Fantasy baseball players are banking on Jack Flaherty becoming the next big-league ace. After a slow start to the season with a 4.90 ERA in his first 17 starts, Flaherty closed out the year with a .93 ERA over his final 16 games. Now fantasy baseball players are investing a second-round pick on the Cardinals pitcher. According to the latest Average Draft Position data, Flaherty is coming off boards as the 24th overall player and the 7th starting pitcher.

Should he go even higher? Sports Illustrated’s fantasy baseball analysts Ben Heisler and Shawn Childs break it down in the attached video.

Read the transcript from their conversation for more analysis:

Bill Enright: After an impressive finish in 2019, Cardinals pitcher Jack Flaherty is climbing up draft boards in 2020. Just how high should he go? Let's find out what the experts say by talking with Ben Heisler and Shawn Childs, two of our fantasy baseball analysts here at Sports Illustrated. Shawn, I'm going to go to you first because Flaherty started off slow at the beginning of 2019. But, boy, did he have a strong finish with a sub-one ERA in his final 16 games.

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Shawn Childs: He's a guy that really came on the second half of the year, really helped fantasy owners win championships. He was electric. All of his pitches work well. They hit under 200 on almost all of them, his curveball was 2.40. So he's tremendous on pushing forward, but he actually is a guy for a shortened season, sets an example of, "if this ace that I draft gets out to a slow start where you had a 4.9 ERA and 19 home runs and he underperforms, you're going to really get me in trouble." I think he's going to hit the ground running. I like what he brings to the table and he's really pressing forward to be an SP1 in a high stakes market. I'm very attracted to him and he's going to be a special player going forward.

Bill Enright: Ben, let's talk about Flaherty’s ADP because he's coming off boards as the 24th overall player, the 7th pitcher. Are you buying him at that price?

Ben Heisler: Yeah, it's hard not to, Bill. I'm really impressed with what Jack Flaherty was able to do a season ago. This is somebody that's going sort of in that same realm as Stephen Strasburg, and we talked about him just a handful of days ago. I like the outlook more for Flaherty, a younger arm, more on the rise. We've seen Strasburg miss time after throwing over 200 innings before. So I like him to go there. Certainly, during the stretch of the second half, players were barely touching his sinker. They were swinging and missing on his slider, his curveball. He was throwing for strikes as well. So I think Jack Flaherty sets up really nicely in 2020, particularly in a shortened season.

Bill Enright: We have plenty more ADP analysis for fantasy baseball in the 2020 season. You can check it out by going to SI.com/fantasy.

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