Will Thames, Ozuna keep driving your lineup?

The following is a transcript of a segment from this week's Fantasy411 podcast, hosted by MLB.com lead fantasy writer Fred Zinkie and national editor Matthew Leach. To hear the rest of Zinkie and Leach's discussion, subscribe to the Fantasy411 podcast by clicking here.
Leach:Eric Thames and Marcell Ozuna have been two of the top hitters in the game -- one a little more surprising than the other, though I think some people were high on Thames coming into the season. Ozuna is a guy that I think a lot of people have expected to bust out for a while. Personally, I am very high on Ozuna. I don't think he's gonna keep hitting .404, but I think he is a guy to take very seriously as a potential top outfielder.
• Fantasy411 pod: Subscribe now, celebrate in September
I am less sold on Thames. I think he'll hit for some power, I think he'll be productive. What he's done already isn't going to go away. He might hit 30 now. I think now, with the head-start he's got, 30 is a pretty good number for him. But I don't think he's a huge star-type player going forward. Where do you see those two guys? Do you agree with me that between the two you'd rather have Ozuna going forward?
Zinkie: Actually, I think I might be a little more excited about Thames. But it's very close for me. I'm high on both of them as far as their ability to continue it. Obviously, as you mentioned already, they're not going to continue on the pace they're on -- that kind of goes without saying, but needs to be acknowledged -- but it's really whether we're projecting that they're going to make a major increase in their overall production this year. And I think both of them will.

What I like, what's encouraging for me about Thames, is he's hitting for power, but also his strikeout rate has been fine. Like, he's on pace, if he plays 145-150 games, he might have 130-135 strikeouts. That's a really reasonable total for a power hitter. So I'm just really intrigued by Thames. Also, I was kind of on him back in Spring Training -- with a Brewers team that doesn't mind stealing bases -- to maybe steal 10 bases this year. Now that hasn't happened, he hasn't been stealing bases yet, but it's early. It could still happen.
If you can get 30 home runs from Thames, and eight or 10 steals, and if the strikeout rate can continue to be reasonable. ... Now, baseball is a game of matchups and adjustments, and will pitchers adjust to him as they study him more throughout the season -- kind of the new Thames that's back in the Majors? That's totally possible, and maybe I'm not giving enough credit to the adjustments pitchers will make on him in the coming months. But I'm really encouraged by what I've seen so far.
Leach: And that's part of it for me. I think we're now at the point where Ozuna, things have sort of been sorted out between him and pitchers. It's not like we're suddenly going to discover something on him, where pitchers are suddenly going to discover a hole or discover a new way to get him out. The other thing is -- pardon the shameless plug here -- I wrote something on Ozuna this week, taking a look at him through a Statcast™ lens. And it's impressive. He is absolutely obliterating the ball like few guys right now, and that's part of what I look at with him.

He's just crushing the ball. Exit velocity on fly balls and line drives, as of a couple of days ago, led the Majors. And that's the thing that really jumps out to me: Ozuna is a guy who we've always thought he had power, and he is really coming into that. And hopefully somebody's going to get into his ear and say, "Hey, hit it in the air a little more," because he doesn't hit the ball hard on the ground. But some of those peripherals on him make me very excited. Again, a guy that we've known for a while and has shown flashes of it before, and it's just a matter of keeping it together.
I'm really high on him. He was a guy I had targeted coming into the year -- this goes back to something we talked about: we tend to like the guys we liked -- but I do think he's a guy to take very seriously, and a guy we're probably going to have a tier higher in next year's pre-draft rankings.
Zinkie: Yeah. Maybe one final comment on Ozuna is: some fantasy owners will remember he was really good in the first half of last season, as well, and then faded in the second half. I'm not buying at all that his second-half fade means he's not a second-half player. I don't buy that at all. I think it's quite likely that the second-half fade was injury-related last season, which also makes it even more encouraging that he's off to a great start. Because this could have been someone who had a breakout year last year, maybe, if not for some nagging injuries down the stretch.