Royal's second baseman Whit Merrifield is coming off back-to-back seasons of batting .300. His consistency at the plate has fantasy baseball managers drafting his as the fifth-second baseman right after Gleyber Torres, Jose Altuve, Ozzie Albies, and Ketel Marte. Yet Sports Illustrated’s fantasy baseball analyst Jaime Eisner thinks Merrifield is getting drafted a bit too high. For Eisner’s complete thoughts, watch the video above and check out the transcript of his conversation with fellow SI fantasy baseball analyst Shawn Childs.

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Corey Parson: Hey, what's up? It's Corey Parson the fantasy executive here with si.com. Major League Baseball could very well be on the way back. Many fantasy baseball players drafted their teams already, but some of you could still be in that process. Joining me right now to talk about Kansas City Royals, Whit Merrifield is SI fantasy and gambling analysts Shawn Childs and Jamie Eisner. Shawn, let me start with you. Last year, you look at Merrifield batting average over three hundred, but the stolen bases did go down. And so did the stolen bases. What do you think of Murphy coming into this season?

Shawn Childs: He's a guy that earned his stats by volume of at-bats. You know, his steals are such a major impact on rotisserie leagues two years ago. Out of all the baseballs, I developed an SI score to kind of rank baseball players. He was 11th highest rated hitter in baseball last year, even though he had a fade in RBI's in his home runs weren't really there, and the steals were down. He still ranked twenty-third and he has an ADP of forty-nine is the thirty-fifth player off the board. So if he repeated last season he would be kind of be a value. But the trick here is his walk rate is sliding a little bit. Is the team behind him going to have as much success as the runs will go down? You know he makes good contact. He'll hit four batting average steals are really, really the big wildcard. Can he get back over 30 for a full season? Obviously, half that for, you know, a half a season, 15 or so. But he's an attractive player, but he doesn't have that sexiness. And you kind of like just take him to kind of fill the categories. But he just plays every day any eventually helps your team win. Steady player, like him if he falls off the offense, all about team structure with him.

Corey Parson: Jaime, how do you rank among the second baseman in all you drafting or passing?

Jaime Eisner: I'm probably passing on him at his current price. The question is, is, like Shawn said, where does his steals total to come in this year, at least pro-rated? You know, he stole 34 bases a couple of years ago, stole forty-five, I guess. Forty-five. Two seasons ago. And only 20 last year. And maybe more concerning, he only attempted 30 steals last year. Got caught on a third of them. That's highly concerning for his fantasy value. I expect him to come back down under 100 runs again. He'll be a solid player or a pro-rated version. Around 90 runs 14 15 home runs, 65 RBI. Is that low 20s in steals or so? But for me, I'm going to take a player like that in the sixth round, maybe even early seventh round in twelve-team leagues. Mike, I take him in the fourth round where he's going right now. 

Corey Parson:  All right. Thanks a lot, fellas, for all the latest news from the majors. Stay tuned right here on si.com