Oh boy, it's almost Fantasy Baseball season, y'all.

Subscribers, welcome back to the Fantasy Baseball Today Newsletter, and if you didn't read the "From" portion of the email, allow me to introduce myself: I'm Chris Towers, and I'll be right here in your inbox helping you win your Fantasy Baseball championship. 

The goal with this here newsletter is to give you everything you need to win your league, from draft season all the way through the end of the MLB regular season next fall. In a few weeks, I'm going to be in your inbox nearly everyday, providing you with my unique perspective on building the best team possible, with the help of my FBT pals.

You're going to hear from me, Scott White, and Frank Stampfl five days a week once we get rolling, just like you do on the FBT podcast. You're going to get the latest written content from our team, plus snippets from the podcast, and unique analysis and reactions to the latest news that you won't find anywhere else – including regular reader/listener mailbags, if you want to send your questions to [email protected] to be included. 

Now, we're not kicking off the newsletter in earnest for a few more weeks, because … well, I'm on vacation until the end of the month! But I'm taking a break to introduce myself, and whet your appetite. The CBS Fantasy Baseball product launched this week, which means this is the unofficial official start of baseball season for us. The FBT team's rankings are live on CBSSports.com right here , including Salary Cap Draft values, and here's a shocker: Ronald Acuña is the top player for each of myself, Scott, and Frank coming off his historic 2022 season. I've got him valued as a $50 player, $6 clear of any other player in Roto, and I think you can make a case that the No. 1 overall pick is more valuable this season than it has been in a long time – at least since Mike Trout's peak – because of how absurdly dominant Acuña was last season.

So, if you're picking first this season, you've got an easy choice. After that? Yeah, you might need our help. We'll be right here in your inbox to help you prep for your drafts, whether you play in H2H points or Roto, and we'll even have some Dynasty help for you – like, for instance, Scott's Top-100 prospects for 2024, which you can read right here. And, if you tuned out of baseball last summer, make sure you check Scott's annual " Everything you missed after Fantasy Football started," one of my favorite offseason columns every year. 

You want more? Alright, we've got more for you. In the rest of today's newsletter, I've got Sleeper, Breakout, and Bust picks from Scott, Frank, and I to get you started. Over the next few weeks, we'll be rolling out the rest of our picks, and we'll start rolling out our position previews, mock drafts, and more as we get ready for the start of Spring Training, and then, the start of the 2024 Fantasy Baseball season.

It's gonna be a great season, and I can't wait to get started with you all. 

If you checked out midway through last summer, you might have missed one of the most exciting pitching breakouts in Kansas City since Danny Duffy's heyday. The Royals acquired Cole Ragans from the Rangers in late-June, but he didn't join the team's rotation for good until early August -- and he was one of the best pitchers in baseball from that point on. He threw 66.2 innings over his final 11 starts, striking out 32.3% of opposing batters and sporting a 2.70 ERA and 2.43 FIP; only Spencer Strider had a higher strikeout rate among qualifiers last season, and nobody had a better FIP. 

Despite that run, powered by a 100-mph fastball from the left side, Ragans has his share of doubters, with an ADP of 112.51 in NFC drafts as of Jan. 14. Scott isn't doubting it, though, as Ragans headlines his initial list of sleepers for 2024. Head here to see who else Scott thinks drafters might be sleeping on right now. 

I had a great time searching for sleeper pitchers, and I think there are enough options that I'm comfortable taking a single ace in the first 100 picks and then building my staff around guys in the double-digit rounds. Now, if I'm going to reach for a No. 2 SP in the first five or six rounds, however, it's probably going to be someone like Tarik Skubal or Yoshinobu Yamamoto, both of whom made my breakouts list, or Grayson Rodriguez or Eury Perez a few rounds later.

And Perez is especially enticing. The Marlins had to balance limiting his innings while making a run to the playoffs, and that put Perez in a tough spot as a rookie. The fact that he shined to the tune of a 3.15 ERA and 108 strikeouts in 91.1 innings of work is a testament to Perez's skill, which is prodigious. My second-favorite stat from Perez's rookie season? His slider, changeup, and curveball all ranked in the top 10 among all pitchers in whiff rate last season. Not top-10 percentile, mind you; for example, only one pitcher had a higher curveball whiff rate than Perez's 54.3% rate.

My favorite stat about Perez? He doesn't turn 21 until a few weeks into this season. He's going to be a star. To see who else I'm tabbing as a breakout for 2024, head here. 

Cincinnati baseball fans are going to hate the FBT podcast, I'm afraid. That's one of the most fun teams in baseball, and I don't want to make it sound like we aren't fans. We are. But we've got reservations about a team that is deep in incredibly fun, young players, but pretty shallow in proven commodities. 

Despite that, the Reds have three players being drafted in the top 100 and seven inside of the top 150 right now, and some of those prices are tough to justify. In Frank's case, he's got Elly De La Cruz, Alexis Diaz, and TJ Friedl all on his Busts 1.0 list, but I don't want Frank to catch all of the heat; I've also got De La Cruz and Matt McLain on my forthcoming busts list. And I'm sure Scott will follow in our footsteps as well.

For more of Frank's bust picks, head here to see which non-Reds players he'll be avoiding this year.