Fantasy Baseball: How aggressively should Fantasy owners pursue Amed Rosario and Ian Happ?

Ian Happ is already playing for the Cubs, and there's some buzz surrounding Amed Rosario as well. Scott White considers how rosterable these two are.

If you hadn't experienced it already, chances are you did this weekend.

Those sweaty palms, those throbbing temples, that tingle on the back of  your neck. It's the call of the prospect, and when it hits, it runs roughshod over your sensibilities.

Perspective is lost in the dash to the waiver wire, where the scent of youth has made for a feeding frenzy normally reserved for newly anointed closers and the latest Charlie Morton start. And which prospect brought out this beastly behavior this weekend? Two, actually: Ian Happ and Amed Rosario.

Your league doesn't get caught up in prospect fever, you say? Haven't had the occasion to add either, you tell me? Oh, but you want to. That twitching lip. That quivering eyebrow. Your body quakes with desire. You've picked up the scent, now it's only a matter of time before you dispense with civility and dissolve into your baser instincts.

What are we, animals? Servants to our senses? Creatures of compulsion, with not a care for cognition or calculation?

Nonsense! This pursuit deserves careful consideration, deliberation and ultimate reconciliation of our mind and instincts, our faculties working in harmony to answer the most primal of questions:

Yes or no?

Do we pick up the latest Cubs call-up and live Happ-ily ever after? Or would pursuing the Mets top prospect be viewing their shortstop predicament through Rosario-tinted glasses?

Here's the problem: Neither prospect has the inside track on full-time duty -- and even most of the middle tracks are occupied.

Granted, we were in this same spot just a few weeks ago with Cody Bellinger, who arrived with no promises of playing time and, in fact, a stated expectation that he'd be sent down as soon as Joc Pederson came off the DL. But even so, his situation was different. The Dodgers had a non-prospect who wasn't living up to his surprising playoff production in left field (Andrew Toles) and a fading 35-year-old just willing himself on the field every night at first base (Adrian Gonzalez). The path was clear as long as Bellinger did his part. And he did.

But isn't Happ? He started his first game with the big club and went 1 for 3 with a homer. He started his second game with the big club and went 2 for 4 with a double. So in other words, he's 2 for 2 in capitalizing on the opportunities placed before him, and most notable of all is that he's getting those opportunities. What was presented to us as this:

Ian Happ may be added to #Cubs today as short-term call up because of injuries (Russell, Jay, Bryant etc). Stay tuned

— Carrie Muskat (@CarrieMuskat) May 13, 2017

Has since turned into this:

Maddon also told Happ: "I said, I don't know if it's going to be a week or the whole season, but just go play." #Cubs

— Carrie Muskat (@CarrieMuskat) May 13, 2017

Maddon was most open to the idea of keeping Happ around after that second performance Sunday, telling CSN Chicago "if he keeps doing [this], it's hard to say that you don't want him here any longer."

It's a nice sentiment from a manager with no shortage of sentiment, but the question remains where?

Some have nominated Ben Zobrist as the Cubs' version of Gonzalez, but he's only in the second of a four-year deal and was just the World Series MVP in October. Besides, his struggles are mostly the result of bad BABIP luck, which a forward-thinking organization like the Cubs will no doubt recognize.

Is he banged up now and could use a 10-day breather? Possibly, but even then we're talking about a temporary absence -- and one where Happ wouldn't even have first dibs. The Cubs, after all, had too many hitters to fit in one lineup before Happ even showed up, forcing them to use Javier Baez as sort of a super sub. Oh, and they called up lesser prospect Jeimer Candelario just a couple days before Happ and have been motivated to get him in the lineup as well.

It all adds up to Happ being just a spare part when Bryant and Russell are back from their day-to-day issues. Nobody else is getting sent down and nobody else is getting confined to the bench. The Cubs would be squandering too much potential that way. And though it's possible they put a second of their banged-up hitters on the 10-day DL and begin exploiting it the Dodgers have with their starting pitchers, rotating mainstays through to give each a two-week breather while giving their excess a chance to contribute, that scenario tests the limits of the imagination, don't you think? The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

So what about Rosario? Unlike the Cubs with Happ, the Mets have yet to express they even want him around. The question first came up about a week ago, when Asdrubal Cabrera suffered a thumb injury of unknown severity. He was presumed to have jammed it at the time, but additional testing has revealed a torn ligament -- an injury that often requires surgery.

It opens the door to the long-term absence needed to justify a changing of the guard, allowing the 21-year-old Rosario to establish himself without the Mets reversing course at the first sign of trouble. But they also have Jose Reyes to play shortstop, especially now that he appears to have been displaced at third base by T.J. Rivera, a 28-year-old rookie with Martin Prado-like upside.

That's not even the biggest obstacle, though. The biggest obstacle remains Cabrera himself, who maintains for right now that he intends to play through the torn ligament. Clearly, the Mets can't turn the page to Rosario if there's not even an opening for him yet.

And then comes the question of productivity. Rosario is a top-10 prospect anywhere you look, but some of the skills that factor into that ranking don't translate to Fantasy. Compared to Happ, who already has 15 home runs this calendar year between spring training, Triple-A and the majors, Rosario's utility isn't so obvious.

But he's hitting .359 at Triple-A Las Vegas. He has an .894 OPS. His strikeout percentage of 14.0 is akin to DJ LeMahieu's in the majors. He's a more polished hitter than Francisco Lindor was at the same stage of development, and his athleticism could play up in a similar way. And most important of all, he's a shortstop. If he's what we hoped Dansby Swanson would be, performing at a 10-homer, 15-steal pace with good peripherals and a respectable batting average, he'll be hard to sit at that position.

In a way, Rosario has an easier path to Fantasy relevance even though he's not the one in the majors right now. He just needs the Mets to make the call. Happ, meanwhile, would need two high-end hitters to go down and the Cubs to look his way (and not, say, Candelario's) after that.

So while I can get behind the idea of adding Happ and Rosario -- and have done it in several leagues myself -- I don't see it as an across-the-board decision. You have some time certainly in Head-to-Head leagues, where teams typically start just three outfielders and no extra corner or middle infielders, and if you're in the same position I am in those formats, you're happy to take that time. I already had to expunge players like Avisail Garcia and Yasiel Puig, whose numbers merit their ownership, in those leagues this weekend just to get Aaron Altherr and Jose Berrios on my rosters. How am I going to make room for prospective contributors?

But in anything deeper -- let's say in leagues where 300 or more players are rostered or where you'd pounce on Yoan Moncada if someone else was to drop him -- you probably need to make a play for Happ and/or Rosario. Which one sort of depends on need. If you were dealt a miserable hand at either second base (Happ) or shortstop (Rosario), you can't expect a more promising player to emerge than these two in the weeks ahead.