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Fantasy Baseball: Baltimore Orioles Sleeper, Bust and Breakout Candidates

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With baseball season potentially returning this summer, SI fantasy analysts Jaime Eisner and Shawn Childs break down who to draft and who to avoid on the Baltimore Orioles

Read below for full video transcription: 

Bill Enright: Time for some fantasy baseball talk here at Sports Illustrated, and today we're focusing on the Baltimore Orioles with a sleeper, bust and breakout. For that, I go to my two fantasy and gambling analysts here at SI, Shawn Childs and Jaime Eisner. Shawn, I'm going to start with you. Give me a breakout and a sleeper from the Orioles. 

Shawn Childs: Austin Hays is the guy that's kind of a breakout hitter. He kind of struggled for a couple of years with injuries. Last September, he had a good final 63 at bats, .309, 4 homeruns, 63 RBIs. He should probably hit second in the batting order. I think he's gonna be, you know, an upside of 30 homeruns once he hits the ground running. But he's a talented player and I like him a lot this year, and he said he was drawing some attention in the early draft season. As far as Sleeper, Ryan Mountcastle probably gets a big bump with Trey Mancini looking like he'll miss the whole year recovering from colon cancer. So last year he hit like .312 with 25 homeruns, 83 RBIs. Strikes out a little bit too much, doesn't take many walks, but he's a guy, you know, middle of the order bat with a good swing and he probably could hit for average in the majors, and I'm very excited about him this year. And he's going to go fly way under way under the radar. 

Bill Enright: Those are two players that we are high on or excited about. Let's go to a player that we don't want on our fantasy baseball teams. Jaime, give me a bust. 

Jaime Eisner: One of Sean's big regression candidates for the Orioles was John Means, and I think if you look at just his surface stats from last year, that 3.60 ERA, the 1.14 WHIP, you might be inclined to add him to your team based off of really, as Shawn pointed out, a quality change up that he threw, the second most of all his pitches at 29% last year. 

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