The following is a transcript of a segment from this week's Fantasy411 podcast, hosted by MLB.com lead fantasy writer Fred Zinkie and Al Melchior. To hear the rest of Zinkie and Melchior's discussion, subscribe to the Fantasy411 podcast by clicking here.
Zinkie: Now, I want to jump back to something Scott Pianowski from Yahoo mentioned last week. We had a great conversation with Scott. Scott is a big Francisco Lindor fan. So am I, but Scott took it to a level that I wasn't willing to go to when he said that he could see Lindor as a potential first-round pick next season. Now, Lindor has been durable. The power was up this season, and he can steal some bases. I'm not sure if I have him there, though. Al, do you see where Scott is coming from or do you think Lindor is not really a first-round pick consideration next year.
Melchior: I guess I'm going to be sort of in between where you guys are on Lindor, because I think that it's defensible to take Lindor if you're at the turn. I have not done any kind of firm rankings yet, but [I'm] sort of just looking at the landscape of who might be a first rounder -- and there [are] so many players from the shortstop mix, there [are] so many players from the outfield mix there that are so close together that if somebody wanted to take Lindor over Trea Turner, if somebody wanted to take him even over Carlos Correa, I could see it. I'm not sure in the end where I'm going to come down on that, but he is, I think, defensible as the first shortstop taken overall. And 11th or 12th [pick] would not be a bad place to nail down your choice at that position. Must draft in the first round? No way. Is it defensible? I think it is.
Zinkie: Yeah, I think I'm going to end up with him probably more around 15, actually maybe more like 20th. I think I'll have Turner higher than him, maybe Correa, too. Probably Correa, too. I can see the really high floor with Lindor, though, just viewing him as durable in that now he has these power skills. Even if those power skills declined a little bit, it's possible it could be offset by maybe his batting average going up a little bit because it dropped a bit this year. Maybe the higher batting average helps him get a few more chances to steal bases. I do see him as a very high-floor player. Now, another player who I see as high-floor [player] right on his own team is Jose Ramirez. Would you rather have Lindor or Ramirez if you're drafting right now.
Melchior: I would rather have Lindor, and [I'm] looking at these two players a little more in depth before I start that. To me, Lindor, he's elite. And there was less that's separating them than expected, but I still think Lindor at the very, very least gets the benefit of the doubt from me by virtue of being a couple years younger. So whether either one will replicate the sort of power that they showed this year, Fred, I talked a little bit in another podcast about my lessons learned from this season, and I feel like the thing that maybe I did that hurt me the most was put too much stock in players who broke out or apparently broke out in 2016 and kind of putting too much weight on the one season. So I probably will overcompensate with Lindor and Ramirez in that regard, because we haven't seen this kind of high power from either one of them before. And it certainly didn't look fluky, but I certainly would favor the players who have done it more than once.