in groups of four, and the first group includes Drew Thorpe, a starting pitcher with the Yankees, Lazaro Montes, an outfielder with the Mariners, Chase Petty, a starting pitcher with the Reds, and Zach DeZenzo, a third baseman with the Astros.

Just to clarify a little on the premise here, these are obviously low-end prospect pickups, not guys who are going, not guys who have appeared on the top 100 list yet. Maybe they will next year, and so you can kind of beat the rush to them now if you're playing a deep enough dynasty league. But yeah, Drew Thorpe has been ridiculous

between high A and AA and double A and really since making the leap to the fact that he's kept it going because maybe when he was still an A ball well-developed change-up and just those young kidders don't know what they're doing against it.

It hasn't mattered. He has recorded double-digit strikeout six times this year and has gone seven innings or more seven times which is especially rare for a minor league pitcher. It's continued in a AA. Drew Thorpe looks great. Lazaro Montes, we talked about him recently,

only 18, so it's kind of ridiculous to make the Jordan Alvarez comparison, but there are a lot of comps there. He's gotten those kinds of comps at that very young age and producing big power, really big numbers all around in the lowest levels of the minors. I'm warming up to Lazaro Montez. Other one I'll highlight here is Zach DeZenzo, who actually was in baseball prospectus' mid-season top 50.

So they especially like Zach DeZanzo. It's mostly about the exit velocity readings for him. Nobody hits the ball harder in the Astros organization. The power has started to come lately since his move up to AA. So Zach DeZenzo might want to get ahead on him. The next group of four includes Sterlin Thompson, a third baseman with the Rockies, Thomas Sejisi, second baseman with the Cardinals, Justin Henry Malloy, third baseman with the Tigers,

and Xavier Isaac, a first baseman with the Rays. Yeah, very interesting group here. Thomas Sejisi, we've talked about him before too. Remember, he came over from the Rangers in the Jordan Montgomery deal, and he's put up ridiculous numbers in the minors this year. Seems like one of those guys who ends up playing second base because he's really not good anywhere. So I think that keeps him lower on traditional prospect rankless.

Plus, you know, he's not a big guy. He doesn't hit the ball especially hard, but he's been crazy productive since mid-June batting about 350 with 19 homers. Maybe he's up to 20 now by the time you're listening to this. He's been crazy. Thomas Sejisi, I like him. Justin Henry Malloy of the Tigers, he has been overlooked because, like Sejici, doesn't have a lot of raw power, but it's functional power.

He pulls the ball over the fence wells, reach base at well over a 400 clip this year for the Tigers. I like Justin Henry Malloy a lot. Xavier Isaac may be the highest end of this group. He's a 19-year-old true first baseman, which a lot of times when a guy gets pigeonholed at first base that young is a bad sign. But the guy can really hit the race made him their first round pick last year. And they know what they're doing. He's been productive so far, Xavier Isaac.

All right. The next group of four includes Yvonne Melendez, a first baseman with the debacks. Bigby, an outfielder with the Tigers. Graham Pauley, a third baseman with the Padres, and Ben Rice, a catcher with the Yankees. Avon Melendez was actually the Golden Spikes Award winner in 2022. Last year, it ended up going in the second round to the Diamondbacks, so he's not like a big name prospect, but he does have that going for him.

Golden Spikes Award winner goes to the best college player. Guy has crazy power, crazy power. And we've seen in recent years, Stackass has kind of shown us that guys who hit the ball exceptionally hard are able to overcome outlier strikeout rates. Ivan Melendez is going to put that to the test unlike any prospect before him because the power production has been amazing between high A and AA, but the strikeout rate is like 35%.

So the numbers look great, but the strikeout rate gives you some pause with Ivan Melendez. Still, it might be worth taking a flyer for the upside. Justin Bigby is a very interesting prospect for the Tigers. He just moved up to AAA recently. As a matter of fact, he's hit about 350 this year. And when you watch highlights of his home runs, they're basically all the opposite way.

He just loves to drive the ball the opposite way, which is part of the reason why his batting averages so high. It undercuts his power potential, and the tigers are working with Justice Bigby on that to maybe help him pull the ball over the fence more, get more home runs that way. But either way, with the kind of batting averages he's producing, Justice Bigby, very interesting.

Ben Rice for the Yankees has put up... He had a 10-Homer August, and so that's made his overall stat line just ridiculous between three levels. Getting a lot of hype in Yankees world has Ben Rice. He has a noodle arm. Noodle, was the word I said there. He has a noodle arm.

I'm not sure he's going to be able to stick a catcher, and so that's going to put a lot of pressure on his bat to perform. All right, this last group includes Christian Scott. He's a starting pitcher with the Mets. Chase McDermott, a starting pitcher with the Orioles. Yordani Monegro, a starting pitcher with the Red Sox, and Troy Johnston, a first baseman with the Marlins.

And if you want to hear more about them, then you could do so on the website. CVSports.com slash fantasy slash baseball. For more extensive fantasy baseball coverage, listen to the full-length Fantasy Baseball Today podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, the Odyssey app, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Thanks for listening to Fantasy Baseball today.

and we'll be back again next week. Bye-bye.