Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 669: The 2015 Under-25 Starters Draft

Episode Date: May 4, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about the weekend in baseball and draft starting pitchers under age 25.

All right, all right, come on and tell me, tell me that you're gonna go, come on. Woo-hoo-hoo, I can choose, who's your baby? Woo-hoo-hoo, I can choose, who's your baby? Good morning and welcome to episode 669 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben.

Hi. How are you? Coming down from my Sunday night TV high. Mm-hmm, yeah. Pretty high these days. Sunday night has never been better. I, you know, I will dispute that. And the only reason I'll dispute that is because I feel, most Sunday nights I don't really watch anything.

I watch Good Wife, but that's very recent that I've watched it live. So I haven't had a TV show on Sundays for many years. But I get a longing in my heart Sunday afternoons pretty regularly. I would say probably every fifth Sunday I get this longing, this nostalgic longing for Lois and Clark to be on. And there was something about Sundays when Lois and Clark was on that just felt so special. You'd have this show that you'd look forward to all week and it'd be on at the end of your weekend. So that just as your weekend is ending and you're starting to get bummed,

oh, here comes Lois and Clark. How can you be bummed? And Sundays used to be, yeah, it would be Lois and Clark and then it'd be X-Files after that. So it was a pretty good combo. But yeah, Lois and Clark. It never got any better on Sunday nights than Lois and Clark and then it'd be X-Files after that so it was a pretty good combo but yeah Lois and Clark it never got any better on Sunday nights than Lois and Clark in my opinion I would probably dispute that but

it's pretty good though I don't know I just came off of watching Outlander Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Good Wife, Mad Men Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Veep. It's like a whole day just blocked off for Sunday Night TV. What time is it where you are? Is it 4 a.m. right now?

That's eight shows. Seven or eight shows. Well, Outlander is a Saturday show that I didn't watch on time. I see. Wow. It's a solid block. All right. I watched Good Wife and I had to work during the commercials

because I couldn't get a full hour free. Alright, non-TV banter? Well, A-Rod hit number 660, bringing you one closer to winning your bet with Andy McCullough about A-Rod breaking the all-time home run record

and more significantly he did it on a 3-0 count which is a favorite thing of yours. Swings on 3-0. We haven't talked about that in a while. I don't remember that being a thing I cared about. Pretty sure that was a thing. Didn't you do an article on it? Stolen bases on 3-0 I definitely did an article on. Yeah that's true. I thought 3-0 swings were the thing Maybe Russell Carlton did an article on it Someone did The meaning of 3-0 green lights by Sam Miller Okay maybe that's what we talked about

Yeah it was I don't know Take some time to read that Multiple graphs Oh yeah I remember what it was i remember that's right i wanted to figure out what it said about a team that gave the green light a lot and so i looked at how many hitters have the green light on each team and i wanted to see if they correlated with what we think of as particular types of teams like stat head teams and uh and i found that was

what was vexing about it is that there is no pattern to it. Like I have between the data and the quotes, you have extreme money ball teams on both extremes and then you have old school types on both ends of the side. So like Davey Johnson was a big 3-0 green lighter, but like the A's are like the ultimate 3-0, non-3-0 green lighter. Although what inspired this was that suddenly a bunch of A's had green lights or at least they had swung on 3-0 and then afterwards said Billy's going to be mad at us. So yeah, so i wanted to figure out which type of team gives the green light 30 and i couldn't couldn't figure it out couldn't solve it it divides uh across all ideologies well apparently the yankees are one of those teams unless it's just a rod being a renegade again probably just had the red light swung through it because he's a rod

uh what else we haven't even had a podcast about wobbly chairs yet and we've already got toppled chairs ron reneke fired craig council hired robin ventura on the wobbly chair reportedly the two biggest catching prospects in baseball were promoted i'm excited to see austin hedges in the major leagues yeah everybody's been promoted doesn't it feel like a lot of people? Yeah, I've been thinking about that. You're going to write an article, aren't you, about how people don't care about the Super 2 anymore?

You've already written it. Yeah, I was thinking about that. But on the other hand, it does seem like there are reasons in all of these cases. Like the Red Sox called up Swihart. They just didn't have a catcher because both of their catchers got hurt. So they kind of didn't have a choice. The Padres maybe is a little more towards some sort of philosophical shift.

I mean, Will Nieves had not been good, but you could kind of live with Will Nieves for a while if you wanted to. So maybe that's more of an example. But I don't know. Like Russell, obviously, is something that no one expected to see happen so soon. Bryant was very expected. But it does seem like we've seen a bunch of top prospects come up earlier than usual. Yeah, that's true. Okay.

You know what I've noticed? No. Yeah, that's true. Okay. You know what I've noticed? No. I've noticed a lot of ballplayers tweeting criticism of umpire calls. And it was always the case that you didn't badmouth an umpire after a game or you'd get a fine.

But I wonder if there's a feeling that Twitter doesn't, like nobody reads Twitter or something. Like, you know how kids are these days. They don't realize that their social media is visible to everyone. I wonder if we're just running into this with baseball players now who think that it's different if you're on Twitter. Yeah, maybe. Although there have been a number of times that players have gotten in trouble for things that they've said on Twitter or have gotten talking to at least.

From their clubs. Yeah. Who was it? Syndergaard, right. That was a recent one. I have a quick banter about a Twitter thing. Brian Cole pointed out that

there was a Mike Trout tweet that didn't have spaces before the punctuation, but it was a sponsored tweet. It was like in his voice, but it was presumably a sponsored tweet because it's shilling for a brand.

So this tweet says, favorite baseball app is back for 2015, dot, dot, dot, at tops, bunt, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation, cards.twitter.com, et cetera. dot dot dot at tops bunt exclamation exclamation exclamation cards dot twitter dot com etc. And so the fact that there's no weird idiosyncratic spacing

between words and punctuation is a dead giveaway that he didn't write this. And I'm going to just first off call out the tops copywriter for not writing in the voice of the person you're writing for. That's step one is get to know the guy you're writing for that's you know step one is get to know the guy you're ghostwriting for yeah but also i mean like i hate to call people sellouts

but you gotta you gotta stand for something in this world and i think i would fight for the space if i were mike trout it does seem like you feel strongly about that. Or we thought so. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like he lost something here, that it wasn't just that he agreed to put his name next to a product, but he agreed to subjugate himself to laws of English grammar for a product, which feels much bigger to me. Yeah, you're right. That's disappointing. He couldn't even tweet something about the weather. He could have slipped something about the weather in there. Yeah, no airplane icons up here on the screen.

Right. All right. Thank you, Brian Cole. Okay. And the at Yankees account tonight tweeted how sweet it is. Yeah. Did they sweep someone? Yeah, they swept the Red Sox.

That's the best time to use that. It's really the only time. All right. So we're going to do our annual pitchers under 25 draft. As everybody knows, we've done this twice. And one of the miracles of the under 25 draft is that, well, some pitchers turn 26, but a lot of pitchers just disappear because they stop pitching. They hurt their arms and then they stop pitching.

And so we always have a fresh class of people who are under 25. So the first year that we did this, we drafted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 each. Second year, we drafted 5, 10, 12 each. Gosh, that's a lot. This year, I think we're doing 11 each. Okay. Yeah, 11 each. All right. And so these are, the rules are the person who gets the most warp from their pitchers over the next five years wins half of the

contest and then after 10 years that's the second half of the contest uh and uh all of these starting pitchers are 25 or younger and uh this season at least and uh all of them were chosen basically because they all have started two games or more this year in the majors. A couple of them I expanded. A couple of them were one start or more, and they're kind of the more famous of the one-start pitchers. And just as another quick update, we're almost tied in last year's. Ben's up 13-12, and then he's running away with the year before, 39-25. But, Ben, that's a fascinating question now.

I was just going to ask this question, I think. Yeah, how will the transition to DRA change this? That's a good question. We really genuinely don't know what this will do. You could be winning both both for all we know i could be i mean there are some sizable gaps for some certain pitchers in the transition uh and uh it's conceivable that these scores will be completely irrelevant so we're gonna have to i guess are we switching over i think we probably have to switch over because old warp will probably not continue to be calculated for the rest of the contest span.

So we're going to have no choice. Yeah, I guess not. Are we switching over, though, for the warps that are in Grandfather Day? Well, I have some incentive to say yes. I have Clayton Kershaw on that first team, so I feel like I'm probably going to be okay no matter what. But I guess in the spirit of New Warp is better, more accurate reflection of the actual value,

and what we were drafting at the time was who's going to be better. That was basically the idea. Then we should go with the more accurate stat, even if that changes who we thought was winning. Yeah, it isn't as though I drafted these with warp specifications in mind. Right. And neither did you. It's not like I was definitely going to stay away from ground ball pitchers

because warp doesn't give them the credit they deserve. Yes, right. So hopefully official Effectively Wild statistician John Chenier can recalculate these with the new Warp values. And you can find the Google Doc with all of our contests updated very frequently by John in the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You just click on the file section and it is one of the files in there. So he'll update these probably and maybe enter the results of this new one when we do it, which we're going to do now. So are you curious, by the way, are you curious about any of the, if you want, I can tell you, you can name a pitcher and I'll tell you whether he changed. I just have to get the spreadsheet up.

But I can tell you if they've changed. So if you're curious, I can do it right now. Jose Quintana was a big one for me for the 2013 draft. Jose Quintana gains 0.3 warp. All right, excellent. The only one you're interested in? Kershaw. Kershaw gains 7.3 warp. All right. Excellent. The only one you're interested in? Kershaw. Kershaw gains 7.6 warp.

Okay. Well, that sounds good. Chris Sale. You're only naming yours. Yes. He gains 2.0 warp. And by the way, I believe that replacement level is a little lower here. And so most pitchers, I think a large number of pitchers have gone up than have gone down.

So maybe two might be just breaking even. I'm not sure. Okay. Well, here's one. Here's one. These are careers. So Kershaw's, it's career, not just the last two years. Okay.

Well, here's what I'm worried about. One of your guys from 2013 who old warp didn't like very much, sort of a surprisingly low values for him. Chris Tillman. Okay. Chris Tillman gains 5.4 one okay yeah that could be bad could be i want to i'm going to check bum garner because bum garner bum garner loses i was feeling okay about that one yeah and he lost all right so all right so

that's it okay okay all right so uh you can go first. Okay, I guess. No, I can do that to you. I'm going to flip a coin. Alright, call it in the air. What kind of coin are we dealing with here? It's a quarter. It's a quarter. 19.

They don't put dates on these anymore. It's on the back. 2006. It's 2006 quarter. Nebraska. It's Nebraska. Okay, in that case, the 06 Nebraska's, if I recall correctly. Call it.

Call it. Heads. It's heads. Okay. All right. I didn't do my usual prep for this draft. Listeners know that I usually set aside several hours and call some scouts and crunch some numbers and come up with a spreadsheet, which usually doesn't help me at all.

In this case, I have not done that. I'm kind of winging it too much TV to watch to prep for this at length. So I'm going to take as my top pick Carlos Martinez. I know you would not have. I should have should have waited a while because I know you're not a fan. I wasn't a fan, but I do sort of embrace the idea that he is simply better suited to starting than relief. And I have kind of found it just troubling to watch him as a reliever and see non-dominance. I'm so used to seeing mediocre starters dominate in relief that I can't help but, you know, harshly penalize guys who don't dominate in relief. And, you know, enough people, even while it was happening, even before he was struggling, were making the case that he has a

repertoire that is suited for starting more than relieving, if not, you know, if not necessarily the build for it. And he does seem to be... I mean, his strikeout rate basically goes up as a starter or stays exactly the same. His block rate basically stays exactly the same. The fact that he's able to be as good as a starter as he was as a reliever is unique. And it's not a bad pick.

I like him more now than I did three weeks ago. But you're right. I'm not in love with Carlos Martinez. All right. Good pick, Ben. Okay. All right. I'll be interested to see whether you thought about him at all,

but I will take Jake Odorizzi. Yeah. He would have been one of my top guys. Yeah. Okay. I'm glad he wasn't. And Odorizzi was, let's see, Odorizzi is, I'm trying to remember if it's DRA or CFIP that is obsessed with him. But one of them had him.

Like, I think he was, I think when we published on Tuesday or Wednesday, I think Odorizzi had the lowest DRA in baseball up to that point. And so that's pretty good. Yeah, I like Odorizzi. And he was one of the guys I wrote about pitch selections and how guys change their pitch selections each time facing a hitter in the same game a couple months ago. And Odorizzi was the only full-time starter last year who threw more fastballs the further he went in the game like the more usually the the typical thing is guys start mixing stuff up they use their fastball early and then they mix in breaking balls or off-speed stuff each time they go through just to show the hitter something new and he did not do that at all he He went up, it was like, I don't know, 54% his first time,

and 56% the second time, and 58% the third time, something like that. And I interviewed him for that story, and he claimed not to have been aware of that. And now, all of a sudden, he's not doing it anymore. So I'm not going to claim credit completely, but I'm claiming partial credit for Jake Odorizzi's pitch usage this year. Yeah. It's interesting that the James Shields deal ended up, you could end up really easily defending it from the Royals' perspective, primarily because the second guy in the deal

turned into such a great thing. And to the point that you were almost like, wow, the Rays kind of got an underwhelming return As it turned out In Will Myers except then you can Defend from the race perspective because Odorizzi who was the second guy in that deal Turned out to be really good Like it really ended up I don't know that we will Ever remember it this way because

We are going to always be in the moment but Historians might look back at this and call it The Wade Davis Jake Odorizzi deal Yeah maybe so. Okay, my turn. I'll take Trevor Bauer. Uh-huh. Interesting.

I'm not Googling to see who Trevor Bauer is. Yeah, so would this have been where you picked him three weeks ago, or have you had your mind changed by his strikeout rate and general flashiness? Yeah, I probably would have waited a pick or two to take him before this year. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this is not a great list. No, it's really not. I'm already like, eh, and we're at the second or third pick

So yeah it's not a great group I don't know what that means Just happens to be the case that Good guys are 26 all of a sudden Or what but yeah They were there wasn't really much Of a drop off from year one to year two And so I sort of looked at this as a

As a pool of players that Churns every year. But this year is a huge drop-off from last year. Yeah. Even last year, I mean, we were taking Jordano Ventura and Tanaka and Waka and Cole and Gray and Wheeler. Like, I don't think there's one person on this list who I would take over the top six from last year. Yeah. Maybe that's knowing what we know now about those guys

as opposed to what we knew then, but even so. I think you could make... Could you make a case for Porcello or Salazar or Tehran or Archer? You could definitely make a case for Archer. Archer would go ahead of Odorizzi, right? Yeah, I think so. Probably can't make a case for the other ones I named now. So the seven best pitchers would all be him.

Danny Salazar was on last year's list. I might take him over the guys I just took. Yeah, yeah, I said him. All right, I will take Archie Bradley. And I actually don't like Archie Bradley. I think Archie Bradley is a good pitcher. He is, to actually, I don't like Archie Bradley. Like I, I think Archie Bradley is, uh, is, is a good pitcher. He is to me, I don't know. He feels to me like he's going to be one of those good when healthy guys who will, it'll take four years for me to give up on that dream. And,

uh, I know that he's, I know that he's not currently hurt in an arm kind of way, but I've been spooked by Bradley. Combination of... Matt Trueblood pointed this out, but he basically hit the three red flags last year. Deteriorating control, forearm strain, and I forget what the third one was. Maybe he had shoulder tightness or something.

I forget, but he had the three markers for a guy who's definitely going to have surgery in the next 17 minutes. And so I was all aboard the ignore Archie Bradley train this year. But, you know, he is kind of undeniably good. I mean, he's on a pitch for pitch basis. He's probably the best on this list in terms of stuff and potential. Okay. Well, not a rave review of your second-round pick, but okay. All right.

I'm going to take Tywon Walker. Yeah. Not super enthusiastic about Tywon Walker either, but he looks really good sometimes. And he was a very highly rated prospect and he's only 22 oh here's the third the third one okay so the matt trueblood's three three warning signs mild flexor strain in his right elbow which basically as soon as i see that for a young pitcher i figure it's only a matter of time. Velocity down throughout the season and arm slot dropped. Yeah. Ominous. Very ominous. Who'd you take? Tywon Walker? Yeah. He's doing really well. What's his DRA? I bet his DRA is better than his 8.74 ERA. You think so?

Yeah, I think so. Is DRA less prone to swings like that? No, but he's struck out some guys. He had one really, I don't know, he's had five starts, and he had one that was really good. He had two that were really good, and a couple that had two that were really good and a couple that were his last start was like a disaster start that kind of screwed up everything his dra is 5.48 lower definitely lower okay no doubt about it okay i will take everybody on this list is doing

poorly yeah right i will take this. It's this part now. Yeah, on your third pick. I'm going to take, oh my goodness, I'll take Aaron Sanchez. Okay. I've thought about taking Aaron Sanchez, but I don't know. Nothing that he has done so far this year makes you think he's not going to be a bullpen guy. Yeah. It's crazy how many guys on this list

were hyped prospects three weeks ago and feel like post-hype sleepers right now. Yeah. You're like, oh, he could bounce. No, he could definitely. Yeah, it's been a tough stretch for him. But it's only been four years since he was good. He could come back.

If he learns a new pitch. No, these guys were awesome three weeks ago. And now I just look at them all and they're like the child that disappointed me. Which is probably a mistake on our part. 20 walks and 25 innings. I mean, how many picks deep would you have to go on a Tommy John avoidance draft to avoid the guy who walked 20 and 25 innings? Pretty far, yeah Yeah I don't know

I was interested in what he would do This year just as a Two pitch guy And adjusting to starting And had clearly been pretty good in the bullpen And yeah nothing that he's Done so far has made it look like It's going to be an easy transition

But maybe you'll get a Good bullpen win every year yeah okay i'm taking jesse han that was who i was going to take that was the one i was uh debating yeah i like jesse han i actually feel kind of good about jesse han i feel better about jesse han than probably the first couple guys i took no fewer than 11 of the pitchers we've drafted in the past two years have had Tommy John. Oh, man. That's almost a quarter in two years and half of them only in one year. Wow.

11 TJs. And 12 of you count Mike Miner, right? Yeah. Jeez. Wait, is Miner a twofer? Wait, Beachy, Medlin, and Miner all had two? Maybe. I think Miner.

I was just reading. And Venters had three. I don't think. They can't possibly have nine TJs in four. Well, Miner just got transferred to the 60-day disabled list with rotator cuff injury. So that's even worse. All right. So you took Jesse on, which is a good pick.

Thank you. I will take Eddie Butler. Okay. I'm really just trying really hard to say, don't veer too wildly on the basis of three weeks. Yeah, sure. That makes sense. I don't love Eddie Butler anyway, though.

I never loved Eddie Butler. Yeah, people ask us what it means sometimes when we say that we don't love a guy or we don't like a guy. I guess it just means, I don't know what it means. It means we have a bad feeling. Not necessarily a bad feeling. I don't know what it means. It means we have a bad feeling. Not necessarily a bad feeling. I don't know. I guess it means we like him less than consensus, whatever our nebulous sense of consensus is.

Yeah. Okay. I'll go with AJ Cole. Yeah. I thought about AJ Cole. Jeez. Butler and Aaron, my last two picks have 37 strikeouts and 35 walks. In 2015, in like the year that nobody ever walks anybody.

They account, this is true, this is true. They account for 40% of the league's walks. I just play index, man. It's true. They account for 40% of the league's walks. I just play Indexed Mad. It's true. I don't think so. All right. The question is, do I really just embrace what I've become? There's another guy with a ridiculous walk rate you could take on this list.

Is it Tyler Mantic? It's not the one I was thinking of. Mantic has 13 strikeouts and 13 walks so i could go 50ks and 48 walks in a three pick span is it tj house it is tj house yeah and he's got the shoulder he's gonna be the last person pick and yeah he's moved way down my board in the last few weeks. I like TJ House. I like him too. I do too. I had him in things. Yeah. Now I very much don't.

No. You can have him with the last pick. Well, you don't have the last pick. No. You can have him with your last pick. I'm going to switch it up, and I'm going to go with the low upside, relatively safe-ish kind of pick. I will take Kyle Hendricks.

Kyle Hendricks is what I think of if Tommy Malone were right-handed and a little taller. So worse or better? Is that better or worse than Tommy Malone? I think that it's better because He has the platoon advantage more often I think it's worse for his career because He can't be a loogie So I would draft the lefty first but I think it's better

For his DRA warp Okay I'm going to take Daniel Norris Recently demoted Recently mentioned in this Podcast Moments ago Bad pitcher Set down to the minors Recently mentioned in this podcast just moments ago. Yeah.

Bad pitcher. Yep. Yep. Sent down to the minors after he, I think, threw 78 pitches in a three inning start, which he didn't allow lots of runs, but they didn't like what they saw with the 78 pitches. But we've got 10 years ahead of us in this bet. So I'm banking on Daniel Norris' decade. I'm going to go, I'm going to put faith in BP. BP was the outlier on this pitcher's prospect status this year.

We had him in the top 100. Kylie, I think, had him. We had him 63rd. I think Kylie also had him in the top 100, but at the very bottom. And Baseball America and MLB.com did not have him in the top 100 at all but i'm i trust my guys so i'm gonna take michael lawrence and okay recently promoted yeah made his major league debut on uh like friday or something like that i saw him in the afl once and he was bad so that's when you did your scout school yeah so that's what i know about him well

ben he allowed three home runs in five innings in his debut but only only three runs though oh okay so solo shots scattered them yep okay well i'm going to put my faith in the St. Louis Cardinals, and I'll take Tim Cooney. Yeah, I was thinking about taking him just for faith in the Cardinals. The reason I didn't take Tim Cooney or I haven't taken Tim Cooney is that on Thursday, I was on Cardinals radio something. I did a radio hit, and I had to prepare for that. And they're like, yeah, we're just going to ask you about the Cardinals radio something, you know, like I did a radio hit. And I had to prepare for that, and they're like, yeah, we're just going to ask you about the Cardinals. And so I dug deep into some Cardinals things, and I figured they were going to ask me about Wainwright and replacements.

And so I had to have something to say about Cooney. And so I was all ready to rip Cooney. And not because there's anything wrong with Cooney. He's average. He's got four average pitches. They're all exactly average. They're four exactly average pitches. But he's no Marco Gonzalez, right?

And so it was really like I was going to talk about how he's up for this start, maybe one more. But Marco Gonzalez is really the fix there if there is one. And Cooney, you know, he's the kind of guy who could dominate lower level pitchers and hitters because he could sequence. He had an advanced feel for the levels. But as he rose, you could see everything kind of going downhill for him. He's kind of like, if I were to describe Tim Cooney, I would probably describe him as maybe a left-handed, slightly taller Kyle Hendricks.

So that is a much, much taller Tommy Malone. Exactly. But the handedness no longer needs to be mentioned. Okay, so I was ready to not like Tim Cooney for right now. And so then I didn't want to pick him. Okay. That's all. Long story.

Just to brag that I was on the radio nice yeah all right i'm gonna take rafael montero okay i rafael montero is i think i've come to conclude that he is simply a blind spot in my baseball knowledge because i think he's good and every time i look at his numbers i think oh that guy's And every time I look at his numbers, I think, oh, that guy's good. And then I look at his pedigree and I say, oh, he is pretty good. And then he never gets to pitch. Like he's always, he's always, you know, in, you know, he's in relief or he's up and down or he's down or he's up and then he's down again. And like, he's not young, particularly he's somewhat young, but he's not young particularly He's somewhat young but he's not Particularly young Everything seems good about him and yet

There never Seems like he's the guy that they want So but I like him Well he was optioned to triple A And then that Option was rescinded because He was placed on the DL with right Rotator cuff inflammation

That hurts Not believed to be serious but I believe that it could be he was placed on the DL with right rotator cuff inflammation. That hurts. Not believed to be serious, but I believe that it could be. Okay, we're at the point in this draft where I kind of just want you to take every one of these guys because maybe you'll get negative warp. Yeah, TJ House is a safe zero in my opinion yeah i i think i'm taking house just just because i like tj house a few weeks ago and we're talking about a 10 year long span here so the fact that he was awful in a couple starts and hurt where he's still still got a future ahead of him i liked him last year he had a crazy high ground ball rate

with a very low walk rate and just he was impressive last year in about half a season so i kind of liked him and now i like him less but i like him more than all these other guys ben the most important rule of a keeper league is you have to appreciate that just because it's a keeper league doesn't mean that the rest of the league is going to keep doing it. So you don't really build for four years down the road. Because this is what you've got right here today. And I like your optimism, but we're not going to be following this in 10 years. As long as John Chenier is. Uh-huh.

Maybe. I won't be.ier is. Uh-huh. Maybe. I won't be. Okay. I don't know. Does it count as gloating if you're gloating to a person who's died? Probably. Yeah, sure. Okay.

All right. All right. Bronchitis must be more serious than I thought. I'll take Kendall Graveman. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay. Okay. The less said about that, the better. Man, all right.

By the way, with Kendall Graveman, does the Billy Bean thing, do you have a lingering 2006 Billy Bean effect in your brain? Like, I know that you're smart enough to be above that, but does your brain kind of still? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. I know that Billy Bean is a smart GM. I tend to think that if any GM wants a player, I go, oh, Robbie Ray. You wanted Robbie Ray? I bet Robbie Ray's pretty good. I think that about almost everybody. I like these GMs. I think they're smart people. But even

in a world where, I don't think that Billy Bean is necessarily any, or the A's, I guess, are any smarter than the Indians are or the Blue Jays are or any number of smart teams are. But there's just something about the fact that, you know, Billy Bean was there when I was in the crib, you know. I was an infant, and he was holding me. Yeah, my girlfriend watched Moneyball the other day, and he sure seemed pretty smart in that. Yeah. Graveman's two inches taller than Tommy Malone.

I'm actually, it's weird because I'm actually now worried that you're going to take my guy. You have a guy still on here? I don't have a guy. Guess I'll take Matzik. Yes. I thought about Matzik. I thought about Matzik. Matzik, I can't get over.

I can't get over the minor league walk rate, man. And I don't know if it was one of those things that was just an easy fix. I kind of thought that he was over it, and then he's been really wild this year. And I don't know. I always feel like this is not my philosophy. I talked about this when B.J. Upton got traded from Tampa to – well, not when he got traded, when he got signed by the Braves and

there was all this talk that oh well maybe he needed a change of scenery. You know maybe he didn't seem to be that happy with the Rays. There was a lot of criticism of him over like whether he ran out pop-ups to the second baseman and so on. And yeah you could look at it and say oh a change of scenery will be great. He's got all this natural talent. But to me a guy

who needs a change of scenery is a guy who is quite likely in a few weeks, months, whatever, going to need another change of scenery. Guys who need a change of scenery are just guys who need changes of scenery a lot, right? They have something about them that leads them to this sort of equilibrium of semi-unhappiness. And I'm fine with that. I have an equilibrium of a flawed state as well. And so with Matzik, you could say, oh, well, he got the yips. And that's easy enough to fix. And it is easy enough

to fix, but it's easy enough to go back to it. The guy who gets them is a guy who gets them. So that's why Matzik terrifies me. Matzik seems to me like the guy on this list who is, like he's, he could very easily win

19 games and be a good pitcher. Like I don't put that past him. But if I were picking a guy who's going to be out of the league in two, three years, I'm not sure we've named a guy yet that I would pick after him. Okay. So who's your guy trevor may

it's gonna be my next guy and a true post-hype sleeper too because i mean he was a he was he was hype in like what 2011 ish 2010 something like that yeah his prospect rankings were pre-2012 that's when he was on the top 100s and he's got good peripherals. He had them last year when he had an 8-yard array. I mean, not good. It was horrible, but better. And they're good this year. He's having a good year. He's having a solid season.

Yeah, okay. He's like Tommy Malone. Except right-handed and 6'5". He's 6'5", 240 pounds, right-handed. He has a twin, though. That's pretty much what I mean. Similar uniform. Alright. Similar initials. Yeah, true. Okay, I'm gonna, I guess I'll take

Why do I think it's good to be like Tommy Malone? I don't know. It's not good. How old is Tommy Malone? When did he age out of this draft, Tommy? I feel like he might have drafted in the first year. Oh, he's 28. Oh, yeah.

Okay. All right. I'm just going to take a guy who's pitching well this year. He's like the only guy on this list. Anthony Discofani. Yeah, that's a good pick. I mean, I probably would have taken him before Manso. In fact, that's good.

I mean, you know, again, it's like, he's a guy that not that long ago a GM wanted. Like a GM said, that's the guy I want for Matt Latos. Like, I've got this player who's famous and I'm going to trade him. Who can I get for him? I want him. And that says something. I mean, nobody ever said that about Kyle Lobstein. Except you with your next pick. You want to hear a story about Kyle Lobstein? Sure. So there was an early run of DRA and it was early. It was like before it was ready to publish. And it wasn't quite right. Just in terms of getting the details right or the programming or whatever, it wasn't quite right. And the way that I could always tell it was not quite right

is that Kyle Lobstein was at the top. He was having the best year. And it was weird because every other person was in the right spot, but there'd be like three guys who were out of place. And I could have looked for whichever three guys there were at any given point to see if it looked okay. But all I had to do was just look for Kyle Lobstein. And then they did a run, and Kyle Lobstein was back where he belonged,

and it was ready to publish. Good. I'll take Kyle Lobstein. Okay. All right. So that leaves two guys, right? We're on our last picks here. Maybe for our last pick,

we should just pick the one that the other guy has to have because I don't want either of these guys. So you're going to pick for me and I'm going to pick for you? Yeah, I'm going to pick the one that you have to have that I don't want. All right. Well, yeah, you don't get to pick for me. No. Because it's the last pick.

Okay, I want you to have... I'm going to give you Erasmo Ramirez. And I'm going to take Nick Martinez. So if I were to distinguish between these two, Martinez is probably a little bit better, and Erasmo Ramirez probably has a little bit more pedigree. So you're going with the now value. Yeah. That seems reasonable.

If you can say that about a guy who has 13 strikeouts in 32 innings he's got black ink on that page man yeah zero homers per nine and four four hit by pitches yes okay all right this might have been retaliation because the rangers have been hit a ton this year well all right so i get nick martinez and you get erasmo ramirez and that's it that's it man there better be some better young pitchers by this time next year it's not a good group a lot of good hitters have come up not a lot of good pitchers well i mean a lot of these guys are good pitchers they were they were they were like top 20 top prospects, a lot of these guys. They've sucked. Yeah.

I mean, really. So Bradley, Butler, Walker, and Odorizzi, who's good, were all top 30 guys at some point. I think Bauer probably was. Carlos Martinez was certainly a top 100. Sanchez and Norris were top 50, top 60. Trevor May was a top 60. and Norris were top 50, top 60. Trevor May was a top 60. Mancik was a... Mancik was like the...

Wasn't Mancik a candidate to go first overall in that draft? Where was he taken? Pretty high, right? 11th. Cole must have been ranked. He was a top 23 prospect. He was a 23rd ranked prospect by both

publications. So he was a legit superstar prospect. So they're just... Han? Did you say Han? Han was a prospect? Yeah, so there seems to be a... I don't know, there's like a weird absence of established guys, though. Like when we were drafting the last couple of years, we had guys who had not only been top prospects, but had actually been good in the big leagues.

And this year, not so much. Like, Oda Rizzi is... Is he the most accomplished major league pitcher on this list, probably? Like, almost cumulatively. Like, he might have everybody else beat. Yeah. Not a distinguished group.

Okay, well... No. Well... Did you say Cole? I did say Cole. Cole was a prospect. Yeah. Montemar was a prospect. Okay. Well. No. Well. Did you say Cole? I did say Cole. Cole was a prospect. Yeah.

Montefiore was a prospect. Yeah. Lots of prospects. A lot of prospects. Yeah. So I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that strikeout rates are not up this year and scoring has rebounded a tiny bit, or at least the trend toward more strikeouts and less scoring seems to have slowed or plateaued or something this season.

I don't know whether that's because there's been less of an influx of ace young starters this year than there have been relative to the last couple of years, or I don't know. You know, the second most accomplished pitcher on this list is probably the non-prospect Kyle Hendricks. Yeah. You can make a case for Martinez. You can make a case for Bauer. But Hendricks has more wars than either of them in fewer innings. Okay.

Well, that's the sorry state of under-25s starting pitching. Write a piece about it. Okay. All right. So that's it for today. Send us – Oh, wait. I do write a piece. Every year I write a piece about it. Okay. All right. So that's it for today. Send us. Oh wait. I do write a piece.

Every year I write a piece about. Do you? Pitching prospects. Yeah. Every year I do a piece about whether this generation's pitching prospects are better than they were in the tin staph days. And so what. Yeah.

It's been going steadily up. The amount of value that top 100 or top 50 pitching prospects have produced has been going up very steadily for like the last 20 years. So when Tin Stap came out or when it was coined by Christina or... I think it was Gary Huckabee. So in like 99 or something like that, it made perfect sense because if you looked at the 1993 crop of pitching prospects who were all like had all reached maturity, they were all horrible. Like one guy was above replacement level.

They were just it was this historically bad group of prospects busting. And that wasn't abnormal. And then slowly they started adding more and more value. And the group from like six years ago is like the best group ever and and it was before that the group from you know two years before that was the best ever and so it has been a steady climb and so just looking at this i don't know maybe it's just that there's a lot of really good under 25 pitchers who we already drafted last year like we said but this is a pretty bad group maybe it's uh maybe it's turning around yeah there is no such thing as a pitching

prospect by the way is tin stat for those who don't know and you know actually just looking at our previous drafts the first two times we did this we did 25 and under so we included 25 year old pitchers and this year we only did under 25 so if we had included 25-year-olds, we would have gotten Salazar again and Baumgartner and Gray and Evaldi and Henderson Alvarez. So there would have been a few more options. So that's part of the reason why this crop was so thin. Okay, so that is it. Send us emails for later this week at podcast at baseballprospectus.com and support the sponsor, the Play Index, by going to baseballreference.com and using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.

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Aww. I want to cry a little bit. You have nice listeners. Yeah.