Fantasy Felony: Should You Sell or Buy Jason Heyward?

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The Atlanta Braves had to make a decision when spring training began. Once Jason Heyward was in camp, the team had to decide how long to let him stay. The hype grew as Heyward blossomed, and then the Braves had to decide whether or not Heyward -- at 20 years old -- could actually make the ballclub.

We all know what the Braves decided to do. And now that Heyward is the starting right fielder, fantasy owners have a decision to make.

If you landed the prized prospect in the draft, do you stick with him or trade him now? If you didn't nab Heyward a few weeks ago, do you attempt to put a deal together for him?

Now may be a good time for a disclaimer, before we go any further. I'm only talking to fantasy GMs in one-year leagues right now. Those of you in keeper leagues will either have to pay too much if you don't own Heyward, or have such a promising commodity if you do own him, that trading will be prohibitive.

Let's take a look at his stats through 26 at-bats. Heyward is hitting .269 with a 1.041 OPS. He has three home runs and nine RBI in seven games and has struck out 10 times while walking five times. He's been a pretty inconsistent hitter thus far -- as rookies tend to be -- neither putting lengthy hitting streaks or hitless streaks together.

What you should really like about Heyward is the fact that he's driving the ball hard when he hits it, and those power bombs are coming frequently. He's launching a home run once in every 10.3 plate appearances, and if he keeps that streak up, will cross the 60 home run plateau with regular play all year.

He's not going to hit that many bombs, trust me. In fact, I set the expectation at 18 home runs back in March. So what do you do with a hitter who's hitting home runs frequently, has all kinds of buzz surrounding him and has an RBI in over 70 percent of his games played? You trade him while his value is high.

My advice is to find the biggest Braves fan in your fantasy league -- if there's not one, you always have a fantasy GM who loves young prospects -- and sell high. List all of those reasons I mentioned earlier. Tell him that his power is abundant and he's driving in runs all of the time. Be sure to mention that he's the number one prospect in all of baseball and that we haven't even seen him steal bases yet -- which he will do. When mentioning the steals to come, go as far as saying, "Heyward will be even MORE valuable when he starts stealing."

There is so much buzz surrounding Heyward that he should be easy to deal, and you should be able to extract some pretty nice talent for him. Just do it quickly while his numbers are still as lofty as they are. If you wait too long and Heyward struggles through a long cold spell -- and you know that he's going to -- you'll be sorry.