Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1474: The 2020 Minor League Free Agent Draft

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley discuss the signings of Hyun-Jin Ryu and Dallas Keuchel, the Blue Jays’ historic 2019 rotation, the depleted pitching market, MLB’s rising revenue and the continued strength of spending on free agents, Jake Odorizzi and the qualifying offer, Nick Senzel’s switch to Scott Boras, and Rich Hill’s arrest(!), then […]

You want a bag, you get a bag. You need a bag, you get a bag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You need a bag. Good morning and welcome to episode 1474 of Effectively Wild Baseball Podcast on Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. We're all here. Hello, folks.

Hi. We're going to be doing our annual minor league draft. I'm excited. The minor league free agent draft, we're doing it. Seventh annual. Seventh annual. We'll go over last year's results. And while we're doing that, maybe we'll go over this year's results and while we're doing that maybe we'll

go over this year's uh off-season free agent contracts results too because i can't go over those enough um ben uh ben you had some something you wanted to mention yeah well i think it was related to the off-season contracts for agent draft right because because I think things went even worse for me I've stopped checking it because it's just Too upsetting Yeah So are you talking about Ryu signing I think so right So there were two big signings since we last spoke

The free agent pitching market Is basically depleted at this point Because the White Sox signed Dallas Keuchel For three years and 55 and a half million And the Blue Jays signed Keuchel for three years And 55 and a half million and the Blue Jays Signed Hyunjin Ryu for Four years and 80 million both Scott Boris clients so his

Off season total is up Over a billion now that's a pretty good Off season for Scott Boris commission wise And now There's there are no good pitchers left I guess There's there's Rich Hill I don't want to Disrespect Rich Hill but just got arrested There's Rich Hill. I don't want to disrespect Rich Hill. Just got arrested.

Rich Hill? Rich Hill just got arrested. What? This broke like six minutes ago. For what? Trying to get an oversized bag into a football game. Oh, my God. What?

I've never been more relieved to have to react to something live. All right. So this was apparently on saturday i uh i have not read the article that it's based on but here's a here's a section of the article richard j hill a veteran pitcher for several major league baseball teams including the dodgers and the red sox and his wife were arrested outside gillette stadium saturday after caitlin hill repeatedly tried to enter the stadium with an oversized bag and then refused to leave the grounds when ordered to do so by Foxborough police. Police said Monday

Richard Hill was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting when he allegedly tried to stop police from putting his wife into a prisoner transport vehicle for a ride to the police station for booking on disorderly conduct and trespassing charges according to police oh my goodness huh all right well i'm relieved it's so ritual is not canceled the roller the roller coaster of emotion yeah so over the last 30 seconds chivalrous i guess oh yeah no i mean it's it is what you would like to be arrested for for for sure like you're it's double right like you're you're a arrested for defending your wife uh against the state which is already a solid thing to be doing uh and then b

for fighting the petty tyranny of like modern security yeah culture yeah right yeah security theater i guess not that you know you like like there is a point to not trying to sneak suspicious packages around. So I'm not, I guess I'm not totally sure where I fall on this. But yes, I mean, the way that we have acceded to living is sometimes you feel like you wish someone would stand up and say, no, this bag is fine. would stand up and say, no, this bag is fine. Yeah. As someone who had to purchase a clear plastic purse to take to Seahawks games and then have had to watch as male security officers

have opened tiny little parcels within that and then looked horrified at having to carry tampons, which human women do sometimes have to carry with them. I support the Hills. I will join their revolution. Yeah. I wonder what was in the bag besides that. Why was it so big?

I hope it was little bottles of hooch. Like a lot of little bottles of hooch. Not just one, but a lot of them. Little ones. Maybe it was just the principle of the thing. Anyway, that was not what I was expecting to hear when I brought up Rich Hill. Not sure how I missed that story. So I guess that probably doesn't hurt Rich Hill's free agency, I wouldn't think.

So he's maybe still the best free agent starter available. I don't know who else is out there now. It's like Yvonne Nova is still a free agent. I guess Homer Bailey. It's pretty bleak. So anyway, what does this do to our— I got some pitchers who are available that I'm going to talk about in a few minutes. They're some good minor league.

They're game changers. Yeah, sure. So anyway, Keichel, White Sox are going for it. They landed someone else, and Blue Jays, sort of surprising that they would be the one to land Ryu, I guess, except that—and this is something we probably should have talked about on our story we missed about every team, because we talked about Matt Shoemaker for the Blue Jays in the brief season he had. What we probably should have mentioned is just the Blue Jays starting rotation as a whole, which I did not realize they had 21 pitchers start for them in 2019.

Very brief. That is, yeah, that is wild. 21 pitchers that is not quite A major league record but but basically So the the 1915 Philadelphia A's had 24 Starting pitchers because that Was their first post fire sale

Season and so I guess they were just starting Whoever was around at the time But other than that that's the most Ever it's the the 67 Mets had 20 and the 2019 Blue Jays had 21. So no wonder they felt like they needed to go get a starter. And they had also already signed Tanner Roark and traded for Chase Anderson and re-signed Shoemaker. So anyway, fun to see Ryu go to an unlikely destination.

And he got a good deal, which was, I guess bad news so for me in the the free agent contracts draft which i assume you have the updated numbers and are eager to share them at the moment you're 300 million dollars behind me oh my gosh who has donaldson among i don't remember we didn't donaldson was not picked we we couldn't get a read on it. Oh, okay. So there are five, I think five players left for you to make up the ground. Will Harris and Marcelo Zuna for me. Oh, yeah. Okay. And Puig, Batonsas, and Edwin Encarnacion for you.

Okay. All right. And you do have the over on all of them. Yeah, right. The funny thing is that- So if they sign for 100 million each, I still get a shot. So the only one that you've got right so far too is basically on a technicality because Jose Abreu accepted the qualifying offer

and then like 40 seconds later agreed to a three-year extension that would have been double what his predicted value was. So yeah, you're doing an Orioles thing here. Yeah, I think I misread the market. You're getting the first pick in next year's draft. Yeah, I'm happy to be so wrong in the sense that You're getting the first pick in next year's draft. Yeah. I'm happy to be so wrong in the sense that it means that the offseason has been busy and bullish, but-

Yeah. Those were your five unders. And so the three remaining are your three overs. So you made five unders and they were all over, which isn't that shocking given- Unders were a bad idea, it turns out. Yeah. And we talked about that. So much of this game was trying to figure out what way the macro economy of baseball free agents was going to go. Speaking of which, do you think Odorisi is like... I was going to ask that. Yeah, I was going to ask that too.

He must be like yelling at his agent or kicking himself, right? Because he is the only player who accepted a qualifying offer this year, right? Or no, Abreu did technically, and then he got the big extension anyway. And Odorizzi, who was coming off a really good year, not a full healthy season, but very effective when he was good and not old or anything. And pitchers who are not as good or promising as Jake Odarizzi have really cashed in this winter. So he must be regretting that qualifying offer, right? He might be, but probably he would still consider this good because now he's under contract for one year and he'll hit the market next year.

And if this is not an anomalous offseason, but if this represents a correction to previous norms, then that would mean that he's still going to hit free agency in a year. I mean, he'll have to live through a year of stress about that. So I think you're right that he would probably, if he could do it again, he would have hit the market. But this is generally good news for him. And next year, he won't have a pick attached to him. And he'll be one of the better starters on that market, right? the 2020 starting pitching market is what it's him it's uh i haven't even looked ahead that far james paxton i think comes up in 2020 um to be in that off season there are a couple others but i don't think that that market is especially rich you know there's no garrett cole at least not that we're aware of yet so

yeah yeah and these two deals that were just signed. So Ryu accepted the qualifying offer last winter, which granted he was not coming off anything like the season he is coming off now, but he went from that to four years, 80 million. And then Keichel, of course, sat out half of the 2019 season and finally got a deal at mid-year and he was a qualifying offer guy too and so this year he's not but still the fact that he is signing for 355 coming off a half season or so when he didn't really do anything that he hadn't done the previous year he had like exactly the same era

almost and pretty much similar peripherals so it wasn't like he was a new and improved Dallas Keuchel he's just a year older and lost a little bit more velocity and yet he got the deal that I guess he was looking for this winter which I don't know if that's all qualifying offer or just the market just the market is back teams are spending again I don't know yeah Stroman will also be a free agent and Trevor Bauer and and Quintana. And then it drops down into the Mike Miner, Robbie Ray tier. I'm excited to watch Dallas Keuchel throwing to Yasmany Grandal. Yeah, that's true. Good pairing of pitcher and framer there. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know what you do if you're the Angels now, or I guess the Twins who kind of got lucky. I guess that Odorizzi accepted that and then also signed Pineda and haven't really had to keep up with Cleveland doing anything, obviously. But they haven't really added anyone to last year's team. And then the Angels, they added Julio Tehran. So I don't know. Is that it? Are they going to get David Price? There really aren't that many appealing pitchers

who we know are available remaining. So I'm not sure that there's enough left for them to go into next year and have satisfied us with their pitching deficiencies. Did I dream that there was a Michael Clevenger rumor the other day? You did not. Oh, my goodness. You did not dream it. I mean, you could be generous and assume the best about the Corey Kluber deal

and maybe talk yourself into it. But there's a lot of difference between that, a pitcher coming off of a lost season who's quite old and is coming to the end of a contract versus Mike Clevenger, a pitcher who is young, healthy, and peaking. Very different story there. It does paint a rather grim picture. Pretty grim. Yep.

All right. And the only other thing I wanted to mention is that Nick Senzel just switched his agency to Scott Boris, so perhaps he heard our discussion on the podcast the other day, Meg, about why every player is not represented by Scott Boris and decided that would be a good idea. this year with more growth projected in the future as national tv contracts increase and nike deals and other revenue sources coming in in the near future so in that sense it is a good thing that free agency has bounced back at least right now or we would be contrasting that news of even more revenue with another slow off season. But fortunately, we have avoided that for the moment. It probably means nothing, but it is kind of interesting the timing of Senzel switching to Boris right now

because he was not a Scott Boris client when he was drafted second overall in the June draft, which is a time when you might—I mean, that's when Boris has thrived traditionally. And he's not switching to Boris right before his free agency period when, you know, again, Scott Boris thrives. Instead, he's switching to him now, six years ahead, I think six years ahead of his free agency during the period when there's not much to do except negotiate an extension. And Scott Boris is not known for negotiating extensions. There have been a very small number of them, but it's a small number and they tend to be

after arbitration, which sends us three years away from arbitration. So that is kind of interesting. I wonder what the thinking was there. Or much more likely, they bumped into each other at a fancy party and he said, hey, you want to be my agent? And Scott Boris said, sure. Yeah, could be. I don't know.

Maybe he's upset about having to change positions or something and feels like he needs a stronger advocate. I don't know. That's just wild speculation. Anyway, that's all I've got for news. All right. So let's do this draft. The rules are the same as always. We're going to pick from the Baseball America list of minor league free agents, which is about 500 minor league free agents.

And we now have a few points of clarification for people who have not been through this before. Many, many players sign minor league deals as free agents, but they are not minor league free agents. A minor league free agent is someone who has spent, what, six years in the minor leagues and ended the season in the minor leagues, something like along those lines. Yeah, or a West. And there's a list put out every year of about 500 of these players,

many of whom you haven't heard of, most of whom you haven't heard of, some of whom are in high A or double A and have never gotten any higher, some of whom you've heard of, but not for like seven years, some of whom are technically not retired, but for all intents and purposes,

they are retired. And then like some of them are just names retired but for all intents and purposes they are retired and then like some of them are just names where you see them and you think that you like you have a memory of seeing them this year and then you check and in fact they haven't played in four years or they haven't played in the majors in four years and you're not sure where that memory came from i would say that the mets have my favorite group of minor league free agents this year or these are former mets they're no longer mets it includes zach lee irvin santana erasmendi alcantara danny espinosa ruben tejada reimer liriano and gregor blanco that's a that's a that's a team from like from a few years ago yeah so maybe one of them maybe one of us will draft one of them or maybe not.

So we're going to do, we typically do about 10 rounds. So I guess we'll do 10 rounds. And that's it. That's the whole thing. We have to explain the scoring, what we're actually trying to achieve here. So the scoring is based on Major League playing time in the following season. And it is based on plate appearances or batters faced so that's it we don't necessarily need to draft someone who will be good next year

we just goodness it helps but if they are in the majors and they are facing batters or pitchers then that's it we just tally up the plate appearances and batters faced at the end of the season and whoever has the most collectively wins. Yeah. And so last year, Jeff destroyed. I mean, Jeff had, on his way out the door, had one of the all-time great drafts. The all-time great draft.

It is the best, yes. Easily. So Ben and I were neck and neck. Ben had 548 plate appearances. I had 586, which is, I don't know, roughly median performance. Neither of us brought shame on our family or anything like that. But Jeff got 1,640.

He hit on eight of 11 players. Wow. Seven, right? Seven? Or no, because we drafted 11 last year. We drafted 11 last year. Impulse purchase at the end. Right, yeah.

He had Harold Ramirezirez 446 plate appearances luke bard 199 brandon brennan 195 asher wachakowski 362 hiro diaz 245 rookie davis 52 josh lucas 69 and rj alani's 72 what does and this is after a really shameful performance the year before when he had 203. That makes me feel better. Which I believe is like the lowest that we've had. Maybe an all-time low, in fact. I don't know if I'm going to be able to see.

So 203, 2017 at 375 was the low. 2016, 303 was the low. 2015, 560 was the low. 303 was the low 2015 560 was the low 2014 90 okay so ben ben in the inaugural year had 93 and so that was the all-time low but we were really just figuring things out at that point we didn't even have the internet yet that's we had to draft based on memory we had to just name have you heard of this guy do you know where he'll be yeah well that makes me feel good i had forgotten that jeff had a dud draft the year before because i was gonna say well no wonder he got hired by a team he can clearly pick the players but maybe

it was small simple i don't know but pretty impressive because the guys he got weren't even like obvious ones like they weren't guys who were necessarily in the majors getting playing time every year they were just kind of good picks i i'm impressed and i think on the whole we did a pretty good job because uh 19 of our 33 picks hit yeah obviously like some of them got five plate appearances or six plate appearances but still we were we were better than 50 50 at finding players who would actually be in the big leagues next year so we can spot value maybe yeah i'm feeling uh yeah i feel good every year we get a little bit better and we get a little bit more i don't know we throw out some strategies we throw

some overboard they've we've tried them and they failed and uh we we try some new ones so yeah well i get you know meg the first year that that jeff did it we we gave him the first pick and he said he said oh yeah well i don't want it so i'll go last okay so i want the first pick good you're the first you're the first and then ben i'm gonna do a random number generator here so you're gonna be number one and i'm gonna be number two because alphabetical here we go my eyes are closed generate it's two okay all right what does that mean it means i go first okay all right okay so i'm going first you're going first yeah and i i am taking with the first overall pick uh patrick wisdom oh so now you've you've got you've you've

thought this so you've skipped like five years of ours. Well, I don't know. She's listened to previous drafts. I have listened to previous drafts. So that works, although we should confess or I should confess to our listeners that despite having listened to every previous draft, I still had to ask both of you what the actual rules were for this draft yesterday. I don't know if I prepped too much or not enough, but I'm taking Patrick Wisdom with the first overall pick. Patrick Wisdom, who last year was in AAA for the Rangers and signed just a deal, just a one-year contract with the Seattle Mariners. He is on the 25-man roster at this very moment.

He plays third base, among other things. The Mariners may or may not try to trade Kyle Seager this offseason, so I will not go into this much explanation for the rest of my picks, some of which will be not as good. But I feel very good about Patrick Wisdom. Yeah. Explanations are good because none of these names mean anything to anybody. Anything to anyone.

This is a long banter. Patrick Wisdom would have been my second pick. Okay. And so that's what, I mean, I'm very impressed. You've brought you've brought a very uh fully developed game yeah well we'll see you are you're you have pitch ability you showed up with a lot of refinement yeah he was he was third on my list he had 31 homers and triple a but triple a and pcl and juice ball and all of that, but still pretty good. And yeah, the all-important major league deal.

I want to ask about your process, Meg, your inaugural draft prep, but I guess if that might potentially give away your strategy, then we could wait till the end. Why don't we wait till the end? I don't know that it will give away my strategy. That might be conferring too much graft to what I've actually done here, but in case you think my draft is very smart, we can save it to the end. Okay.

And you got, with Wisdom, you got a player who is actually on the depth chart, which is a very rare thing, very strong, not as a starter. But as noted, everybody on the Mariners is prone to be traded. And I think Wisdom is next on the depth chart for a couple of positions. So that's a very strong pick so it was number two but i hadn't actually really thought can i ask a quick question of each of you though uh which if you don't want to give it away fine but i'm curious how many names do you have well so i have like multiple tiers of names i have a spreadsheet with like 60 names on it but

i'm gonna kind of be i cast a wider net this year when it came to prep like usually i'm i'm worried about whether i even have enough names on the thing for me to draft players that the other people don't draft this year i have too many players but i've sort of kind of organized them in some kind of hierarchy here which i will be kind of determining as i go so i have 60 names but i only like remember much about or like you know half of them or fewer okay i have i have 20 ranked names but i have a spreadsheet with a lot of information probably too much information on the entire well i don't have information on all of them but the entire 510 guys from oh wow you put them all in there i put them all in there they're not i mean they're not all ranked even i have my limits but wait you

you did querying you did like uh you did you have some sort of like uh vlookup thing going on yeah wow how did you do that this list is like written in text i i know there's no i put white christmas on and wow did some spreadsheet work you did you type 510 days no you you what i did some copy and paste and some transposing and some data cleanup. I am very impressed. Well, don't be impressed yet. Oh, my goodness. Now I'm intimidated. I'm not sure I made it all the way down the list.

I don't know. I was nervous about bringing shame on my family. Historically speaking, I'm not sure that prep time has correlated to results. Yeah, it seems very unlikely to. All right, Samuel. All right, I'm going to go with, well, I'm going with my first on my list, but it's Kyle Finnegan. And Kyle Finnegan is a very safe pick, I think.

Kyle Finnegan is a very safe pick, I think. Kyle Finnegan is a reliever. He was very good last year in the minors in double and triple A. Good peripherals, great strikeout rate, great success overall. Struck out 14 batters per nine in double A and didn't allow a homer. And then also did well in triple A. And then he was signed. Throws hard, everything good. And then he was signed by the Nationals, who have been known to have bad bullpens.

And so I'm thinking that there's like a lot of room there for him. He also got a 40-man spot. So, you know, that's a great thing to see about your player. But it does hurt a little bit to take a reliever with the first overall pick. You know, if things work out, which I feel confident they will, but if things work out, you're looking at maybe 220 plate appearances. You're not getting Harold Ramirez in the first round with a reliever. But all the same, Kyle Finnegan, former sixth-round pick,

was with the A's, now with the Nationals, who have one good reliever right yeah finnegan was second on my board it's a good pick and i'm gonna take jose muhica who was third on my board yeah so i think we all gravitated toward the same strategy with our first picks here which is major league contract someone who has a 40 man spot muhica signed with the rockies so he's a he's a relief pitcher how hard can it be for a relief pitcher to make the rockies in 2020 he has been promising in the past he's young for for the free agent draft i think he's what 23 24 and he missed all of this past season he had tommy john surgery i believe in 2018 and or some sort of elbow surgery and he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had been good before that he had Tommy John surgery I believe In 2018 Or some sort of elbow surgery And he had been good before that He had been promising he was a raised Prospect and

He had pitched well prior to That surgery but Then he got hurt and he hasn't come Back yet which is sort of scary but I think The combination of his age and Former performance and prospect Pedigree and going to the Rockies and getting a 40 man spot that's

Enough for me and he's 23 and It's rare to see like a Minor league free agent get A story on MLB.com Rockies sign ready Mujica To free agent deal you don't see That for everyone in the free agent draft Or certainly on the free agent list So that't see that for everyone in the free agent draft or certainly on the free

agent list so that uh speaks to his status on this list yeah the only reason that i had him third is that i was worried that he would be like uh you know he'd pitch in june or something like that that you right he wouldn't uh necessarily i didn't know i have not seen his medicals is what I'm saying. Nor have I. He did, I think he had Tommy John in September of 2018. So he should be ready, I would think, given the typical timeline, but haven't heard how his rehab has gone. It's so great to draft a Rockies reliever too, because if they're, say they have, if you draft an ER, a reliever with an ERA plus of 100 in Colorado versus an ERA plus of 100 in Miami, that's like 65 more plate appearances because they're giving up so many more hits. You have all these innings where you allow three base runners and one run scores, and then you get an attaboy when you come in. Whereas to get an attaboy anywhere else, you have to have three up, three down, which is only half as many plate appearances.

So for this game, it's great to get a Colorado reliever and have him, you know, pitch a lot with a 5.3 ERA. Yeah. Yep. All right. Okay, I'm up. I'm going to take and I am going to apologize if I mispronounce this name. Xiao Jing Zhang. Oh, get out of here.

Yeah. this name xiao oh get out of here yeah i actually i asked my my wife to pronounce it for me in anticipation of of me having to pronounce it because he's did i do okay well so she did she pronounced it for me and then and then she looked at me and then she and then she told me how i should pronounce it because she knew that i would not sound like i would sound bad like you were affected you were affecting an affectation that's so so she said shouting chiong okay is what she told me well i will i will learn it in case i actually have to say it out loud so this this is a pitcher who was previously with cleveland is now with the tigers i i don't know he he seems like because he's with the tigers that he might throw some innings was primarily in triple a for cleveland last year you know like this this guy's not

anything to write home about he ran like an era and a fib in the fives but uh but the important thing is that he now works for the detroit tigers and they are projected to be quite bad. So that's what I have to say about that. I think that the guys had like a 40 future value on him last year, maybe, maybe the year before when he was with Cleveland. So, you know, there you go, 60 fastball, 45 slider. It sounds like a Detroit reliever to me. Yeah, time-tested strategy. Get guys on the bad teams. And so you both know,

I am currently tracking our draft here. Excellent. Yeah. We're also recording. Oh, yeah. We're recording. That's true. But this way,

you won't have to go back. All right. Well, you hitting two of my top picks this early now makes me... Now I feel like I now need to maybe adjust to prevent you from getting my other top picks. All right, so, all right, well, I think one of the, okay, so I think one of these will make it back to me if I do that, so okay.

All right, well, I'm gonna do the opposite of the Kyle Finnegan strategy then. I am not going to go with the player I think is actually good but will only get me 200. Plate appearance is credited to me if things go well. I'm going to go to the player who I think is probably very bad but could get me 1100 if things go right. I'm going with Matt Harvey. I had an intense 10 minute long internal debate about Matt Harvey. We talked about Matt Harvey on the last episode. I then sort of knew that Harvey had gone to the minors and was also not good there.

But I did not realize he was the property of the Oakland A's at the end of the year and pitched pretty well in AAA. So I don't know. Yeah. I mean, we've heard of him. Someone will give him a shot. He made like $8 million a year ago. Right. That's a pretty good thing to have in here.

And he faced 755 batters one year. That's a draft maker. Mm-hmm. All right. All right. I'm a little nervous about this pick because I'm not sure of this player's current whereabouts. But I'm taking Alexander Guillen. No!

Dang it! Happy I made this pick. Mad at you. Sorry, that was loud. That was a loud yell. So Alexander Guillen, he's good as far as I can tell. He's got good stuff. He's got good stats. Now, one problem is that he was in AA last year, so he does have a little climbing to do.

However, he is 24. He is a relief pitcher, and he was on the Rockies. I was not able to determine whether the Rockies had brought him back or whether he has signed elsewhere, which makes me a little nervous because one would think the Rockies would want to retain his services. But he did become a minor league free agent. And in double A this past year, he was excellent. He pitched 76 and two thirds innings with a 153 ERA. He struck out about 11 per nine. Good control.

Then he went to the Arizona Fall League. Maybe you saw him there, Meg? I don't know. He had a good Fall League. He was excellent in the Fall League. And so I'm not sure where he is now. I'm hoping he didn't hurt himself or something or go to Japan or who knows. There's always like one pick every year where we find out after the draft that the guy has already gone to Korea or something.

But he has good stuff. He throws hard according to his fan graphs scouting values. And he has a 40 future value too with the above average fastball. I think he throws in the high 90s and like a 70 slider, which sounds good. So not sure where he is or where he will be. But I have faith that wherever that is, he will be pretty good. Drat. Yeah.

Well, bad news. Over the weekend, he was arrested for trying to smuggle a sandwich into the movie theater. Dang it. Very odd. It is very odd that there's nothing here, right? That there's nothing about him anywhere. That does seem very odd. Hard to explain. Yes.

Like not even a stray tweet. No, couldn't find a thing. He's a mystery man, which I would think based on his performance and his stuff that he would be in demand. So I'm not sure what that means and i'm i'm nervous but i had to take the risk okay oh it's me again yeah hello it is me again i'm going to take who am i gonna take now i gotta now i'm nervous now i'm nervous about some of the folks i thought might survive can't count on anyone dropping to you you never know what's going to happen gosh dang it I don't know how I feel about this this is so early for me to be this stressed

okay I might end up regretting this pick later she said knowing she likely would I don't know where I don't know no I'm so sorry Dylan they're going to be a lot more like this so you should leave it in I don't know. No. I'm so sorry, Dylan. There's going to be a lot more like this.

We're not editing a single. You should leave it in. Nope, not a single. Every um, every pause. Just so that people know how much consternation I'm feeling. It's an echinizing process. I'm going to take... I'm the worst.

I'm going to take Jimmy Yacobonus. Okay. I already have regrets. He was on the Orioles. He was a pitcher on the Orioles. Can I change my mind? Tell me about Jimmy Yacobonus, the current state of Jimmy Yacobonus.

He works for the Padres now. I don't think he's on their 40, man. They got this new look bullpen, you see, and he, I don't think, is part of it, at least as it's currently constituted, but he seems like he might throw some innings for them. He threw major league innings last year. He did.

I think he was the third or fourth best reliever on the Orioles. he might throw some innings for them he threw major league innings last year he did he threw i think he was he was like the third or fourth best reliever on the orioles right he had a 6.80 all right yeah so like yes but also what is that what does that tell you that was i yeah no he was not the third or fourth best he struck out 33 and walked 24 in 41 innings and so on. That seems pretty bad. Classic, classic Yakabonus line. Yakabonus. Maybe I just like saying it. I got some names too. So yeah, we're definitely going to draft some names here.

He's not even on their 40 man at the moment. I don't think any, you're not going to find another player who's on the 40 man. I think we got at the 40 man. I did it. I did it, you guys. Okay. Okay. Seven.

Let me cross them off my list. Okay. That's very rude. I want you to know that that was quite rude. Can I tell you guys? I don't have to do any editing of my list after that. Shut up. I would like to tell you, though, that I had never heard of Alexander Guillen.

I hadn't before today. It just makes me wonder about my list. Yeah, you should. Yeah. Definitely feeling the Guillen shame. All right, Jimmy Akebonis. Okay, I will take Socrates Brito. Yeah, he was on my list.

A little bit of Major League playing time last year. So he's in the atmosphere. Pretty good season in AAA. Has had, I wouldn't say extensive Major League playing time, but has appeared in the majors four years in a row. Is only 27 years old. Plays center field. And the GM who just signed him was the GM who had him last year. And I always like to look for little signs of intention.

I often try to draft the first minor league free agent signed because I feel like that means that the GM really wanted that free agent and has a plan for that free agent. And I couldn't figure out who it was this year. But Socrates Brito was someone who the GM knew him and wanted him and left his job and said, I'm not going anywhere unless I can bring Brito with me. So I'm taking him. Okay. Yep.

He's on my list somewhere. All right. I think I will take, oh boy, I think I'll take Brady Lael. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. I don't even know if you're reading the right letters. Who is this? L-A-I-L. He was on the Yankees very briefly in the majors last year.

He was good in the minors. He was on the Yankees very briefly in the majors last year. He was good in the minors. He was quite good. I think he may have missed some time. I don't know. But he struck out a lot of guys. He didn't walk a lot of guys. He was in AAA, some AA. And the White Sox signed him.

So I like that. White Sox bullpen. Signed him so I like that White Sox bullpen And seems to me like the Yankees The Yankees had a pretty good crop Of minor league free agents because the Yankees Are good and they just seem to have An endless number of pretty good

Relievers in AA and AAA Who just have not been able to crack Their great bullpen and so I'm hoping that he gets more of an Opportunity in Chicago and Can show off what made him pretty good in the minors. Yeah, I like that. I like that that pick now that I'm looking at it in double and triple a 64 strikeouts, 15 walks, 46 innings and one good ERA and one disastrous ERA in those two stints and only 26. ERA and one disastrous ERA in those two stints and only 26 and yeah I believe that he exists did you notice that that Astros only have two players on this list yeah what do you know what

what does that mean why do you suppose that is what what does it tell you about an organization that they only have two minor league free agents whereas many of their peers have 15 or 20 i am not sure me neither i would suspect that they're an organization that can be both aggressive with their promotions with the intent of trading and is generally young and those two things in conjunction with one another probably lead them to have fewer guys who might be on this list just generally maybe yeah feel stronger about that than i do about my jimmy aca bonus just pretend just pretend it was your 10th round pick and now you're gonna take your then your third your real third pound pick you're gonna take in the 10th round it's gonna look like a steal but okay you have a lot of faith in me and i appreciate that even if i find it misplaced

we genuinely have no idea what we're doing here and jimmy yacobonus is a player that i've heard of millions of times more than brady lail that's true oh is it back to me again oh boy can erase the stain of that yacobonus pick i don't know that i'm about to do that i don't know that i am but i feel like i'm gonna make this pick i'm gonna take eric kratz yeah he's on my list eric kratz who i i believe has agreed to return to the yankees yeah on a minor league deal so he got a write-up when he did. It was in the New York Post. Yeah, so he was with New York last

year. He will remain with New York this year. You know, Eric Kratz has bounced around to a million different places and will probably outlive us all. I don't know if New York is going to make additional signings at catcher, but their depth behind Gary Sanchez is pretty thin and he seems

like uh the kind of veteran catcher guy who always manages to accrue a couple of plate appearances a year and uh he spells eric with a k and i don't know why that is i don't like eric's with k's as much oh just i don't know something about it looks wrong to me It's not my aesthetic preference But he's Eric with a K and then Kratz with a K So he's on My roster now He's a 10 year man he's been in the majors For a long time

He has not been in the majors since 2009 right He's been there every year year in and year out And he's going to turn 40 In June so I don't know how long This can keep going but Seems like probably a every year, year in and year out. And he's going to turn 40 in June. So I don't know how long this can keep going, but it seems like probably a low ceiling pick, but a high floor.

Like you're probably not going to get shut out with Eric Kratz. That's exactly right. Everyone needs to take one third catcher for the guaranteed 18 plate appearance. Yep. He had 53 in the majors last year. I thought about Kratz. He's on my list.

And while doing a little research, there were a bunch of pieces written about how like, okay, now the Yankees catching situation is settled. They've got Kratz. That seems wrong to me. There was a finality about it that made me think he is definitely going to be there in July at some point. And Gary Sanchez doesn't play at all all year yeah you know he gets hurt so strong pick probably

would have gotten there eventually as well i am now gonna have to find my third string catcher somewhere in here and i will but for now i'm gonna take caleb. Oh, I was going to take him. Thiel. Thiel. I want to say Teal, but it's Thielbar. Caleb Thielbar is a minor league reliever. He's pretty old, but he did the whole indie ball thing. He went away for two years and pitched in the American Association with the St. Paul Saints for two years. And then he came back to the affiliated ball in the last two years, and he's been really good since then. So in 2018, between double and triple A, he had a 2.05 ERA, and he had 51 strikeouts to five walks, which is a nice little ratio.

And then last year, he had a 3.22 ERA, and he had 94 strikeouts to 16 walks, which is also a nice little ratio. And it's 11 strikeouts per nine, which is pretty solid. He is left-handed and I don't know what to make of left-handed relievers right now. I know that, that the conventional wisdom is that the new rule, the three batter rule is going to be very bad for lefties. I'm on the fence about that. rule, the three batter rule is going to be very bad for lefties. I'm on the fence about that. I think it might actually be kind of good for lefties. I think that lefties might be around just as much only now they're going to have to face more batters that rather than seeing lefties be gone, we're going to see lefties even more. And so I am, there's a little part of me that's going to maybe collect a lot of lefty relievers here particularly ones who seem

to be able to go more than more than one batter and teal bar over the last two years has been kind of a uh a one and a half inning reliever in the minors which it's a different place but a one and a half inning reliever rather than a specialist so caleb teal bar he's my guy yeah i almost took him with my previous pick what gave me pause is that he's been with the Tigers the last couple of years, at least part of the years, and he was not able to make the Major League roster, which if you can't make the 2019 Tigers, who can you make? So that was what worried me. That's a great point.

He's very old as well. He's not 27. And I think there's a – obviously the decisions that teams make are decisions to help themselves win games, the games that they're playing. But each each move you make is a little bit of an investment in the future. You're not just thinking about today. To some degree, you're planning out what you're even if it's just subconscious, you're planning out what am I going to get out of this over the life of this decision? And when you are deciding whether to put a 33-year-old reliever on the roster, you very well might take any number of 27-, 28-, and 29-year-old relievers who are not as good right now, just knowing that there's a little bit of a longer tail there. I don't know if he has signed yet either. I didn't look at that. Yeah, he's with the twins

okay yeah he's from minnesota he's from minnesota so he's going he's going back home and he also pitched in saint paul which i don't know if that counts as being hometown or if they're blood rivals do they hate each other or or is that considered allies twin cities right yeah i guess some twins probably are enemies but mostly not but they probably unite to fight others right it's like you the only it's like when i beat up a kid at uh in elementary school because he was mean to my sister and i was like the only person who gets to be a jerk to her is me it's just like that we're very good friends now so it it's okay. Good. All right. I'm going to take Max Moroff, who has been in the big leagues in each of the past four seasons. He is 26 years old.

He was signed by the Mets and got a spring training invite. And he can play a bunch of positions. He's not super exciting, but he can play short second third he's kind of your generic utility guy so uh heard of him multi-position player has a home gonna hope that he runs the streak to five seasons in a row uh i was getting my charger who'd you pick max moroff ah it makes me feel so much better when someone reacts that way. He was on my list too. He was number two on my current list, on my list of people who are still around.

Oh, boy. Yeah, Max Moroff, that was a good pick. It was a good pick. I thought he definitely looked like a player who's on the cusp of 350 played appearances. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't that good though. I don't know. He played in AAA only like 34 games, but he had a 736 OPS there,

and I don't know. He still got his usual big league time, but I don't know. He wasn't really... His minor league stats have not made a very convincing case that he deserves a ton of playing time, but he's young enough and versatile enough that he might just get some.

Well, I like him, and I'd like to see more off him. Okay, it's my turn. I'm going to take Aaron Northcraft. Okay. On my list somewhere. Aaron Northcraft was, after a three-year layoff from Affiliated Ball, was with the Mariners last year and is now, importantly, for why this pick is happening, with the Miami Marlins,

who are pretty bad at baseball. He's a right-handed pitcher. He acquitted himself well in AAA for the Mariners last year, albeit only over 33 and two-thirds innings. He pitched to a 1.87 ERA and a FIP in the threes. And importantly, as I've said, is now employed by the Miami Marlins, and they're pretty bad at baseball. And he seems like he's reasonable at baseball, so if he can up his innings, stay effective, could be in that bullpen with some room to spare. So that's my guy.

All right. Northcraft. Northcraft. I'm going to admit to the following, which is that while I am no longer really much of a Mariners fan, I probably know their team better than most just because they're like in the air here, not literally, but in a figurative way. And I't know that aaron northcraft worked for the seattle mariners last year but i'm gonna set that aside and pick him because now he works for the miami

marlins so there you go yeah okay i i have always over the course of the last few years i have felt like the mariners show up in this draft more than most teams, that we draft more of their signees than other teams, and maybe also that we draft more of their people that got away. They use more players than anyone else, so we're just playing the odds here. There's good churn. All right, I'm going to take Philip Evans. Philip Evans is a middle infielder who was signed by pittsburgh

he's now with pittsburgh yeah by the pittsburgh i i was just uh making sure that i didn't i don't have an excuse for why i didn't know his team actually i don't have i was i was stalling then and then i was just stalling again i didn't know it's good news he went to the Pirates it's a mess because these AAA stats from last year which I'm sure that you both figured out and I also knew this but I never really got my head around it they're all pretty bonkers everybody had great stats in AAA last year

because of the ball so like there are teams that had OPSs of like 940 and so I'm looking at players and thinking, wow, 283, 371, 470. He can really hit. And then you look and you're like, that's not that great for where he was playing. But Philip Evans has been a quality minor leaguer for his whole minor league career. And I don't know. I'm picking him.

Yep. All right. I'm going to get my designated Marlin So I'm going to pick GhostKato Who of course lent His last name to the Dearly departed Kato system

Of Fangraphs that was created by Chris Mitchell to project minor league players And I missed Kato What's the backstory there? I think it was because uh and i asked chris about this because i was going to pick him and he said that uh so kato was a second round pick i think in 2013 and his 2014 season was strange like he was young for his level he had a lot of walks he had a lot of strikeouts but very little power and he was the player who made

chris realize that he had no idea how to weigh each of those things and to say he's going to be good because he does this or he's not going to be good because he does that or doesn't do that. So that was what prompted him to create a projection system for minor league players in a translated stat system, which was integral to my preparation for many a minor league free agent draft. So in his honor I'm going to take him and he also is coming off His best season yet he Hit well in triple a although As we were just saying who didn't And I think he also had a bit

Of a babbit spike there but He is on the Marlins and that Worked out for me last year I took John birdie and he was a good Pick for me with the Marlins, and I took him almost solely because he was on the Marlins. And he has a lot of positional flexibility. So this year in AAA with the Yankees, he played first, he played second, third, left field, shortstop.

So there are a lot of places to slot Cato in and generally a lot of openings on the Marlins, although they've been a bit busier and more active this offseason than than they were last year but I'm gonna hope that that Marlins strategy pays off again I was surprised because I was looking at the I do each of you tend to start with the list and then just start picking players and looking up the players to see what they're doing or do you start by looking for players and then seeing if they're on the list? I start with the list, and I scan the list to see if I recognize anyone, if anyone jumps out. And I think, oh, that guy's too good to be on here, so I'll draft him.

But then I move on to other sources. Okay. And Meg did a query, so she answered that, right? I did a bunch of queries i did several i tend to start at this point i tend to start by looking for players who seem good who seem to be good last year and who fit the sort of basic characteristics of a player who would be on this list and then i go look and see if they're on the list so like i i look at the triple a leaderboards and i look at the AAA leaderboards

and I look at the winter leagues and things like that. And two things that I noticed about that. One is that a lot of the players that the Pirates signed, including Philip Evans, I'm still talking about Philip Evans, including Philip Evans, but a lot of the players the Pirates signed to minor league deals were players that I wanted to take, but they weren't, they didn't turn out to be minor league free agents. Like they didn't fit that narrow definition of what a minor league free agent is, but they were players that nobody's ever heard of who, who knows where they were, who spent last year in the minor leagues and who signed minor league deals with the pirates. There were a bunch of them. And I thought that there, that emerged to me that like, it seemed like they were picking a

lot of players who I had never heard of, but had, who I fell in love with yesterday afternoon. The other thing is that one of the places I go look is the Marlins depth chart. And I also wanted to see which teams had the greatest holes in their lineup so that I could then look at the minor league free agents that they signed. And I was stunned to see that the Marlins

have a credible, I don't know, not a good team. They're not a good team. They don't have a good lineup, but they have put effort into pretty much every position at this point. That snuck up on me. Yeah, they added VR from the Orioles and some other guys.

So yeah, they have made more of an effort. Well, and they're interesting and weird because they like that system is interesting even though more of an effort well and they're they're interesting and weird because they uh like that system is interesting even though they got so little for their big moves so you would think that like oh this is this is grim but then you look at it you know like this is maybe parts of it are but it's also kind of interesting i'm fine for us to just keep talking for a little while because i've reached paralysis on my next pick and don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do. We're at the point where, for me at least, they start to get pretty indistinguishable from each other. I start, yeah, I have a list of names ordered and I start for no reason at all picking the 11th name on that list instead of the first name. And then six rounds later, someone else will take the first name and I'll scream like, oh, I was going to take him. Right.

Yeah. Remember the draft like a couple of years ago? Yes. You read the first pick in the draft and you didn't use it. Yeah. This guy and then I took him or someone took him. And I screamed, I was going to take him with the first pick. Yeah.

But I had actually had the first pick. That's right. Right. But, yeah, so I'm stressed about this. I don't know what to do. All of these players are bad. You've got five more rounds. I know.

It's such a long time to be this stressed. You guys, what am I going to do? Oh, no. I'm going to make some panicked picks, you guys. It's really going to be a problem. Well, crap. You're just sitting here like, Meg, pick anyone. Just pick any old guy.

Just pick a guy. I can't read my writing on this other sheet that I was doing. Do you have a handwritten sheet too? No. Well, yeah. I did some. I was doing some work, you guys. I was sitting here.

I was like, oh, I'm going to think about stuff and do some work. I did that, and now I don't know what this says so it's just really kind of a more kind of it's kind of a disaster i'm going to select with my next pick you can put a clock on this and be like hey you gotta you gotta make a freaking selection. You could do that and it would be fine. It's always nice when you go and you look up some of these guys and you're like, maybe this is my dude. The most recent article on Fangraphs they've been tagged on was written by Kylie in his first go around with the site. You're like, I bet he's somebody.

I bet that's my dude right there. That's the guy I should take. I'm going to select with my next pick, even though he is quite poor at baseball, and the Mets are not a terrible baseball team. I'm going to take Pedro Peano.

I don't know if I'm saying his last name correctly. What is the name? Peano. P-A-Y-A-N-O. Okay. I'm looking him up too. He was with the Rangers. Now he is with the Mets. Mm-hmm. Yep.

I'd like to say no more about that. Oh, okay. Well, I have nothing to add about him. In 2015, as a 20-year-old, he went 10-2 with a 1.11 ERA. Yeah, he sure did do that. Across three levels. Yep. So that was something.

101 strikeouts and 89 innings. And then he's been a full-time starter ever since, which is nice because there's the possibility that you'll get a starter who starts, you know. A couple years ago, I got Wade LeBlanc. You never get a starter. A couple years ago, I got Wade LeBlanc. You never get a starter. And every five days, I would just hold my breath, and then he'd get another start and just be like this cash would just pour down on me for two hours.

That was a weird season. And so he's a starter, but then also there's the possibility that he'll transition into relief for need and turn out to be awesome, dominate. Yeah, this is again greater generosity than you're necessarily due to give me but here we are he's thin he's thin he's the thin man all right you guys know that rex brothers is still kicking around yeah i looked him up i looked him up to see all right my pick i pick, I'm picking Danny Coulombe. Oh, boy.

Yeah, I liked him. So lefty reliever. Yankee cast off. Yankee cast off this year. That's right. Yeah, that was my strategy sort of. In a way, maybe it turned out I lucked out because he ended up – was he a brewer or a Yankee first this year? I don't remember.

Okay. Well, if you saw him on the Yankees list, then he must have been a Brewer first. He was very good for the Brewers in the minors, but he did not end up getting up to the majors, which left him still in the minor league. Free agent list, he had major league appearances in each of the previous five years. So he's got big league experience. And this year, last year, as a reliever, he threw 36 innings and struck out 15 batters per nine. So that's pretty rare for a list like this. He's still, he's just turned 30 and he's lefty. And so that again goes to, well, will that be a good thing or a bad thing? But I'm taking him this year. I'm excited about this one.

excited about this one yep yep i think that's a good one i i regret not making it myself okay i'm gonna take jamie schultz jamie schultz was on the dodgers this year he was in the majors briefly he was also in the majors briefly the year before that with the rays and he has now been signed by the a's and invited to spring training it's hard for me to tell as i do this research because some guys get a minor league contract and don't get a spring training invitation. Some do. Not always sure whether it's just that it's not always reported that some guys got a spring training invitation or whether certain organizations maybe extend more invitations and publicize

that. So not really sure if it Means anything that you've got a Spring training invitation if you've already Gotten a minor league contract but He got one he's with the A's They have found ways To work in a lot of pitchers In their staffs the last couple years

And I don't know whether it's A positive or a negative that he's been With the Rays and the Dodgers like you might Say well he's been with The Rays and the Dodgers like you might say Well he's been with these good Organizations and they saw something in Him and maybe he just Couldn't crack their rosters because They've been good and they have a lot of talent or

Maybe you think well on the other hand they didn't Keep him around and they let him go now So maybe that's a bad thing I'm not sure but he Spent most of his season in AAA as a reliever and He struck out not sure but he spent uh most of his season in triple a as a reliever and he struck out some guys but he walked too many so i don't know i don't like him as much as i like uh daniel coulomb but i can't draft daniel coulomb uh-huh yeah i always wonder about that spring training

invite too and without having done the research necessary to answer the question, I just mentally filed it away as if you're a major leaguer, then you get the invite. Like if you are, if you have major league experience, you get the invite. I have no idea if that's true. That is the simple pattern that my simple brain put together based on incomplete information.

Okay. I generally don't, I don't make too much of it, though, generally speaking. Here we are again. Oh, it's Meg. Oh, no. I do really like that I have that, that I can kind of like count on that Patrick Wisdom pick.

I feel good about that one. I'm like sitting here going, hey, you know, that's probably likely to work out. I'm going to select a guy who's now on the Philadelphia Phillies who has prior big league experience but spent 2019 in the Diamondbacks system, which is Matt, how do we say, S-Z-C-Z-U-R. Oh, yeah, Caesar. Yeah, so he made my list.

He had a, I don't know, he had a 129 WRC plus a AAA, which, again, what does that mean? We don't especially know. We don't especially know, but he has, that's what I did. That's what I just did. He was high on my list. I had narrowed my list down to now seven people with Xs on them for my final four picks, and he was one of the ones with the X.

Well, that makes me feel better. Yeah, it's possible that I looked too early, and so I'm remembering the good minor league numbers before I fully adjusted. But yeah, he was really good in the minors last year. It wasn't a ton of played appearances, but, you know, it felt— Yeah. I mean, he was a good ballplayer when he was in the majors.

Yeah, he was at least a useful bench piece. Yeah, exactly. All right, thanks. All right, Matt Caesar. Good pick. Matt Caesar. All right, I'm going to take Ryan Cordell. All right. I'm going to take Ryan Cordell. So the other day I was writing an article and it caused me to write Ryan Cordell's name. And that's the end of that story. That's why I'm picking him because I saw his name and I weren't good, and Chicago, this is the White Sox,

is not even going to be around to let him be bad for them this year. But there are other teams that might allow him to be bad. And he's got a long career as a reasonable minor leaguer and got to play a lot last year, and I saw his name. He was on my list. Okay. All right. I'm going to take Cole Stewart. Yeah.

So Cole Stewart, you may know his name. He's a fourth overall pick in 2013 with the Twins and he has been with the Twins ever since he made the majors with them in each of the past two years, but was not good and was really not good this year in his brief work. He threw 25 and a third innings for the Twins. He struck out 10 and walked eight. That is not what we want to see, and it was not what the Twins wanted to see anymore because now he is a minor league free agent. And as far as I know, he has not signed anywhere yet. So I am just banking on some team bringing him in because he is Cole Stewart and he has a name

and he used to be a top prospect. And maybe he will put things together or maybe he will at least get a chance to be bad for a while because he's Cole Stewart. Yeah, Baseball America puts out this list and it used to have one paragraph of text on the top of it. And the paragraph of text always followed the same format. It would list like the three or four most famous people that you would have heard of from like their prospect days. And then says like they're among the 518 players who are minor league free

agents, according to the list that major league baseball released last week or something like that. And Cole Stewart would have been on that list and they didn't they no longer do that extra paragraph and so when i saw cole stewart's name it's sort of like it's it surprised me a little it was like a little electric shock i would have taken him by by the end of this draft okay you ever you ever look up a guy and you're like hey what happened to that guy and then you realize hey i'm sure glad i didn't say his name out loud because you know what he did he had tommy john that's the thing that happened who was it i didn't feel good about it anyhow because i think we still don't have just like we still aren't maybe completely sure of the

the resolution of the makeup stuff but i didn't realize that matt bush went down with tj matt bush just signed like two days ago yeah he got a two-year deal with texas now that two-year sure of the resolution of the makeup stuff, but I didn't realize that Matt Bush went down with TJ. Matt Bush just signed like two days ago. Yeah, he got a two-year deal with Texas. Now that two-year deal make more sense because they want to do his rehab there. So that makes a lot more sense to me now than it would have. I wasn't going to feel great about it, but I was willing to do a thing. I am very surprised that Texas would see in Matt Bush enough value in 2021 to even want to do the rehab for him. Yeah. Right? I mean, he's going to be 35. He was terrible in 2018. Yeah, it was quite bad. So why even do the two-year deal? I don't get it. It's got to be expensive, right? It's got to be a pain, if nothing else.

And you never know if Matt Bush is going to go do something that really embarrasses your franchise. Yeah. You do wonder about that. That's the thing you wonder about. So I'm going to make a pick that I actually feel fine about, even though he is not currently signed because of some rumor scuttlebutt that was on the internet a couple weeks ago.

I'm going to take one Greg Holland. Yeah, on the list. Taking Greg Holland who apparently according to some folks at MLB.com the Royals are considering a reunion with. Here's the thing about Greg Holland. We know the ways

in which Greg Holland has not been good recently. He has been recently pretty poor. And the season he had with Arizona, not so great. Not very many innings and also not so great. But he is a name, a name that I think is still a beloved one in Kansas City. And that ball club projects to be pretty bad. And I'm just going on a hope and a prayer, much like Greg Holland, really. Greg Holland has moved almost into the Fernando Rodney zone where he puts together stretches

of actually quite goodness. So like in 2018, he was traded to the, or maybe he was waived. He probably was waived, released, because he had a 7.92 ERA in St. Louis. And then he goes to Washington, and he has an ERA of 0.84. And then last year with Arizona, you're right. The numbers weren't great, and he ended up getting released there as well. But he had an ERA under 2 as late as June 12th. If the All-Star game were done at the actual midpoint of the season,

he would have been an All-Star. He had a 2.16 ERA. He was the closer on a team. He would have been an All-Star in 2019. But since they do the All-Star game two weeks after that, by that point, he was nearly on his way out of the league.

Yep. But, and then he went, then he pitched really poorly in the minors i think if i'm remembering this right he did not pitch he pitched i mean he pitched fine in the minors in 2018 he pitched nine innings ah yes oh yeah he pitched very fine yeah that's right good pick safe pick that's uh that's like a floor of 80 plate appearances it's been like really up and down my draft all right my eighth pick i'm going to take jose marmolejos he is a 26 year old about to be 27 year old uh first baseman who was signed by seattle he did not get a major league deal from

them sadly unlike patrick wisdom and also unlike d Dylan Moore, who was my big hit last year, major league contract that the Mariners signed him to. And I think also Jeff got a score with the Mariners signed to a major league deal last year. But this year, Marmolejos is just a minor league deal. And he was in AAA last year where he hit 315, 366, 545. And this is kind of, again, just banking on the fact that, you know, that with the Mariners, it's always possible that the depth chart above him will loosen up. And if, say, I don't know, if they make a trade or two, he could be a first baseman for them.

So Jose Marmolejos. Okay. No major league experience. Yeah. I'm going to take, gosh, Eric Stamets. Okay. a marmolejos okay no major league experience yeah i'm gonna take gosh eric stay mets so he was on my list he has uh never been on the mets as it happens but he is now i think on the rockies he was signed to a minor deal by the rockies he was in cle Cleveland in the majors last year, just briefly 15 games at the major league level. He was originally an Angels draftee and had been in their system. Well, actually he'd

been in Cleveland's system most of his career. He finally broke through. Didn't really have great AAA numbers this past year, especially given the offensive bar there now. So that's not encouraging, but he's only 28. He just turned 28, I guess, and now he's on the Rockies. I don't know if he made their depth chart. Probably not. But yeah, Eric Stamets. All right. Goes fast.

Yeah, man, it sure does. I'm going to go off the beaten path a bit, mostly because I really like this name off the beaten path a bit. Mostly because I really like this name. This is another catcher. This is a catcher who... Uh-oh. Oh, no. I'm nervous.

I'm nervous. I'm looking up my next pick to check a thing, too. And he's also a catcher. All right. I'm waiting. Yeah. So this guy, I don't know if he has a, I don't think that he has a home currently.

Okay, I got it. What's the fourth letter of his first name? N? Okay, good. All right, good. So he, this is the best name we will take all day. There's not a better name that is going to go in our draft than this name that I'm about to say.

And that is SicknararfLoopstack. Oh, sure. Yeah. Francis Backward. Yeah. He is a catcher. He was recently in the Cleveland system. He was like 35 future valued for us last year.

The bat is a little light, as is the case for many catchers, but the receiving is elite. And I don't know. I could see him being a guy who catches on somewhere and then, you know, bing, bang, boom, all your catchers are broken or decide to become cobblers or elementary school teachers, and suddenly he's sitting there getting some playing time. Even though he did not advance very far,

he topped out at maybe high A last year but has gone so far as double A. Anyway, that's my guy. Do you think a good name is an asset in real life? Do you think that you're more likely to be noticed by teams? Or I guess your name is more likely to stick in their head. And isn't that, that seems like that's gotta be worth something, right? I can't decide if I think that it really is.

I'm gonna say something and it sounds like I'm being mean to you. And I swear, I promise on the Christmas gifts that just arrived from my grandmother that I am not. It sounds like the kind of thing that either really does matter or is something that like Malcolm Gladwell would spend a thousand words on a book. And you're like, Malcolm, that's just pretend. Just making stuff up now malcolm so i i said that but i also took some real bad picks in this draft so i don't know if you should trust me at all there is a malcolm gladwell essay about that is there really yeah stop it there isn't there is not that's delightful. I am wounded.

I like you so much, Sam. All right. I'm going to draft a catcher who the fourth letter of his last name is N. His name is Tyler Heinemann. Oh, yeah. Perhaps Heinemann. His brother is Scott Heinemann. And because his brother is in the majors, he gets a pronunciation guide on baseball reference.

So I know for a fact he is Heinemann. But Tyler Heinemann or Heinemann, no pronunciation guide, was a AAA catcher last year. And he and his brother, the reason that I drafted him or that I remembered him is he and his brother were both really, really good in AAA last year in the PCL. They both were all over the leaderboards in AAA. And his brother is not eligible for this draft. He made a brief appearance in Texas, but Tyler is. He made a briefer appearance in Miami where he hit 273, 273, 636. But in the PCL, he hit 336, 400, 590. That's a 990 OPS as a catcher.

Obviously, in a juiced ball era, in a bunch of juiced ball ballparks, in a juiced ball league. But all the same, I feel like that's got to get you some plate appearances. Sure. All right. Hmm. What am I going to do here? I think I will take Mickey Janus. And maybe this is a sentimental pick. I don't know. I'll be rooting for Mickey Janus. He is a knuckleballer who's been in the Mets system. And I talked to him this year and I wrote something about the future of the knuckleball and will technology help improve the knuckleball and will robot umps make knuckleballers better? And are knuckleballers using technology and high-speed cameras and all of that to get better to refine the knuckleball?

Because it's such a hard pitch to learn and to teach. And there's so few people who have thrown it who can instruct personally. He had just gone on this great little run at the end of the double-A season for the Mets where he had used a high-speed camera to make this adjustment to his grip, and he had improved his knuckleball, and so he ended the season on this great run of five starts where he, in those five starts, 36 and two-thirds innings, he struck out 44 and walked six and had a 1.23 ERA, and he getting double digit strikeout totals which he had like never done in you know any game really or hadn't done for years and suddenly he did it three times in the span of five or six starts and it was really impressive and i don't know whether that was a real breakout and he can actually sustain that But he had a pretty good year And he's a knuckleballer He's only I think 32 He just turned 32 this month

Which is young for a knuckleballer And I'm just banking on That late season grip change And breakout being Something real And just generally he was pretty good So I want to be rooting for a knuckleballer this year okay good one so he's five nine yeah do you think there's another pitcher

active in the majors who's who is listed at five nine or shorter maybe not since what daniel ray herrera or something maybe i'm gonna look it up you don't need to wait i mean wait who's your Maybe. I'm going to look it up. You don't need to wait. Wait, who did you say? Mickey Janus. Mickey Janus. There you go. Good old Mickey Janus. Where is Mickey Janus on this sheet? Oh, well, Marcus Stroman is listed at 5'7". Yeah, that's right.

He is 5'7", and Tim Collins, I didn't know this, still active through eight innings last year. What? And he's also 5'7". I think he's a minor league free agent. I think he was on the list. All right. Yeah. So then this is my final pick.

This is the last pick I have. That's it. My final pick is Ryan Lavernway, who was with Cleveland and now is with Miami. Still active, huh? Still still active you know what he he had a decent he had a decent little run in AAA uh last year for the for Cleveland and for Cincinnati and then you know it's only 19 played appearances but uh not a bad little showing as a backup for Cincy at the big league level and uh he has signed a non-roster invite with the Marlins. And lest we forget, the current Marlins catching situation is, you know,

Jorge Alfaro probably, right? And I guess they just signed Francisco Cervelli, but he probably isn't going to be doing much in the catching way, given the medical stuff. So I don't know, but here we are. That's what we got. Yeah, good one. Now I don't know if you mean it or if you're mad at me

for comparing your comp to Malcolm Gladwell. Well, to be fair, apparently I was actually not just mirroring Malcolm Gladwell but plagiarizing Malcolm Gladwell which is the one thing you can do that's more dunk on-able I think he did that right I mean he did the birthdates thing I think he did something about names at some point it feels

of a piece so LaVarnway yeah he's over the last three years over the last three years as a major leaguer he's hit 343 395 629 he's like the fourth best hitter in baseball right 38 plate appearances but still but still still so did you have this experience i think this is the first year that this has been case but for major leagu now, baseball reference pages have a projection line at the top. And I'm guessing, my guess is that it's, I don't even know.

I don't know what generates this projection. But I think there's a lot of, if you're not a major leaguer, I think there's a lot of just, they put a league average line up there for you or something. It's probably like a Marcel type thing. Exactly, exactly. Basically a Marcel type line. And. Exactly. Basically a Marcel type line. And it might actually be the Marcel line. And so I kept on looking players up and being like, oh, wow.

Like that's a, he's projected to have like a 740 OPS as a shortstop. That's not bad for this game. And then you look at his minor league numbers and he's got like seven years in a row of a 570 OPS in the minors. So these projections were really messing with my head. And they were all, I was getting anchored, you know? Like I was seeing it, and then I would start thinking that they were legit for far too long.

All right, I'm going to, so every year I fall in love with some minor leaguer, often in Cleveland's system, who has big strikeout-to-walk rates. And then I'm convinced that they're a star, and then they never appear in the majors. And so this year, I'm just going to—there were a couple that I was attracted to, but this year I'm just going to repeat last year's. I'm going to stick with Ryan Merritt. I want another year of Ryan Mer merit even though in triple a last

year as a ray he had an era of seven and he yeah everything kind of went bad i am still looking at the year before when he struck out 52 and walked two i'm still looking at that year and thinking that there's something there and um so i i'm i'm rolling the dice one more time with Ryan Merritt. This is the last year that I'm drafting Ryan Merritt. Okay. All right. So final pick of the draft. I am going to take Roselle Herrera, who has been in the big leagues the last couple of years and actually got pretty good playing time, surprisingly.

He was with the Reds and the Royals in 2018. Then he was with the Marlins this past yearals in 2018 then he was with the marlins this past year that's not really done much to justify further playing time but uh he was on my list yeah he's he's entering his age 27 season just uh turned 27 a little while ago i think he is currently unemployed i don't know that anyone has signed him yet, but he did all right when he was in the minors. And I guess he probably has enough defensive value or something that he hasn't had to hit all that much to deserve a spot on a major league roster. So hopefully he'll sneak on somewhere else this year. It's not a lot.

It's a very small sample. He was good defensively in 2018. Quite poor defensively for the Marlins, but it's one year. One year of defensive metrics and it's really just 119 plate appearances, so very large grain of salt. Any other names people want to just throw out that they never drafted but thought about? I didn't have that many players I was attached to this year for whatever reason. I had Christian Colon that many players I was attached to this year for whatever reason.

I had Christian Colon would have been my next pick probably. I had Jarrett Parker. Yeah, I had him. Francisco Pena was going to be my catcher. Michael Peoples. Trevor Rosenthal, of course, is on the list. Yeah. And I might have gotten him.

Boog Powell. I always had a little bit of an affinity for Boog Powell. Tim Adelman, Jacob Brugman, who I thought, oh, well, he could sign as a J or a Cub. Jacob. It's spelled J-A-Y-C-O-B, so it's kind of closer to making that joke not be completely awful. Joe Gunkel, I wanted to say. Gunkel.

And Steve Okert. The problem with Boog Powell is that he's had multiple suspensions, so that was a good non-pick. What has he been suspended for? I don't know, stuff. I think he maybe did PEDs. I should know because that's a bad thing to level at someone without being sure no he did yeah suspended uh 50 games while he was on the a's and uh maybe

it might have been twice i'm not sure yeah it looks like maybe he got a 50 in an 80 maybe yeah i might be wrong about that but i think that's right yeah i had some of those guys on my list. I had Dubre Ramos. I had Nate Orff, former Fringe Fiver, I believe. I had Matt Reynolds, one of the two Matt Reynoldses. I had Nick Schufo, Christian Lopes, Robinson Lair. I came closest probably to taking Jordan Weems, who I believe was in the Red Sox system, and he signed a minor league deal with the A's. But one of the reasons why I almost took Jordan Weems was because of this picture that former baseball prospectus writer Daniel Rathman tweeted earlier this month that I've not been able to forget, which is of Jordan Weems just festooned with ducks,

just covered in dead ducks on a hunting trip, which I don't know if this is a- And a sad-looking dog. Yeah, like a dog that feels guilty about retrieving all these ducks. I don't know if this is a normal number of ducks to be covered by if you're going duck hunting, which I've never done, but he's just laden down with ducks and i think we can call this a massacre i think yeah it's ducks on the pond i don't it's uh it's a lot of ducks so i don't know what that means about him as a baseball player but he is like single-handedly deduct whatever area he he was in at time. So that stuck in my mind and I saw Jordan Weems and I thought, oh, he's the duck killer.

All right. Yep. Wow. Going out on that. Weems. Weems the duck killer. Weems the duck killer. Don't feel great about my team this year.

Sometimes I feel great. Sometimes I don't. Don't know if it has any connection to how the team actually does, but always team this year. Sometimes I feel great. Sometimes I don't. Don't know if it has any connection to how the team actually does, but always enjoy this exercise. And this year, I kind of cast a wider net. As I said, I went and I looked up everyone who had signed a minor league contract to this point and then cross-referenced with the Baseball Miracle List to make sure that they were eligible, just thinking that thinking that well probably the more appealing minor league for agents will sign earlier in the offseason so they haven't signed by now maybe

that's a bad sign and uh once i got past the few major league contract guys and just a few people i'd heard of that was kind of what i did just looked for guys who had good numbers and guys who signed with bad teams just the usual all right so we did it meg i'm uh i'm looking forward to seeing how your team does i'm very impressed you were the first i believe you're the first person to make a spreadsheet a full spreadsheet yeah but yeah but then i panicked then i then i panicked that we all look ben got 93 the first year he did it jeff got 200 something the first year he did it. Jeff got 200-something the first year he did it. I got, I think, 303. It is a tough draft.

It's tough. It's really tough. And I think that you did well, and I'm rooting for you to do well because I would like to see if this spreadsheet system works. It would be nice if we could crack this. Then maybe we'd get – I don't want to have to make a spreadsheet with 500 guys. What if we get so good at this that teams, like, then maybe we'd get maybe we don't want to have to make no we don't know what if i think what if

we get so good at this that teams like hire us to do their minor league free agent they don't sign anyone until we've done the minor league free agent draft exactly well this has driven home for me i do not offer this as a criticism at all because they're just a lot of these and they happen you know they don't make headline news but we have some we have some of the minor league deals in our off-season tracker but not all of them and i think that really this just proves that we should devote significant dev resources at fan graphs to incorporating the minor league deals on a consistent basis so that it'll be easier it'll be easier for us to generate a spreadsheet yeah and uh and use that order kylie and eric to just prepare a draft board for you if you wanted to abuse your

power i i will have you know the following it did occur to me and i did not abuse my power which is part of why i panicked i'm so ashamed no you did fine. No, now I know that I can never conduct emergency surgery or defuse a bomb. I can't do any of that. I don't know. You can train for those things. You can't train for the minor league free agent draft. It's trial by fire. All right.

So happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays, guys. Absolutely. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. We will be back the rest of this week and next week with the usual

number of episodes. Actually, maybe even extra episodes, but they will be something a little bit different. Something we've never tried before. An actual series of episodes that I hope you'll all enjoy. So you'll start hearing those episodes soon and we have pre-recorded them so that we don't have to do too much talking and editing and producing over the holidays.

But we hope that you may have some time to listen, whether while traveling or even after the holidays. And of course, we hope that you have a great Christmas and Hanukkah and other holidays, too, if you are celebrating something. You can also support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support and signed up to donate some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Zachary Peck, Jacob Nathan, Linus Marco, Lisa Lozo, and Josh Baer. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. Check out all the photos of people's secret Santa gifts that are coming in. It's join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Check out all the photos

of people's secret Santa gifts that are coming in. It's been a great success so far. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system

if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And thanks also to John Chenier, official stack keeper of Effectively Wild. He keeps track of all our drafts and competitions, including this one. I will link to the spreadsheet where you can find the results. And we will be back to talk to you soon. for that man to carry home his heavy load of pain

to carry home his heavy load of nothing What are you opening? I'm trying to open a box. We're very loose this week, you guys. Yeah, no. So this is the box that your Christmas present is from your grandma.

Yeah, it's a very small box, which makes me think that it's gift cards. I shouldn't actually open them yet, but here we are. Sorry. This is as bad as the crunchy snacks during the playoff broadcast. But you know what? I thought that I wasn't going to publish anything at fancrafts.com today. And then these teams, you guys, these stinking teams

and their free agent signings and my dedicated staff that are like, yeah, we'll write about it. What else are we going to do? Talk to our families. So anyway, here I am opening a gift card. I mean, the snacks made sense in the context of the moment

you were hungry. It was a four-hour podcast. Oh, man. This is a little bit more of a non sequitur. Yeah. My, uh, oh, man. Grandma loves these styrofoam packing peanuts. Some of these gifts aren't for me, so I'm not

going to open those because that would be silly. I'm not going to open my mother, her wife's gifts. That would be terrible. Should I tell people what this is? I'd like to know. Aw, it's an Amazon gift card. Thanks, Grandma.

Whose turn is it? My turn. Oh, yeah. Sorry, we have two more picks to do, don't we?