BDPP86, Zack Wheeler of the San Francisco Giants, Bowman Chrome Autograph

Buy or Sell: Buying

Projected Value: Great

This year’s Bowman’s absolutely loaded with pitching — High School Pitching, to be exact.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of losing a bunch of money, let me paraphrase the first rule of prospecting for you:

HIGHLY TOUTED HIGH SCHOOL PITCHERS ARE A GREAT WAY TO GO BROKE

Pitchers, in general, are much harder to project than hitters and tend to flame out at a much larger rate.  The key, obviously, is to know when to buy and when to sell. You can make a lot of money on a quad-A player and lose a lot of money on a perennial all-star, all due to timing.

With Baseball America’s lists dropping like bombs up on these bitches, now’s probably not the optimal time to buy.   Realistically, your best shot of purchasing a Wheeler card is during a bumpy dead-arm period towards the end of next season, or once he’s already made the show and has pitched well, but not Tim Lincecum well.

Zack Greinke and Justin Verlander prove that even the best pitchers will have slumps where you can pick them up on the cheap.  What you have to realize more than anything, is that for every pitcher that hits the road running and continues running; there’s about 50 more that’ll sputter long enough to get a great deal.

Wheeler appears set to debut in Low-A, but considering his age and frame, rushing him through the minors would be suicide. So you’ll have time to acquire these, and you’ll have to sit on them once you do acquire them.

Wheeler has all the potential in the world to top San Francisco’s prospect list after a certain Buster Posey graduates to the next level.  Once that happens and the kid gains steam, that’s probably the time you’ll want to part with his cards.

If you’re a gambling man, you can hold them and hope that he becomes the next big thing.  Most people are happy with a 50-100% ROI rather than the 1/50 shot of a 1000+% ROI payday.

Anyways, back to Zack Wheeler.

The kid has a pitcher’s body — the kind that gives scouts wet dreams.  All of the pitches are there, but some refinement is definitely needed.

Wheeler’s probably a smidgen below Matzek in the ratings, but when you consider the parks their heading to, things get interesting.

If you’re going on sheer value to the collector alone, I think Wheeler sneaks in above Matzek even if he doesn’t top out at the same level.