Fantasy Baseball: What to Do with Kansas City Royals Rookie Mike Moustakas

Heading into every MLB season, fantasy owners focus primarily on who they're going to pick come draft time. Many also spend a fair amount of time keeping their eye on the minors. Fantasy baseball managers are always trying to discover which big name prospects are expected to join their big league ball clubs throughout the season.

Some of last year's biggest prospects were the Tampa Bay Rays' Jeremy Hellickson and the Washington Nationals' Stephen Strasburg. This year, many of the biggest prospect names were batters by the name of Anthony Rizzo, Bryce Harper, Dustin Ackley and two Kansas City Royals prospects by the names of Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas.

Hosmer was arguably the Royals' top batting prospect heading into 2011, but not far behind in the hype department was third baseman Mike Moustakas.

"Moose," as he's called, was the second overall pick in the 2007 MLB draft and has spent the past few seasons down on the farm putting up extremely impressive power numbers.

After 55 games with 10 home runs and 48 RBI for Triple-A Omaha, the Royals finally gave Moustakas the call-up just a little less than two weeks ago.

After hitting anywhere between .280 and .333 in his minor league career, Moustakas has struggled in his first few weeks in Kansas City, earning a Mark Reynolds-like .219 average through his first 10 games. He's also only hit a very un-Reynolds-like one home run and gathered one RBI so far.

Given that this is an extremely small sample size to judge from, it should be expected that 22 year-old "Moose" would struggle. Most rookies don't come swinging out of the gates the way Hosmer has this season or Buster Posey did last year.

Moustakas may continue to experience his early struggles through the month of July, but considering his minor league career there is reason to believe that the native Californian will figure things out at the plate and begin to hit the way he did in Omaha.

The problem with rookies is that every player is different—some start to contribute immediately like the Poseys and Evan Longorias of the world, but some can take years to deliver on their hype, like fellow Royal Alex Gordon.

That being said, Moustakas plays a position that started the season thin for quality options and has only gotten thinner with injuries to top guys like the Mets' David Wright. In AL-only and deeper (12 teams and up) leagues, there's little reason to give up on "Moose" because if you need third base help, there really aren't any names out there on the free agent list that have the upside that Moustakas has.

For shallower formats, it might be time to cut ties with this Royal until he finds his swing.