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Fantasy Baseball Players Banking on Comeback Season for Nathan Eovaldi

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2:05

As the postponed MLB season gets closer to a start date, the Fantasy Analysts at Sports Illustrated are taking a team-by-team look at a deep sleeper, comeback, and bust from all 30 teams in the Major Leagues. 

Shawn Childs and Jaime Eisner highlight three Red Sox players to monitor for fantasy baseball including Jeter Downs, Bobby Dalbec, and Nathan Eovaldi.

Read the full transcript from the interview below:

Bill Enright: Time to talk some fantasy baseball with a focus on the Boston Red Sox. I'll bring on Jaime Eisner and Shawn Childs, two of our fantasy analysts here at SI. I'm going to go to Sean. Let's go to you with a comeback player and a deep sleeper from the Boston Red Sox.

Nathan Eovaldi

Shawn Childs: Nathan Eovaldi is a guy that really struggled last year. In the 2018 playoffs, he really helped Boston win the world championship. Out of relief, he throws really hard. He's kind of straight. But last year he walked a lot of guys. The change in the pitching staff with whoever they lost this year. 

Eovaldi should step in. He had a pretty good spring training, seven innings, and he gave up two or three runs and few strikeouts. So I think he's going to come back and pitch well this year. He's going to really have to step up for Boston to make a push in the AL East. 

Bobbby Dalbec

As far as deep sleeper, I really like Bobby Dalbec back in January, but the Red Sox signed Mitch Moreland to add some value at first base, which puts Dalbec kind of in the backseat of the rotation. He's gonna be the future third baseman for Boston. He has a great glove, great arm. He can hit for power, will take walks. His only downside, he does strike out a few too many times. But I think he's a guy that if they have one injury or if Mitch Moreland starts off kind of slow, he could kind of surprise over the short term.

Bill Enright: Jaime, let me go over to you for the players that we don't want on our fantasy baseball team with our bust, so what do you got?

Jaime Eisner: Well, Boston's all those rare teams that doesn't have a lot of bust-candidates aside from injury concerns because everybody is kind of rated properly. But one guy would keep a close eye on is Brandon Workman in that closer role.

Brandon Workman has a 3.24 ERA in 5 starts for the Red Sox this year. (Brian Blanco/Getty Images)

Particularly because of that really high walk rate, he ranked in the bottom 1% in the league last year with a15.7% percent walk rate. He's got a great K rate. He's got a great WHIP percentage. He's got great stuff but if he cannot control his pitches and he's out of the zone a lot, I could see a guy like Matt Barnes sneaking in and getting some save opportunities.

Bill Enright: We have plenty more fantasy baseball analysis, you can find more of it by going to SI.com/fantasy. Jaime, Sean. Thank you for analysis. 

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