Fantasy Baseball Today - 02/12: Heath's Sleepers/Breakouts/Busts; Fantasy Regulators! (Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

Kicking it off with the latest odds on where Bryce Harper and Manny Machado will end up. Then we get into some of Heath's sleepers (5:00), breakouts (11:46) and busts (19:40). Find out which categories Miguel Andujar, Billy Hamilton and Shane Bieber belong to ... The Fantasy Regulators are back to settle your league disputes (26:40)! We also look at some players who may be able to build upon their 2018 second half success (32:30) and we introduce you to a new metric that will help measure a pitcher's stuff (38:10). It's pretty cool! ... Pros and cons for picks 21-30 (41:00). Player discussed include Juan Soto, Corey Kluber and Anthony Rizzo ... Your emails at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the fantasy baseball today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email fantasy baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Well, fantasy. Now here's Adam, Scott, Heath, and Chris. Sleepers, breakouts, and busts today from Mr. Heath Cummings. Heath, who's one player that fits into one of those categories that you're really excited to talk about?

And then I'm going to guess which category he fits in. I'll say the one player is Shane Beaver, Beaver Mania. I had a look down in my notes. He's a breakout. I cheated. I knew he was a breakout. So what was the point of that exercise? Great intro, Adam.

Yeah, you know what? You coughed during my intro. We're 30 seconds in. You've already coughed. You're coughing again. What is wrong with you? It's better than the first intro. So let me explain.

Adam started the intro for the show previously. And Heath went on an entire different path because you didn't realize we had started recording. It caused some laughter. I nearly choked on a mint that I was chewing, and so I'm still dealing with the after effects of that. Okay. And was it an Andy's mint?

No, it was a lifesaver, or a breath saver. Oh, okay. She could go with Andy's. All right, so let's get into the show. We'll do sleepers breakouts and busts. We got the fantasy regulators coming on today. I know everybody's excited about that. Andy's really isn't a mint.

It's minty. It's chocolate. It's minty. You wouldn't eat that to like freshen your breath. I guess not, but you would need it to have fun and enjoy life. Bet Online, a betting site, an online betting site, bed online, has San Francisco as the favorite to sign Bryce Harper and the Yankees as the favorite to sign Mani Machado. So Chris said he was going to crap all over that news item. So please, Chris.

Are we to believe that BetOnline has some sources within Scott Boris's office and or the front office of the San Francisco Giants of the New York Yankees? This is utterly meaningless. This tells us nothing at all. Okay. It doesn't. What are we doing? I don't know. Just have fun.

This one, like, we can talk about Bryce Harper going to San Francisco and the possible repercussions of that. But I'm not going to, like, pretend like it's going to have. The Nationals have the longest odds. As far as we know, they still have the biggest offer out. So you would change the odds? You think you know more than bet on live? I'd put 50 bucks on the Nationals resigning him at 10 to 1 for sure. Okay.

All right, Chris. Well, good luck to you. Goodbye, a lot of Andy's Vince with that money. Bryce Harper has a career 164-305-284 slash line at Oracle Park, although it had never been Oracle Park. in 19 games. Two home runs, two doubles in 19 games. Mani Machado, a little disappointing 821 OPS career at Yankee Stadium,

but I would take the over if he were to go to Yankee Stadium. We will be talking about Miguel And Duhar on today's show, by the way, and he would be impacted by a potential Mani Machado signing. Yeah, the main thing, I don't care really what Bryce Harper's slash line is because it's such a small sample size. But fan graphs, park factors, or home runs for left-handed hitters by park. 100 is average. There's a lot of teams in the mid-90s.

The second worst park is Marlins Park at 89. The Giants are 82. They are so far outside the norm and the range of any other park for a left-handed power hitter. The exact opposite, obviously, of Yankees. Yeah, Giants left-handed hitters had a 708 OPS at at Giant's Park, I guess, is what it's called now. Yeah, let me take a look and see what opposing hitters did. Or can you see what Giants Lefties did away from Oracle Park? Maybe that would be...

I could, but I already started looking for the other one. Well, the other news item today, Brett Anderson signed a one-year deal with Oakland, and he's probably going to be in their rotation. The A's have a terror... They don't even have a rotation yet. They're going to have a terrible rotation. It's going to be really bad. Yeah, normally when a team signs a veteran like this,

you'd say, oh, that's bad news for the rookies, and we're really excited about the Oakland rookies. They've got so few starting pitchers that they could sign like three guys, and I'm still not sure it would keep the rookies out. Okay, Chris, are we ready, or can we move on? Sub-700 OPS for opposing hitters, left-handed hitters at Oracle Park,

and Giants hitters, it appears had a 673 OPS away from home last year as left-handers, but I think that might be more a result of the left-handers they have. All right, let's look at some of Heath's sleepers, Heath's breakouts, and Heath's busts. All right, Heath, we got Billy Hamilton as a sleeper. Had to have a royal on here. So here's Billy Hamilton.

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously because he's a royal. It's also because, like, he was a sixth or seventh round draft pick most of the last five years. And now he's going in, I think, the 16th round by ADP, because he had a bad year. He had 236, stole 34 bases, but the four years before that he had at least 56 steals. He's generally hit for a slightly better average than that.

And he's gone to a team in the Royals that really has nothing to do but try to steal bases because they're not going to hit any home runs or win any games. He's going to have these Uber green light. I expect him to get back to the mid-50s in terms of steals. I think there's a decent chance he scores 70-ish runs, so he won't hurt you there. And the batting average will come back a little bit, even if it's still going to be bad. And his average sprint speed, according to baseball savant, was, identical to 2017, so it's not like he lost some footspeed there.

Did you mention Billy Hamilton's ADP? It is 167 overall. I got it at 162, Heath. Well, I was looking at NFBC. Oh, okay. I'm just looking at fantasy pros. So we're talking in the 160s for Billy Hamilton. And final question on him.

Last year, he lost playing time because he hits so poorly. Do the Royals have the luxury of benching? No. Okay. I mean, they could play Brett Phillips in Center and Jorge Bonafacio and Wright, but I think it's going to take quite a bit for that to happen. It's very important because the Reds had a bit of an outfield log jam and the Royal Stone. And I think it's interesting to note that Malick Smith is going probably 70 picks ahead of Billy Hamilton at this point. And there may not be that much of a difference between them.

I mean, Malick Smith did hit for a high average last year, but there are reasons to believe that that was a little. lucky. If he falls back to the 6-2-60-2-70 range, you know, if Billy Hamilton hits 240 but steals 15 more bases, that's probably a more valuable player. And I think it'll be really interesting with Hamilton. There's a chance, because I'm not currently projecting him to lead off, but one of Mondesie or Hamilton, I think, is going to lead off, and one of them's going to hit 9th. I still think he's a fine sleeper if he hits 9th. But if he hits lead-off, he could have massive value here. Cody Allen, the new Angels close. certainly coming off his worst season.

You're calling him, though, a sleeper at 30 years old for Cody Allen. Yeah, I think the change to Anaheim is maybe bad in terms of total save opportunities, but he doesn't have to deal with Andrew Miller anymore, and I do think that's a good thing for him. And even in a down year, he posts 10.7K per 9, his K percentage was still, for the most part, fine. I'm just more likely to believe for a guy that we've got a five-year or four, year history of a sub three ERA that in the small sample size

that is one year for a reliever, his control problems and home run problems last year were more of a blip on the radar than a sign that he started to diminish when he was just 29 last year. Yeah, maybe if there's any concern about Cody Allen, his velocity's dipping a little bit.

But yeah, I mean, it was five straight years with a sub three ERA before 2018, where it was 470. And then in terms of competition in the bullpen, Ty Butchery, we liked him at the end of last year, but he's unproven. Hansel Robles doesn't really feel like a closer. Justin Anderson, Cam Bedrosian.

I mean, these guys have had their chances. Allen certainly. Nobody's going to take the job from Allen. No, and I think you would never project a 30-year-old for a career high in something, but I think there's a pretty reasonable chance that Cody Allen has a career high in saves. Yeah, especially because saves are all about usage, not for the most part town. Okay, Jed Lowry is your third sleeper. He is probably going to bat second,

and it seems like he's going to be, at least they're saying, an everyday player for the Mets or close to every day. Jed Lowry was the number four second baseman in points league's number seven in Roto last year. And that's probably the biggest key for Jed Lowry, because I understand why people aren't excited about him. But if you're talking about 20 home runs and even you dip, drop them a little bit, and it's 165 runs plus Rolary, plus RBI out of a second basement.

That's a top 10 second basement easily. He's got an ADP basically in the next to last round of a standard roto draft to 260, I think, is what it was. And I do think there's a chance because last year you look at it, he had 23 home runs. That was a career high. I would understand it's 34 years old. You think maybe he comes down from that a little bit, but this is a better park for power hitters, for left-handed power hitters specifically. And he's going to spend most of his time on the left side of the plate.

So we're talking about Jed Lowry, Fantasy Pro's ADP currently 277, NFBC, Heath said it's about 260. One thing he does a lot of is double, so that might be better in a points league, plus his plate discipline is pretty good. So he might, like I said, be better in that format. The last two years he's played basically a full season. In 2017, he was the number 10 second basement in points leagues. Last year, number four, run to a little bit different. He was number 17 in 2017, number 17. in number seven in 2018.

One thing I did look at Heath, though, was he's played basically four full seasons in his career. And I'll count 136 games as one of his four full seasons. Not full, but for him, it's amazing. In three of those four seasons, he basically hit the same amount of home runs at home as he did on the road. Last year, however, he had 19 of his 23 home runs on the road. So just general question, like, how many home runs do you think he's hitting? Because 23 was a career high, as you mentioned, his point. previous career high was 16 for Jed Lowry.

If I had to set a projection for Jed Lowry for this year, if you're telling me it's a 150 game projection, then I would probably set it at 20. And he's just like a middle infield option for you, or he could be a starting second basement? I think he could be a starting second basement, but you can draft him as a middle infielder. And I think he might gain some more eligibility, right? I mean, they might move him around. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets third base.

I mean, he'll probably play third base pretty regularly, right? He might start there. It's possible. Oh, right. Right. Because I think there's been talk about him starting a third and Frazier moving to first. Right. I think there's a good chance that you've got him as a middle infield corner infield option.

All right. Heats breakouts. Three breakouts of the sleepers, and there are more. They'll be on the website, but we're just doing three of each. The sleepers were Hamilton, Cody Allen, and Jed Lowry. The breakouts, let's go to the Bebes. Shane Bieber. What an amazing walk-to-strikeout ratio.

23 walks, 118 strikeouts in 114 and 2 thirds. He's a sleeper for you, Shane Bieber. Well, and the great thing is it's not quite as good as it was in the minor leagues. I mean, he was a guy, every level of the minor leagues until 48 innings of AAA, he walked less than a batter per nine innings. He has elite control, and he's a good ground ball pitcher, generally above 46% in terms of ground ball rate. Normally, those two things alone are enough to make you a good starting pitcher,

but if he strikes out a batter per inning as well, he could be a great starting pitcher. He had a 3.23 FIP last year, 3.30 X-FIP. His problem was he was not very good with runners on base. I generally ascribe that to bad luck, but it could be that he struggled a little out of the stretch. He had a 69% strand rate and gave up a 356 BABB. I think he's going to be a very good starting pitcher this year.

And here was my concern with him. I thought, you know, maybe coming in that he might be, like a Joey Lucasey type where the minor league numbers were really good, but he got by on, you know, really good control, deception, but not so much stuff. But Adam, you talked about it a little bit yesterday, but the Aces stat that Aaron Salseda created, you can read about that on CBSports.com slash fantasy slash baseball. And you can see the full results if you subscribe to sports line. Shane Bieber was actually 70th percentile by his metric. which is basically attempting to quantify stuff

based on velocity, movement, and control. That makes me a lot more optimistic about Shane Bieber than I would have been otherwise because he's not just getting by on guile. He's not someone that has to pitch in the strike zone to avoid walks but gets hammered because of it. I think he can survive this way. I think there's a ton of upside.

Did get hammered. That was kind of what I was going to say. is Shane Bieber in the strike zone too much? It reminds me a little bit of Taiwan Walker who he had a great walk to strike route ratio. Well, not like Bieber. Actually, the strikeouts weren't as good. But he was a very good control pitcher.

He just gave up a ton of home runs. But Bieber, I mean, the hard contact rate was very high for him. I just wonder, I feel like we were saying that last year. Like he was getting hit way too hard. Yeah, but that's, again, as I said, a lot, that's not necessarily a skill that stabilizes in 110 innings. You know, he basically every advanced metric suggests that he pitched really well last season. Even the expected stats from baseball savant suggests that he was probably 30 points

unlucky on batting average and 50 points unlucky on slugging percentage. I think there's just a lot to like here. Okay. So Beber is going 183rd overall. He is just outside the top 40 at starting pitcher. Some pitchers going in the same range are Eduardo Rodriguez, John Lester, Usaicu Kukichi, and Kyle Freeland. I think I like him more than any of those guys. All right.

The next two are interesting, Andrew Heaney and Nick Povetta. I think those guys are right there with him. Yeah. Okay. Breakouts, number two, Eloy Jimenez. Let's see where Mr. Jimenez is going. Way too late for his possible upset.

I do agree that Helo Jimenez is a breakout. He's going to put up the best numbers of his major league career this season. Thanks, Chris. 123rd overall, Eloy Jimenez. Not in our drafts, that's for sure. I just don't see any, like, if you want to get in on the rookie hype this year, I would much, much, much rather take Iloi Jimenez at the end of the 10th round or the 9th round or really even the 8th round than I would take Vlad Guerrero Jr. in the third or the fourth round.

This is a guy who had a 961 OPS last year, was even better at AAA, at a 15% strikeout rate, hit 22 home runs in 108 games. He could be an absolute star. And his profile looks pretty safe too. Okay, yeah, we like Elohimenez. as he is going, like I said, about the end of the 10th round. I just want to see the other outfielers going in that range. Oh, they would include Aaron Hicks.

At NFBC, Will Myers, A.J. Pollock, D. Gordon, I guess, is an outfielder. Aaron Hicks. I would definitely take him over Hicks. Yeah, probably. But I really like Hicks this year. I think he's going to have a good year. I would probably still take AJ Pollock over at Loh Jimenez in that range, but I think he certainly fits.

I think he's a nice value. I think AJ Pollock is just a little underrated. Last breakout is J.T. Reaumuto. Again, there are more on the website, but J.T. Rayamuto, your number one catcher now. Yeah, go ahead. Where do you think he should be taken? He's going into 58th overall.

Yeah, I think in a two-catcher league, he should be on the third round. and I was tempted to say he should go in the second round. We talked about park factors just a little bit. His new park is the best home run park for right-handed hitters, better than Cors, better than Yankee Stadium, better than everywhere else. And I think there's a legitimate shot that we see like a Christian Yelich star turn from Real Moot. Now he won't be quite that good because he's a catcher,

but he's going to be a good hitter for a baseball player, not a good hitter for a catcher. Yeah, I just want to, if you have a chance, maybe somebody could look up where Rayamuto's been drafted in the last week or since the trade. Sure. Because certainly the park factor helps going from Miami to Philadelphia. And all right, general question here. I think we might disagree on this.

Is Rayamuto's value higher in a one catcher or two-catcher league? I say one. I think it's higher in a two-catcher league. I think all catcher's value is higher in a two-catcher league. Because in a two-catcher's value, Retire League, relative to the rest of your lineup, probably 15 of the catchers drafted are going to be actively harmful. Oh, I don't know about that.

Yeah, maybe. But a decent seat. Heath, who's your number 11 catcher? It might be Wellington Castillo. Right. So, like, a good Wellington Castillo season would be like 260 with 17 home runs and 130 combined runs in RBI or Mike Zanino. I actually think it's less about how many catchers you start and how many hitters you start.

So I guess in my mind, the two catcher leagues we play in are five outfielders, corner infield, middle infield, utility. They're much bigger, where one guy doesn't have as much of an impact on your team. Whereas in a one catcher league that we typically play in, it's three outfielers, it's no corner infield, no middle infield. So all hitters are less valuable in a Rotter league? Yeah, all hitters are less valuable. So that wouldn't really change Real Motos. But position scarcity comes more into play, I think, in... I don't know.

When did the Real Moto trade go down, by the way? Was it like Thursday? It was Thursday. It's exactly what it was, yeah. Over the last five days, there have been 12 drafts on NFBC, and his ADP has not changed. He's 48th over. That's too low.

All right, let's go to Heats. The busts. The breakouts were Bieber, Jimenez, Iloi Jimenez, and J.T. Reamuto. Miguel And Duhar is one of Heath's busts. Quick little ADP check for And Duhar, who was the number eight third base. Ooh, he's going early. 76th overall. Number eight third baseman last year, 76.

That's her way. No way. Adam was all ready to argue with me over a Yankee being a bust. Oh, no. Not at all. Not at all. Yeah, I just, I really, he's fine. I don't think he's a bad.

baseball player, but he's a little bit of an accumulator. I don't know that there's going to be an enormous difference between, and you're going to hate this, between him and Jed Lowry. And you can get Jed Lowry 200 spots later. I think that's fair. I think it depends. I think Jed Lowry. I think Jed Lowry stinks.

I think it's a bad sleeper call because Jed Lowry had like one good stretch at the beginning of the year, and then he acted like a 34-year-old hitter, and he was completely useless and should not have been on rosters for most of the year. two years ago at this. Yeah, two years ago he had this, like, ridiculous doubles year. But also. He stinks. He's not winning anything for your team.

Like, Miguel and Duhar probably had just as long of a stretch as Jed Lowry that was playing above his head, based on his minor league production at least. Like, he wasn't this kind of hitter. But nobody is, nobody's as good in the minors as they, like, most people are not as good in the minors as they are the majors. We do this every time the guy gets called up. Not like they always hit for more power in the majors. They get older.

The environment's different. The ball is different. I mean, how many times do we talk about this? I think that's selection bias. Like, we can talk about Miguel and Duhar or Glaver Torres or some other high-profile guys, but there's a ton of guys that get called up and don't hit for as much power. Reese Hoskins did not hit for as much power. Matt Olson last year did not hit for as much power.

But he hit for as much power two years ago. He can't hit at all in the minors. I know, but he's a superstar in the minors. But minor, I don't know. I mean, you're talking about what guys do when they're 21, 22 years old. When they get to the majors and they're more developed physically, they're obviously, they have the chance to put up bigger numbers. He played a minor two years ago.

And Newhart is a bust at 76 overall. I am not arguing that. I don't know what he does. I think he's probably going to be a good source of doubles. He had 47 last year. He had 36 and 125 minor league games in 2017. I don't know. He doesn't walk.

Adam, I'm going to make you mad with a comp. You ready? Yeah. Chris Coglin. I don't know. I don't think he's bad, though. An identical rookie season. Maybe.

I don't want Miguel And Duhar, so I'm not going to argue it. But he's better than Jet Lowry. Yeah, he is slightly better than Jed Lowry. He's a lot better than Jet Lowell. Not 200 spots. He tripped over that bar. Shohei Otani is a bust for Heath. Yeah, I don't know when we're going to see Shoahe Otani back on the Angels

at Health. the active roster, and when we do see him back on the active roster, I don't expect he's going to play every day. I don't think he can hit lefties. He might be a better version of Kyle Schwerber with steals,

but I don't, I think you're probably getting four to five games a week and not until maybe late May. And he had a 654 OPS against lefties. Otani is going 120 second overall, one pick ahead of Eloy Jimenez.

and he's only D.H. That's absurd. Yeah. Last bust is Madison Bumgarner, Heath. Bumgarner ADP is 73rd. All right, so he's not going super high. That is super high. I mean, he has been able to get by with not as good as stuff as he used to have,

and he did a good job pitching below his peripherals the last two years, but he's at a 395 FIP and a 399 FIP, and he's not striking anybody out. And I think, Chris, you said that Aces piece wasn't very good for him either. Yeah, he is in the 14th percentile in this stat below the likes of Jeff Samarja, Felix Hernandez, Lucas Gialito, Tyson Ross. It's not great. Well. But the park helps.

That's the biggest case. for him. Yeah. And he had a 326 ERA last year. In fact, he's never had an ERA higher than 337. And that's mostly, I think, the last two years because of the park. The other thing is he's not going deep into games either.

1-24 whip last year is very alarming. I think the comp with him and David Price is really interesting. And I've got them in very similar spots. Yeah. But I would want either one until the ninth round. And Gardner's 22nd and

Price is 26 among starting pitchers on Fantasy Pros. And for that AIS's stat, David Price ranks in the 55th percentile. So just to show the difference there, it's not, doesn't necessarily mean David Price will be much better than Bumgarner, especially because of the home park. But it's, uh, it's worth noting. It's just that look at the guys going after Bumgarner on fantasy pros. I think you guys would easily take Perrios over him, right? Yes. All right, but then.

Chris doesn't like to say positive. things about other Brigos ever. It's fine. Mike Fultenevich, I take Bumgarner over Fultenevich. I think so too. Yep. I think the ceiling's higher. Armand Marquez. I take her mark

Marquez. And then David Price. And then Zach Wheeler, Miles Michaelis, Robbie Ray, Luis Castillo. I just kind of think Price and Baumgarner both are being drafted too high right now. There was a reason why I really like David Price, but I don't remember, Chris.

So maybe I'll try to remember for tomorrow's show. One thing I do like that I know I'll like today and tomorrow is the CBS Sports Baseball Commissioner. It's the site that is built for serious leagues like yours. You listen to this podcast. You care about fantasy baseball. This is customizable. You can create your own stat categories.

Adjust scoring by position. Obviously, you can play points, roto categories. We got it all on CBS. Deep player pool with minor leaguers and a feature to add your own player. Advanced stats for the analytic savvy managers. And you can build franchises. We're getting really good with Dynasty now. We've got great in-app commissioner tools.

Sign up right now. Go to CBSports.com slash FBT and start your league today. CBSports.com slash FBT. Sign up on CBS. You will not regret it. It is just the best. Last year we tried a new segment. And ended up being...

We didn't just try it, Adam. We nailed it. We succeeded. Yeah, it was great. It was a lot of fun. And if you're new to it, It's a commissioner, usually a commissioner issue type of segment. It's called the fantasy regulators.

Why? Because Nate Dogg and Warren G stopped by for this segment. And we play this music and we talk and it's just wonderful. So here we go with the regulators. This, yeah, not yet. Are you going to steal my, uh? Hold on for it. You son of a, that's my thing.

No, I read. No, I'm not going to play it. Unbelievable. I'm not going to play it. You are. monster. All right. This comes from the Otani owner. I need help with what to do with Shohei Otani. We used Yahoo last year and he was split as a pitcher and a hitter. This year, we're using another website and Otani is only one player. Both owners were planning on keeping him.

What's the best way to handle this situation? This is fun. I think it depends on how long the keeper value is. If it's just for this year, then just give it to the guy who has him as a hitter because Shohay Otani is not going to pitch in the majors this year. If it's multiple years, then it gets a little diceier. I believe on CBS Sports Commissioner, you could create another Shohay Otani. I think that if it's multiple years, the guy who has him as a hitter should get to keep him this year, the pitcher gets to keep him next year.

The hitter gets to keep him the year after that. It's just going to a time sharing. That's very strange. That's a co-parenting plan. That's very strange. Maybe the guy who has him as a pitcher gets to use him on the days he starts and weekends. The guy who has him a hitter gets holidays and the days he's hitting. You know what you could do is you can see what round they each have him in and see who's willing to go higher.

Oh, you can have like an auction. Yeah. Yeah. I like the co-parenting plan better. I don't like that one so much. All right. So those are some options. You decide, Otani owner.

Next up, Corey, we're adding two league members to our 10 team head-to-head categories league. How should we set the draft order? Normally, we draft in reverse order from the previous season's finish. The worst team gets the first pick in the first round, and we snake. Should the new guys slot in at spots 11 or 12, or is that too favorable? Maybe randomly draw for any spot between 1 through 12. So, yeah, what do you guys do about draft order? They're adding new teams.

I don't quite understand the point of giving the team that finished worst last year the first pick in a non-keeper league. Agreed. Let's just do it random. No, well, if you want to, you do it random. If you want, I think maybe you let the worst team pick his draft spot or her straff spot. And then everybody gets to pick. Being bad last year has no effect on this year. It's not like you're keeping all your bad players from last year.

No, but it's... You shouldn't get an advantage because you were terrible last year. Stop rewarding failure. Probably the chances are the guy who finished last quit playing in like July. And we don't want to reward that. Okay. Wait, so what are we doing about the... Forget about that one.

What are we doing about the two new owners? Randomize everyone. Randomizing every single person. Okay. That has been regulated. Last one is from the commission... You're doing it wrong. The commission queens.

Hey, Joseph, Ed, Judy, and J-Lo. television judges. The last two years I've won my league, I believe I've identified a strategic loophole that virtually guarantees a playoff spot. Our league has a $100 fab budget for ads throughout the year, and we can move up to five moves per week. We can make up to five moves per week. On the website, a CBS competitor, where we run our league, the pitching limits are set at five

starts minimum and seven maximum every week. However, if you wait until the last possible day, you can stack your streaming starting pitchers and go over the starting limit, sometimes by as much as four additional starts, giving you up to 11 per week without locking your lineup. In past years, we've adjusted limits to try and stop this from happening, but not set any rules to outlaw this behavior. This year, I've been elected commissioner. Is it my job to put rules in a place that would knowingly blow up my winning strategy for the good of the league? or screw these guys and take home the trophy for a three year. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

And you have to do as commissioner what is best for the league. And if you believe putting the kibosh on this strategy is the best thing for the league, that's what you got to do. Oh. And that has been regulated. All right, what else do we have coming up on today's show? We got an email about second half breakouts. We're going to do the Aces analysis that you've heard a little bit of so far.

And then pros and cons for picks 21 through 30. And if we have time, some of your emails at Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. All of that is coming up right after this. And here's our email of the day. It's from Hugh in St. Louis, Missouri. I was thinking about how Snell and Bauer had good second halves in 2017 and continued that into 2018, who are similar guys that had a great second half in 2018

that you think will take the next step and keep it going in 2019. Can I just poop on it? It's dumb. The second half breakouts do not tend to be predictive of future success. Full season statistics are generally more predictive than half-season statistics. Yeah, but sometimes when you've got a young player who maybe makes an adjustment, like Blake Snell moved on the mound, Trevor Bauer changes Arsenal a little bit. you can identify things that you buy into a little bit more.

You could. I think that's a very good point. The obvious answer would be Ronald O'Cuna or Tommy Fam. Okay, I came up with three and Fam was one of them, yeah. Or at Alberto Mondesie. Oh, okay. Mondesian in the second half last year had an 835 OPS with 27 steals in 54 games. Do you buy it?

Not quite as much. So two other players that I thought of for this exercise, David Dahl. And the problem with David Dahl is like it really was eight games at the end of the year. He had six home runs in his last eight games. Ahmed Rosario. And boy, did I crunch the numbers on Ahmed Rosario. He started running. That was a big thing for him.

Yeah, he started leading off. Twelve of his 15 steals were in the last two months or something like that. The last 47 games was when he had his best production. Battened 303 and stole 13 bases. There you go. 47 games. But he's got a really bad split in his two seasons, which is not a ton of games, but terrible at home. And even in those 47 games, he played 19 home games and batted 171 with three steals.

And he was great in his 28 road games. So I don't know if that's inflating that. those numbers in that final stretch? I will say another guy that I don't know that I can give a lot of evidence to back it up, but he kind of showed in the second half last year what I've thought he could be, and he's another one of my breakout candidates, and that's Joey Gallo. And it's just that he's continually had an absurdly low Babbup. In the second half last year, he hit 286 Babbup and hit 240.

If he can hit 240, he's going to be an absolute monster. Yeah, if he hits 240, that's an easy, like, fourth or fifth round player. Tommy fan is kind of tough because you don't know throughout his career how much the vision issues have affected his numbers. Second half, well, not second half, but with the raise, he was excellent. 39 games with Tampa Bay. He had a 1071 OPS and he stole five bases in 39 games. Like a star. I'll point to two that I do believe in.

And one was mostly just he wasn't healthy in the first half. Justin Turner is perpetually injured, and I understand that, but he is also one of the 10 or 15 best hitters in baseball. And he's available, I think, around 100 overall right now. That's a steal. Like, I think if you're looking for the next J.D. Martinez, the next guy who is finally going to stay healthy and have that monster season, I think Justin Turner absolutely has the potential to return first round production. Really? Yes. That's cool.

I think he could hit 3.30 with 25 to 30 home runs and a bunch of runs and steals because he gets, or runs an RBI, because he gets on base a ton. He hits for good power. He'll be in a good lineup. I think Justin Turner, he was the fourth best hitter by OPS and the fourth best by way to run to create a plus last year in the second half. And I think Scott White would want us to say Hermann Marquez, he had a 261 ERA in the second half with a 22, 5-fip, 34% strikeout rate, 5% walk rate. Yeah, Luis Castillo is another guy that comes to mind. Yep.

And I'll throw a friend Raias out there as well. He could not make contact when he was first called up. They sent him back down. He got called back up in the second half. Over 180 plate appearances struck out 21% of the time, hit 315 with a 920 OPS. That was the strikeout rate was more in line with what he did in the minors. and I think there's a lot of breakout potential there. How do you guys feel about David Dahl?

Because people are pretty excited about him. David Dahl is going, sorry. Yeah, 96th overall. He's going before Justin Turner. I think that's a little silly, but he looks to be a competent hitter who plays half his games at Course Field. so Ian Desmond was like a top 30 hitter last year or whatever.

I would feel a lot better about it as soon as Carlos Gonzalez signs with somebody else. Oh, last thing, Michael Conforto. I think we all. Sure, and that was another injury one. Yes, he got healthy. His shoulder just wasn't right. Yeah. Okay, so Chris, talk to us about Aces, this new pitching analytic.

Is that a thing? Analytic? Yeah, stat. Yeah, so. Aaron Salseda came up with this. He pitched it to me and basically he weighs the amount of movement that a pitcher gets, the amount of velocity that they throw with. And he incorporates stats, inks, very new over the last two years stat called Command Plus.

And it's basically just an attempt to quantify a pitcher stuff. You know, we can talk about this guy's got great stuff, that guy's got great stuff. This is an attempt to put, you know, an actual weight to it. And what he found was, one, it is predictable year over year. 2017's AIS score explained most of 2018. So it does appear to have a basis in skill. And it was actually the correlation between Aces and DRA, or FIP or any of those

was about as strong as any of them to ERA. So it does appear to affect results as well. Now, this is entirely not a results-based stat. It's all about what the pitcher does. And you look at it, Garrett-Cole, No, Sindegard, where the two highest-st-ranked guys, Justin Verlander was third, Luis Severino was fifth, Chris Sale. That seems to match up with what you'd think,

But there are some surprising results like Nathan Uvaldi being fourth, Zach Wheeler being eighth, Charlie Morton and Joshua James being in the top 10. I think it's going to be a useful tool moving forward. If you want to see the full results and more of Aaron's analysis based on it, you subscribe to Sportsline.com with the promo code score. And you'll get your first month for half off. And I think this is going to be really useful. I'm really excited to see how this works. And, you know, 2017, Charlie Morton was a top 10 pitcher. We didn't see, based on this metric.

We didn't see the results yet, but it certainly showed what was coming. It's good stuff. That could certainly help. And yes, by the way, half off at Sportsline is like, it's really, really inexpensive. It's 10 bucks a month. So, and especially if you like to gamble, it's just outstanding. So gambling advice, fantasy advice, good stuff on Sportsline.com. slash score to get your first month for only five bucks.

Just check it out and see how you like it. All right, another series on the website that you need to check out. Oh, by the way, I need to point out, analytic does not mean what I used it as. That was just a dreadful. I think all of our listeners are shocked. Just go with just metric. Yeah, metric.

Stats. Stats, that's small enough word for me. I could master that. Thing. Thing is more letters than stat. Let's stick with stat. So 21 through 30, we got write-ups on the top 300 players, a pro and a con for each of them for drafting.

So let's start with number 21. Corey Klobber, who wants to be pro? Who wants to be con? We got two cons today. So who's going to be the positive polly over there? I think Heath should be the cons still. He's a much less agreeable person than I am. Okay.

So the pro... Chris, give me the pro to using only second half statistics to predict a 2019 breakout. I will not. Give me the pro, the case for drafting Cory Klover. He's kind of like the Paul Goldschmidt of pitchers. He's a bit older than you think he is. He's not necessarily the best at what he does,

but he's holding up remarkably well. We did see some signs of slippage last season, but even signs of slippage means he struck out over 220 batters was the second best pitcher in fantasy over the last three years. So there's still, you know, Scott was talking about this yesterday where there were signs of slippage with Cory Kluber. Sure. He still was very, very good and has been very, very durable.

Yeah, he was the number three in points, number six in Roto. So instead of like, you know, giving a fake take of why you wouldn't draft Corey Kluber. I've got one right now. Yeah, yeah. His strike rate was down to 12%, which is all the way. back to the number that he had in 2014. And by taking him in the second round, you are needing him to be

one of the top four or five pitchers in baseball. He's probably going to be very, very good. I agree with the things that Chris said, but he's probably more of one of the number six through ten starters instead of top five. All right, number 22. Maybe we should switch the rolls on this one. No, no, I got.

Andrew Benintendi, we have to force Heath to say something bad about Benintendi, 22. Wait, wait, question. Where are these, how did you decide on the order? These are Scott and Heath consensus ranks. Okay. 22, Andrew Benintendi. Andrew Benintendi is one of the safest picks that you can make

outside of the top 20 players. I don't see a ton of upside, but you know you're going to get something close to 2020. You know you're going to get something close to 275 to 290 average. You're going to get 190 combined runs in RBI. He's basically pre-breakout Christian Yellich, and that's a very valuable, very safe player with a really solid skill set. He's a bit of an accumulator, and he doesn't accumulate that many of anything other than runs in RBI,

which are completely dependent on the situation around him. He has not hit more than 20 home runs or stolen more than 21 bases, and if his Babbat goes back to where it was in 2017, he's not even that great of an average guy. I'm surprised that Ben, Bend, Tendi, is 22nd, because where does Scott have him? Because I know he's like Spententany a lot. Like 32nd.

Where do you have Benintendi? 13. In what format? That's crazy town banana pants. I'm sorry. Yeah, he's the breakout. What format? Either format.

Either format. What do you think he's going to break out to do? Like not just to become, but like which skills are going to break out? Like, was he going to hit 3.30? Well, he's hitting the lead off now. So he's going to get more plate appearances. He's going to score more runs. He's going to score more runs.

Right. He's going to score more runs. And I think there's a very, very, good chance at age 24 that he still has a little bit of a power boost coming. I could see a 25, 110, 80, 20 season where he hits 300. 23 on the list is Charlie Blackman. Chris, case for Charlie Blackman. When your bad season has you hitting 291 with 29 homers, 189 combined runs in RBI and 12 steals, I don't really feel like I have to make a case for him. He still hits a course field. He's still five category contributor.

We are one year removed from him being the number one hitter in fantasy. It's an easy call. I think he's a steal at 23 overall. There aren't this. Like, he might be just better than Christian Ellis this year. I don't think that's a stretch at all. It might be likely.

He will turn 33 years old this year. He did see his strikeout rate go up a little bit last year. He did see his hard contact rate go down when everyone else's went up. And he hit more ground balls last year. year than he has since 2012. Those could have just been, okay, it was a small decline last year or it was a bad year last year. I don't necessarily disagree with that take from Chris, but it's also moving into your mid-30s and starting to see those types of skills go the wrong direction. Could pretend more of that.

And next up, we have another Rocky, Trevor Story. He's at a rocky career, a rocky career. Trevor Story, Chris, the case for drafting him. he was arguably the most improved player in baseball and he started looking a lot more like the guy he was in the minors. He cut the strikeout rate enough to where it wasn't an issue. And he started running. And something that Scott White says a lot is that stealing bases is mostly about wanting to. And if the Rockies are cool with him running as often as they did last year, I think the upside here is huge.

He played like a first round play and you're getting him. potentially in the third round. That's a situation where you could be looking at two or three first round picks on your squad if you take Trevor Story. Yeah, I think the concern is, and Chris has brought this up before, John Carlos Stanton, when he cut his strikeout rate by a huge percentages, the next year it just kind of went back up. And he did still have 11.5% swinging strike rate, which is only one point lower than his career mark. So I think there's a concern that the strikeout rate goes back up close to 30%. The Babiap maybe comes back to the 330 range where it was in 2017, and you've got a 250-260 hitter again.

I mean, does really... Story's value really depend on the steals. Partial. I mean, it depends on everything if he's going to be a first-round player like he was last year. Yeah, I think the fulcrums for his season are going to come down to that strikeout rate and the stolen bases. If one of them declines, I think he can still be... a second or third round player. If both of them,

if he goes back to being a, what, eight to 12 steel guy and a 240 hitter with a 30% strikeout rate, then we're going to see the same guy who we were taking 120th overall. Here's Blake Snell at 25th overall. Blake Snell.

I think a solid place to start is he was the exception to Tampa Bay's opener experiment. He was the guy that they trusted to go three times through the order, and he lived up to the wildest expectations possible. He doubled his curveball usage and refined his control. It made him a much better pitcher.

The 11.0K per 9 was backed up by an elite 15.1% swinging strike rate, which I believe was top five in baseball, induced more swings than ever on pitches out of the strike zone. And, you know, 189 ERA is unreasonable to expect, except that Blake's now pretty much did it every year in the might. winners too. Yeah, he had a 3-3-0 Sierra, and to the big reason for the gap between those two numbers, he had a 241 babit-plowed and the 88% strand rate. So he has a ton of regression coming, and it's not just in the stuff that he controls, but also he's got some regression coming and wins likely. He's not going to win 21 games on the raise again. All right, 26 overall. That was Blake Snell. This is really a guy that just flummoxes me. John Carlos Stans. 26 overall. I mean, you obviously have an opportunity to get one of the best hitters, but what Stanton is going to show up?

The case for taking Stanton here at 26. He was the number two player in fantasy two years ago? Do I have to go on? How many players have that kind of upside? Charlie Blackman did that here. He was number one. Mookie Betts and Mike Trout. Jose Ramirez.

Other than that, how many players do we reasonably think could be, have the potential to be the top, one or two players. He's done it. It's going to come down to him improving his strikeout rate, but he's done that before. And one thing you'll see a lot when guys change leagues is that first year there's a bit of a decline as they get used to new parks, new pitchers that they haven't faced, et cetera. And then after that, we'll start to see improvement. If he gets back to 2017, if he doesn't hit 57 homers, he might be the odds on favor to lead the majors and home runs. he's injury prone

he's going to DH a little bit though I was just trying to make Chris upset injury prone I don't really believe that he's injury prone he did hit 266 last year with a 333 bat which is like the second highest of his career I do think that when you look at his last four years and see a strikeout rate of

29.9, 29.8 29.9.23.6 it's pretty easy to see which one the outlier is so he's probably not going to improve his strike out rate again All right, that's John Carlos Stanton. Right after him, we have Juan Soto, 27th overall. Go ahead, Chris.

Major League Baseball has been played for 142 years. In that time, only 97 players have seen at least 100 played appearances as a 19-year-old. So already Juan Soto is in rare company. You're talking 99.9th percent on the major leaguers. Nobody has ever been better as a 19-year-old than Juan Soto was. He hit for power. He hit for average. He walked.

He didn't strike out. He even threw in five steals in less than a full season. There might be double-digit steel potential here. We could be looking at, hold on to your hats, an Albert Poo-Hulls or Joey Botto-like talent. And Albert Poulos was basically the number one pick for a decade in fantasy. He had a 54% ground ball rate and only a 17% line drive rate. And in a year when the hard contact rate went way, way up,

his was just 34.8%. That is fine for a 19 year old, 18 year old, 19 year old, but it's not really very good bad at ball profile for a major league baseball player. How do we feel about Soto 27th overall? Oh, I like him a lot.

I don't love it. I could see, like the floor is really high because of his skill set, although even then he's a 20 year old in his second major league season, so who knows what's going to be discovered about him from opposing pitchers, but I think the floor is like a good Eric Cosmer season, but I don't think the ceiling is quite as realistically high as I think

we might be hoping for because, as he said, the batter ball profile is less than ideal. I can't see taking him over guys that we're going to talk about. Anthony Rizzo, Chris Bryant, I just can't see taking Soto over those guys, but I'm sure some people would. Javier Bayes. We've got three more guys. Let's get through it here. Javier Baez, 28th overall. We know where he's going around the end of round one

is way too early for Javier Baez. But what about 28th overall? Chris, make the case. Yeah, 13th overall, which is his ADP on NFBC. That's way too high. But we're talking about maybe the single most dynamic player in baseball, a guy with just mountains worth of skills, huge raw power, incredibly athletic and fast,

and we saw it all come together. He started swinging. He didn't strike out quite as much, so his plate discipline was a little better. He still swings in everything, but his selection has become much better, and his ability to put the bat on the ball has become better, and that's all he needs to do.

If he puts the bat on the ball consistently, he's a stud. Yeah, I just, I don't think there are too many players in the history that have had a 32% fly ball rate, a 35% hard contact rate, and hit 34 home runs. I wouldn't expect him to hit 30 home runs this year. I wouldn't expect him to score 100 runs or driving 111 or steal 21 bases.

He had a fantastic year last year, but it was probably his career here. Javier Bayes 28. Two more. Aranola, 29th overall. Chris, Aranola. I used to have my doubts about Aaronola about his upside. And then he went and added two miles per hour for his fastball. That's made everything play up well.

He avoids hard contact. He excels with both command and control, which isn't something that everybody does. And now we've got three straight seasons for Aranola being in the top 10 in FIP. He's an ace. Is he? Heath. We'll find out. It was a pretty significant jump innings last year up to 212.

He'd never thrown up more than 168 in the major leagues and 178 overall. So it'd be interesting to see how your response to that. He did get pretty lucky last year with a 251.000. BAB and an 83% strand rate. His numbers for his career in those area are a 291 and 75%. So even in a best case scenario, you're probably looking about a full runs worth of regression from a ZRA. And number 30 overall, a guy that was arguably a first round pick,

maybe more like a second round pick last year, but he's been, I would say a top 15 pick, Anthony Rizzo. We have him 30th overall. All right, I'll say top 18 pick. But now he's 30th. So make the case for Anthony Rizzo. we've talked a lot about guys who haven't had their best case scenario season, that season where everything clicks into place like Javier Baez did last season.

I think you can make the case that both we haven't seen the absolute best case scenario for Anthony Rizzo. He hasn't had the season where he put the power with the average, with the stolen bases that he's capable of. But I also think we saw his worst case scenario last season. pretty much everything moved in the wrong direction. Not in terms of skill set necessarily because he had a 27.5% line drive rate and the same batted ball data as previously otherwise.

But just in terms of the stuff that he can't control, his Babbitt was below his career. Sorry. His Babbitt was at his career mark, but it wasn't as high as we've seen. He's had some seasons in the 310 range. But the home run to fly ball rate was down. the Babbip was low relative to his career high.

This is a long one. This is a long one. And he was a first round pick last. I was playing you off. He's just too far behind Paul Goldschmidt and Freddie Freeman. He does not make elite contact in terms of hard contact rate. He does not minimize soft contact necessarily at an elite rate. He doesn't get down in that 15% range.

He's just not going to be a huge guy in any one cat. You're looking at somewhere around a 270-280 average with 25 to 30 home runs. He's very, very good, but maybe not a difference maker. Yeah, this is Anthony Rizzo we're talking about. And I was kind of surprised when I looked into Rizzo's numbers where he finished amongst hitters in his best season, his best season, you know, his normal seasons. He, let's see. So last five seasons, this is where he's ranked in points leagues. 20th among hitters, not first base,

20th, 5th, 12th, 8th, and 21st. So that's three top 12 finishes in points leagues. But in Roto, whether OBP or batting average, 22, 13, 26, 20, 36. So in a Roto league, Rizzo's probably about 20th in his normal season among hitters. In a points league, he's probably top 12 because his plate discipline's so good.

That's just something to keep in mind. And that is going to end our wonderful Tuesday show. We'll come back with a Wednesday show tomorrow where we're going to give you a preview of every single team. We did this last year, like a quick sleeper breakout bus, position battle kind of deal for every single team in the majors. And it should be really, really helpful. We also have a draft coming up today ahead-to-head categories draft so we can talk about that tomorrow. And then the position previews are starting at the end of this week. Thank you, Chris and Heath.

Good job, guys. Excellent job, Adam. Thank you, Harry. Chris and Heath, I'm Adam.