Fantasy Baseball Today - 03/06: Finishing up SPs; Severino News; ACES Metric (Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

Starting with the Luis Severino news, how far does he fall in drafts? We also touch on Salvador Perez, Miguel Sano and Craig Kimbrel. Then we get to more SPs (9:45) as we finish up our preview with the late-round picks we like taking ... Emails about players we are willing to reach for (29:00), a third baseman to pair with Vlad (30:00), dynasty strategy, OF strategy and "Wild Wild West" strategy (36:30) ... News and notes plus Spring Training standouts (38:10). More talk about Lewis Brinson, the Rockies 2B competition and the Mets 1B competition. And get ready for Team Name Tuesday on a Wednesday (44:40) before we are joined by Aaron Sauceda of SportsLine who tells us which pitchers have the best stuff (46:20)! ... 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. One, one pitch, basketball, pulled, and basketball. Got a fantasy question? Email fantasy baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Where fantasy. Now here's Adam, Scott Heath and Chris. Oh, Luis Severino.

Scratch with shoulder inflammation. And here we go, Chris. Pitchers get hurt all the time. Can't pitch. I don't know what you're talking about. We know exactly which pitchers will be good all the time. They do get hurt. This is a problem.

And we are going to talk about that. Luis Semarino not going to be ready for opening day. Who will replace him in the Yankees rotation? And what does this do to his draft value? More news from around baseball. And we're going to finish up starting pitchers. We only needed three shows to do it. But we got through 50 players in ADP.

And we will get through a lot more today with our favorite late round picks. And also the weird thing that happened with, Luis Castillo in average draposition. And good morning to Heath as well. Hey, Heath. Hey, Adam. It's good to see you.

I'm just surprised that Luis Severino's ERA from last year didn't prevent him from getting injured. What on earth does that mean? I have no idea what that means. I'm not even sure what you're trying to do. ERA matters. Oh, okay.

Gotcha. Also, Salvador Perez is going to be out of the season. So I spent about five minutes yesterday looking up the pronunciation for one of Salvador Perez's backups. Yeah, today also your emails, fantasy baseball at CBSI.com. We welcome you to the show. Thanks a lot for listening.

Tell your friends. Tomorrow we will recap all of our position previews. And we have an awesome interview that we did with Aaron Soussada of Sportsline to talk about some advanced stats, the ACEs metric. Chris, it was fun. We talked to Tim yesterday. We got some good stuff out of Aaron. Yeah, it's really interesting.

interesting, informative stuff. You can find the article where he introduces and explains it on CBSSports.com slash fantasy. I'll go ahead and put that in a cover today so you can see it. And to see the full results in it, I think it's been really helpful. We talked about it yesterday with Aaron that, you know, I think a big part of why all three of us have started liking Zach Eflin is because he rates out so highly by this metric. So that's one of the places where, you know, we've started to learn a little bit of

something and we've put it to use and hopefully Jack often has a good season and doesn't make us look bad. Hope so. So yeah, you'll hear that at the end of today's show. And what else do we got? Oh, spring training notes. Louis Brinson keeps homery. And, oh, it's team name Tuesday on a Wednesday.

You know, we haven't gotten to like our normal segments. So we'll have some team name Tuesday. I think you say Kukuchi, or Kikuchi is going to be a very popular one. For example, somebody pointed out you could put his name in the beginning of Lisa Loeb's stay. So I will probably have a team name. You say, I only hear what I want to. I know you like that, Chris Towers.

It's one of my 10 favorite songs ever. Wow. It's such a good song. It's such a good song. Top 10 ever is saying something. Unbelievable song. All right. Luis Severino was a top 10 pitcher, but shoulder discomfort.

And I sound the alarms. Like, worst case scenario, well, no, not worst case scenario, but a bad scenario, Marcus Stroman had shoulder inflammation in spring training last year. It basically wrecked his season. So let's let Severino just take his time, recover, and get back, maybe toward the end of April, something like that. Let's start with this. When do you draft Severino at this point? Well, so Clayton Kirchall has fallen to like 80 in some drafts that I've seen.

He's actually throwing. Now, we think Louis Severino is probably, well, I have less concern over Severino because I had concerns about Kershaw before this most recent hiccup. He's had more injuries recently. Okay. Coming into spring, before we knew any injuries about either, who did you have rank higher? I think I may have had, they were right in the same range, and they're right in the same range. Again, I saw Scott say yesterday he had actually dropped Severino behind Kershaw, and I have Kershaw lower than Scott does.

He took him yesterday, I think, in the fourth round of our roto draft. I've dropped Severino to 22 overall at pitcher, which is right around sixth round, and Kershaw, I have one spot behind him. Okay. That's really low. I'm not even disagreeing. That's just that's lower than I expected for Severino because that gets past the group of guys that we think are reliable. Exactly. He can be reliable.

He has a shoulder injury. He's not going to be ready for opening day mostly. Who's right in front of, who's right in front of Severino? It's the burritos-ty-one. Okay. So, but when you drop him that low, it's not just like, well, he's going to miss three weeks and then be fine. It's, he's going to miss some time. We don't know how long.

He's going to miss some time. Right. And but there's still the risk that this could be worse, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And he's right in front of Well, I'm looking at Scott's, Chris Archer for Scott.

He's right, yeah, and for Heath. Right in front of Chris Archer, Mon Marquez, Charlie Morton. So Salvador Perez needs Tommy John surgery. He's out for the season. And the two players who, as of now, will replace him for the Royals. Cam Gallagher, who's more of a defensive guy. And I hope this is how you pronounce it. This is how I heard it.

Mabrese Valoria, more of an offensive guy. I don't think we're not talking. I think you just set the pronunciation. You're the first person to say his name on a podcast or any broadcast of any kind. No, that's true. I heard it. People will be going to YouTube now to find out how to say it. I hope so.

I figured this would be almost like clickbait. How do you pronounce May Bree's Valoria? Oh, Fantasy Baseball today just got a lot more traffic. We don't care. Nine clicks from that. We don't care, right? About these guys? No.

No. Yeah. But it does thin the position out. There were eight that were sort of solidified. Now there's a top seven, and then Jansen Mejia, and then Al Faro and the rest of whatever. So what does this do for you on draft day with Catcher? I mean, it's just take one of the elite guys or wait until Danny Jansen. Yeah.

There's just one. Yeah, I think there's other guys that I'm willing to wait for. I think you've kind of settled on Danny Jansen as your only one. I'm willing to wait for Carson Kelly, who I think his skill set is pretty similar to Danny Jansen. and he's talked about one of the reasons he struggled over the last couple of years is because he just every time he'd get called up he knew well there's nothing literally nothing I can do to earn a job with the Cardinals and then he gets sent back down and your your motivation's going to wane in that scenario

when you just you know you have like we can talk about having internal motivation and everyone should play for the love of the game but like this guy's playing for his career and he had no chance. So, you know, a top prospect similar in pedigree to Danny Jansen, similar skill set, doesn't strike out a lot, has a little bit of pop. So I like Carson Kelly. He should be playing every day for the Diamondback. And I think one thing we've kind of glossed over so far that could be related to this whole discussion,

Yaddy Molina has not played in a game yet. He had off-season knee surgery, and they gave Matt Wheaters a chance to be their backup catcher, which is a pretty big name backup catcher. I've got a little bit of concern about, like, Molina, I think, needs to be at the very back of that group of the sure thing catchers. Yeah, and Posey's coming off off-season surgery. It just makes Rayamuto and Sanchez look a little bit better with all this news coming out. Miguel Suno is out until at least May after surgery to repair a cut near his Achilles.

Anything to say about Miguel Sano or the twin situation now? This is probably better from Arwen. Williams's studio. Slow and steady. But I'm still going to take Sino late in a roto draft. I still think that there's some sleeper appeal there. Oh, we all know. You took Williams Estadio late in our roto draft yesterday.

Around 240 overall. The expectation would be that Marwin Gonzalez plays pretty much every day at third base to start the season. And Astido can be, are you telling me? He played shortstop in the spring training game. I think he was listed a really. originally at Shorestop, and then they said, no, that was just a joke. And he played you, as we like to say. But he did play center field last year.

He's a catcher. So, you know, if he gets four, three or four starts a week, he's probably a viable option as a second catcher. It's like the twins were trolling Chris, their lineup card. I was so excited. Please tell me Justin Bore actually batted lead off yesterday. Don't break my heart. Clayton Kirshaw, we know he's probably not going to be ready for opening day. And the nationals are negotiating with Craig Dershaw.

Kimbril. Just one spot we don't want to see him because we love Sean Doolittle. So, yeah, don't go there. We don't need to replace one great closer. It does not. It does not sound like they're going to go there because they said their goal is to stay under the luxury tax. And they're like $5 million away from that. So it's pretty much impossible to see how they get Craig Kimberle and stand under the luxury tax.

Yeah, they don't have that luxury. Hey, okay, let's talk about pitchers. And one guy we didn't talk about yesterday because something really strange. range happened in average draft position was Luis Castillo. Because currently, if you look at Fantasy Pros, his average draft position is 296th overall, the 79th pitcher off the board. Let's just say he's more like 30th in there with Michaelis and Morton and Robbie Ray, maybe even around Zach Wheeler.

So you're looking around pick 100 or so for Luis Castillo. And where do you guys rank him? And then after we talk about him, I'll get to 50 and beyond in ADP, and we'll talk about players we like in that range. But first, Luis Castillo, what is he in your opinion? I've got him 28th overall, and it's, I mean, we got on a little bit of a Luis Castillo rant, and then it's continued on Twitter, and it made it sound like maybe I don't like Luis Castillo. It's not true at all, but I mean, my 27 through 30 is Robbie Ray, Luis Castillo, Shane Bieber, Nick Povetta.

I'd like to have two, three, maybe even four of those guys in my roster. Okay. I don't disagree, and I think he's in that range. The upside is obvious. And I believe I saw he's working on a new pitch, and I think that would be at least expanding his arsenal. And that to me, because he sort of reminds me of Severino, really good in the first year, took a step back into second year, but not to the degree that Severino did where he was basically banished to the bullpen. And Severino added a change-up in his third season.

Kesthi already has a change-up, but if he can get, you. his slider going more and be a real three-pitch pitcher, I think it would take him to new heights. It could be really important for him. So having said that, let's go down the list here, and we started where we ended with Kevin Gosman and Sean Newcomb, and the next guy off the board is Tyler Glassnow, Junjin-Rew.

Where are we in the draft? We're at 50 at starting pitcher, and we're at about 190 overall. And, you know, some, I mean, Glassnow really jumps out to me, but Gosman, Newcomb, Glass Now, Ryu, Kikuchi, who is going to be on. somewhat of a weird pitching schedule. Like every fifth or sixth start,

they're just going to basically throw them for a few innings. That's what they say anyway, like a bullpen day. So you do have to keep that in mind. They're going to limit his innings. John Gray is also in this range. So, yeah, some good names here. I imagine Glassnow and Gray are going to be your favorites. But maybe I'm wrong.

You tell me, guys, Breakdown Gossman, Newcomb, Glass Now, Ryu, Kikuchi, Gray. I like Glass Now. I really like Glass Now. Of this group, he's probably, well, Ryu as well, it's just a question of whether he can stay healthy. And the answer's probably no given his track record. But when he is healthy, I think he's very good, probably not. Did he have a sub 2 ERA last season or something like that? He probably won't be that good.

But, you know, I think he's fine in this range. You can't really make a mistake at this point in the draft. But when I'm targeting the pitchers with upside in this range, I probably steer more towards Glass Now, especially in a head-to-head points because you get that Sparf eligibility. But I think he has more realistic upside than Gosman, Newcomb, and Kikuchi, who I do like as well. My favorite of this group, and most of these ADPs when we're talking are in Roto, because most of the other sites are doing Roto League. So Glass Now is definitely my favorite in a head-to-head points league, but I don't, that's not what we're looking at here. You're not going to get him here in that format because he's a spark.

John Gray is my favorite, and he had a terribly both unlucky and bad year last year, got sent to the minor league, got left off the playoff roster and deservedly so. He had some problems maintaining his weight. Apparently he couldn't eat on days when he was pitching, and he's tried to make some changes there, and then also added a lot of weight in the offseason to try to get through the season. I still think there's a pretty good chance John Gray is the best pitcher on. the Rockies.

Even last year, in a down year, the control was still good. The strikeouts were still there. I expected to have a major bounce back here. Okay. So that's not a bad range. And, you know, this is, again, we're 50 picks in. So in a 12-team league, you know, for a lot of people, this could be a fourth or fifth starter.

If you're going a little pitching heavy, maybe you're talking bench guys at this point. But, you know, I feel like we'd be okay with these guys as a number five starter. Just take. I'm not that excited about Kevin Gosman. I wasn't excited. I didn't mean everybody. And now he's got a shoulder thing. Like, no thanks.

No. Okay. Yeah, he pitched well for the Braves in terms of run prevention and whip, but he did not get the strikeouts. And he also beat up on the Marlins a couple times, the pirates a couple. He'll do that again. But, all right, let's go past Gray. Yeah. Sorry, Chris.

And Sean Nukum, I just think the potential's there, I just, it's one of those situations where, like, he hasn't shown enough of the actual skills that he needs to take the next step. that at this point it's still a lot of projection without, you know, he's not quite young enough and he's not quite inexperienced enough where we can say, well, he's got, you know, this big leap. He could make that leap, but we haven't seen enough of it yet where I'm making a point to target him. I'd still rather have him than Gosman. Yeah, sure.

That's Sean Newcomb. Jake Arieta, Alex Wood, Alex Reyes, Ross Stripling, Josh James. A lot of potential here, a lot of upside. guys you might want to keep on your bench. Not all of them. I don't think I'm drafting. Three guys who may not have a rotation spot. In stripling Reyes and James, right?

But Arias looked good yesterday. I mean, there's a ton of potential. Obviously, a ton of potential there with Alex Reyes. I want to draft them. Hopefully you have deep enough benches where you can stash them. But there's a chance Reyes makes the opening day rotation, right? I think at this point there's a pretty good chance. You know, with Carlos Martinez ailing, it doesn't sound like he's going to be ready.

They've, every indication is Alex Reyes is getting a real legitimate shot. So it's just a question of can he get stretched out enough and can he stay healthy? Last year we saw he made one start and then broke down in the majors. So that's really the only question for me. I think he's awesome. At this point, yeah, obviously you take the risk on him at 222 overall. All right, what about the rest of him? Alex Wood, pretty consistent pitcher, velocity, he's getting a little worse.

And James is really exciting, but he's injured currently with a quad. Quad, quad injury? Quad, quad. I feel like you guys don't want Jake Arietta. Heath? That's the thing, though, and I've, this is right about the range that I rank him in. I think there's a pretty good chance that we were two down on Jake Garietta at the beginning of the year. He's not going to be Jake Arietta where he's at top.

20 starting pitcher. But there's probably a pretty good chance that he's going to give you a decent amount of innings. He's going to win some games, and his ratios aren't going to be as bad as they were last year. We've talked a lot about with the young exciting Phillies pitchers, how we're more excited about their defense being better for a guy like him that's not striking anybody out. That should help him out quite a bit. And he did have an injury last year that he kind of pitched through for a while.

There may not be a huge difference between him and, like, Cole Hamils and David The price, you know, similar age, similar recent track record, arguably his track record's better than either of those guys over the last three or so years. I think it's one of those situations where there's been a decline and then that decline makes us overstate the present value. He's not exciting, but, you know, 180 innings of a mid to high 3 ZRA can have value on what we think is going to be a good team, especially if you get it 60th overall instead of 30th overall.

Right. So we're about 60 pitchers in now to ADP, and I think we've got a few more, and there will be some late guys that we really like, but like the next group of five or 10, we're still going to find some names that are pretty exciting that you could see potentially having a great ear, consistently being in your rotation, in your lineup. And then I personally think it's going to get a little thin after that, but let's keep going. After Stripling and Josh James and Alex Reyes, Alex Wood, Arieta, we've got Kenta Maeda, Cala McHugh, Zach Godley,

Julio, Tehran, Joey Lucasey, and my guy, Tyler Skaggs. So that group of six there, there's some good names. Maida, McHugh, Godley, Lucchese, Tehran, Skaggs. I know Scott talked about McHugh yesterday as one of his sleepers. I just want to point out, like, I don't know what you can really take away from last year. His numbers were amazing because he was in the bullpen the entire year. When he's been a starter, he's been good, not great. He gives up a ton of hits.

But maybe he can carry over something. But, yeah, again, I mean, these. are exciting pitchers to have on your bench. I'll read the names one more time and I'll let you guys talk about it. Maeda, McHugh, Godly, Lucchese, Tehran, Skaggs. Yeah, Maeda and McHugh both are guys that you're a lot more excited about in a points league because they are eligible with that Spark eligibility. I still like Maida in a Roto league because I feel pretty confident he's going to be good

for about three months until the Dodgers decided to take his money away and make him pitch out of the bullpen for a while. The one, though, that I think is just way underrated is Zach Godley. And he is a guy whose control got away from him just a little bit last year. I think I may have mentioned him as my sleeper on the first pitchers episode. I think there's a really good chance he gets back to be in a top 40 starting pitcher this year. Yeah, I wouldn't say he's underrated. I just think he has the upside that a lot of guys, I think you can make the same argument for Tyler Skaggs,

where he was he was kind of as good as we were hoping Zach Godley could be for most of last season. And then Adam, you've said a couple times he's pitched through that adductor strain at the end of last season. And it just tanked his numbers. But I don't think he's ever made it through a full season without an injury. Sure, sure. I don't care at this point, though.

It's 67th pitcher off the board 230th overall. Kentimaeata is not going to pitch a full season. Yeah, I just really believe in Skaggs. I mean, it's funny because we're going to talk about him with Aaron, and we talked about him yesterday. You'll hear it soon, and why Skaggs doesn't measure up so well on the Aces scale, and that's actually something really interesting that you need to hear about. But when I see him, I see a really pretty talented pitcher.

His curveball is ridiculous, and I don't know. I think there's a lot of potential there. Not counting on him for the entire season, I guess. But I think he's my favorite. He's never had an ERA below four. Yeah, but he did when he was healthy last year. So, like, way below it. below three, in fact.

You're not counting on him. You shouldn't, and this gets into our larger philosophical debate, but for most pitchers outside of really the top 30, you shouldn't count on them because, so I did some research last night, and Ariel Cohen, who is a, he's written at Fangraphs, he's one of our sports line contributors. He did a piece earlier this offseason about why you should pay a, up for Aces and he looked at the success rate of the top 12 players the top 12 pitchers last year versus everyone else and it was like the success rate of top 12 pitchers was like 66% which is

really good for pitchers 13 through 32 it was a 70% bust rate for pitchers 33 through 57 it was a 71% bust rate so when we talk about like well I don't want to rely on Tyler Skaggs this gets to my point which is that I don't know how many pitchers you can actually rely on. So at some point, you just want as many bites at the Apple as possible. You identify skill sets like Tyler Skaggs that could be really good and go from there and try to get as many of those guys as you can. Preferably, you know, if you can get them in the 50 to 60 range of starting pitcher, you're minimizing your risk while still getting that upside.

Yeah. And I think we've said that's kind of my philosophy. No, I don't disagree with that. I mean, probably a little more bullish on pitching. Right now, you don't. No, I'm probably a little more bullish on pitching than you are, but I understand that a lot of these guys could be busts, starting from one on down.

But I think the point we're showing here is that once you get past the 50s and all the way through basically the 70s, at least so far, and we still have Chasine, Marco Gonzalez, who we talked about as a sleeper a couple days ago, Joe Musgrove, who's pretty good. then, you know, gets a little dicey after that. There are a lot of names. So if you only have like four pitchers and you fill out your rotation with Alex Reyes,

Kenta Maeda, Tyler Skaggs, Zach Godley, you know, some combination of that. Maybe you only have three pitchers at that point. You're loaded up on hitters. It might be okay. A lot of good, a lot of good upside guys here. So who else? We can't go through everybody in ADP. So just tell me who else.

I know Chris, you like Marco Gonzalez, who likes Joe Musgrove, Rodon, Derek Rodriguez, Trevor Williams. Just give me some names that you guys are targeting late. I've got names. I like Jesus Lazzardo. I think he has really almost as much upside as somebody like Alex Reyes this year, just because I think their innings are probably going to be similar. And he's pitching in a great park just like Reyes, and he's had phenomenal success. I like Luke Weaver a lot where he's going.

Vince Velasquez is a guy. We've talked already about Zach Eflin. And I do kind of still have a little bit of hope at the very end of the draft for Carlos Rodon. Yeah, I'll throw Rinalda Lopez, Jimmy Nelson, Sunny Gray. Kyle Gibson has had flashes. I think Julio Reyes was hitting 98 miles per hour in his spring training starts the other day. He's not actually a starting pitcher, I don't believe. I think he's RPO.

But he has a good chance to be in the opening day rotation. You know, he'll have innings limits, but is there a pitcher we have, we've mentioned since the 30s that hasn't had innings limits or or innings concerns? You know, he was 19 when he made his major league debut. It feels like he's been around forever. He doesn't turn 23 until like midway through this season. So he's still super young, super talented. I think there's still ace potential. potential with Julio Arias, especially if he's, you know, really throwing high 90s again.

So there's still a ton of upside at this point in the draft when you're filling out your reserve spots. I think you want to draft as many of these guys as possible for your bench and just see who sticks and cycle through them. I mentioned Marcus Stroman in points leagues. I think he could bounce back, give you a lot of innings, quality starts, that kind of stuff. It was one other, oh, yeah, just keep an eye on the Braves rotation, whether it's Tuki Toussaint, Mike Soroka, good prospects here. Luis Gahara. I love Louise Gahara.

If he's healthy, I think he could be the best pitcher on that staff. Yeah. And Tehran wasn't so bad last year. I mean, he's terrible. He's frustrated. He's absolutely awful. He doesn't deserve to be in the major leagues. He was one of the worst pitchers, not only in Atlanta, not only in the NL East,

the National League, all of baseball, including Japan and Korea. He's awful. And Steve. That's overbats. But there's no point drafting him. Stephen Matt is somebody that I know the Aces metric likes a lot that Aaron's going to talk about in a little bit. So there are a lot of guys. And I am always very active on the waiver wire that first week.

Actually, last year it was Tyler Skaggs. He was the guy the first time that he pitched first start last year. I watched the start. Came away very impressed. I think I saw the numbers and I watched the highlights, whatever it was. And I was like, whoa, might have something here with Tyler Skaggs. So that was good. Be aggressive early in the season.

Some of us are going to differ on that. philosophy, but I'm very aggressive with the back end of my pitching staff, just trying to find those gems. I think like three years ago it was Aaron Sanchez. I picked up after his first start, I believe, and he had a great year. I think he won the ERA. Let's not forget about him. You know, he still, he rates out really well by the Aces metric.

He had a, just a miserable injury marred season last season, but still throws like that 96 six mile per hour sinker that when it's on looks unhittable. So there's guys well past 100 that you can make a case for. Well, I think that more or less includes starting pitchers, although I think tomorrow, Scott wrote a deep sleeper's column. I know you all want to hear about AL only and NL only. So tomorrow we'll get a little bit deeper, talk about some real deeply guys in addition to wrapping up all of our position previews

and recapping them. Can we do just one more quick piece of information about the very end of the draft at starting pitcher. Yeah. There are six starting pitchers over the last two years that have thrown at least 300 innings and a FIP over 4.8. Okay.

Andrew Cashner, James Shields, Marco Estrada, Mike Fires, Derek Holland, and Julio Toron. Yeah, but Derek Holland's good now. He's one. The Hulio Toro.

Sorry I brought up. I didn't realize that Julio Tarant offended you so much. listen, subscribe to Sportsline. Great fantasy advice. Now is the time to get on Sportsline. Your drafts are coming up. So we've got great fantasy content and, of course, gambling content for you.

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Again, that's CBSports.com slash FBT. If you've played on other sites and you've never played on CBS, the difference is just so noticeable right away. We're going to read some emails. Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Coming right back after this break. John writes in, says,

Dear You, Max, Armando, and Yismero. I mean, they're pitchers. I don't know what the relationship between these pitchers are. It's very strange. But they're certainly all pitchers. Well, John says, since last year I've been very high on Elo Jimenez. I plan to draft him this year.

But I don't expect him to last until pick 100. So I think I'm going to reach for him, Eloy Jimenez, around 80, 81. He already knows which pick he has. This may bite me later, but I want to reach for Eloy Jimenez. That brings me to my question, who is one player you would reach for in your league? Well, I'm the guy, because his ADP is right around 120, and I'm the guy, it seems like, in almost all of our drafts that's reaching for him around 80, 81. I think in our most recent draft, podcast listener or Kayla Van Horn took him at 75 or something,

and I was not happy about that. So, Elo, I might be the guy for me, too. I don't think there's that big a difference between him and Vlad. Chris, you reaching for anyone? All of Chris's picks are great value. Well, no, recently I've been reaching for Nick Senzel as it looks like he's got a pretty good chance of cracking the opening day roster. as the starting center fielder. And I just, I really love his skill set.

I think he could have a power, speed, and average, you know, in a really good park and lineup. I'm reaching for Todd's games. I took him 170th, I think. This next email is from Aaron. Dear Yakko, Wacko, and Dot. And apparently I am Dot. I don't remember.

I don't know if that. It's probably an insult, but I don't remember if it is. They were, all three of the Warner siblings were great. I loved them all. I thought he was calling Adam a clown. No, it's the Animaniacs. The Animaniacs, East. Yeah, I remember.

God, old man. They had baloney in their slacks. Any recommendations for cheap third base option who could outperform the first two or three weeks? I have Vlad in a Keeper League, but I will need someone with good matchups or who's filling in for an injured guy that I can get for very cheap.

So basically, who's a good third baseman to pair with Vlad? Marwin Gonzalez. I don't know how much his cost is going to go up. The problem is you can't play him at third base the first week of the season. That's the one position he's not yet eligible. How about Taylor Ward? He's in Scott's Deep Sleepers column. Was absolutely miserable in the majors last year.

But in the minors has been a power speed guy, hasn't struck out very much at all. And with Zach Kozart dealing with, I think, a calf strain, he could be the opening day third basement for the Angels. if you're looking for someone that will be available with the very last pick of the reserve rounds, that could be one of your best options. Next email, they're trying to look up who he's referring to in the greeting. It's from Simon in London, or just outside of London, dear Tommy, Arthur, Flynn, and Polly.

I thought that was Peky Blinders, but it's not showing up on the Google. You guys don't watch Peky Blinders, do you? No. I have never seen the peeky blinders. I'm going to tweet who are Tommy, Arthur, Flynn, and Polly and see if it's Piki Blinders, which is a pretty good show based on one episode. I was wondering if you could discuss dynasty strategy in relation to rookies. In these leagues, people always tend to value prospects highly, and I understand why. But over the last couple years, I've tried a new tactic in our supplemental drafts.

I take as many top 20 prospects as I can, if there are any left, or any that have stood out in spring training. And then I spend the whole season trying to flip them for established top 100 players that are usually around 28 to 32 years old. It's worked for me in my 14-team league. For instance, last year I traded Harper, Tatis Jr. and Louis Robert for Paxton, Bauer, and Jeffress. I've done a little research. In general, top 20 prospects have a very poor chance of making a top 100 overall player.

Over the last four years, only 19% of batters and 7% of pitchers have made it into the top 100 for this year. So I think you're in general better off flipping the talent far earlier for an established player and consistently challenging in your league. What do you think about that strategy, guys? It's too bad Scott's not here because I think he would probably disagree with it. I'm all for it. Yeah, I think Dynasty League players tend to look too far in the future. And like the next two or three years are so much more important than years four through whatever.

I mean, let's be honest. Your league might not make it four years from now. But even if it does, you know, Eloi Jimenez might end up being a pretty good outfielder. Justin Upton. That would be a really good outcome.

I was thinking like if he's Justin Upton, that's probably like a 90th percentile outcome. The most likely outcome is probably something a little worse. And that's with a guy who's a really, really good prospect who we all really like. It's easy to overstate how likely it is. Prospects will reach their potential. And this is the mystery boat or the mystery box versus a boat thing.

We get really excited about prospects and we tend to, because you can say they could be anything. Actual players are who they are. And once the prospect, especially once the prospect makes the majors, their value tends to go down unless they're Juan Soto or Ronald Acuna right away. Pecky blinders. Score one for me. I was right. This is from Taylor. Deer Jones, Shebler, Hembrian Davis.

Scott's? Adam Scott, Chris, and Heath. Come on. Adam Scott, Heath, and Chris. Geez. And that's bad Chris Davis, too. 12-team points league, but roto depth.

Corner infield, middle-infield, utility, nine pitchers. Am I crazy to consider taking maybe only one or two outfielers in the first 14 or 15 rounds and then loading up on Winker, Bowers, Santana, Reyes, those types of guys. I don't think it's crazy.

Again, it's the Scott strategy. Almost every draft we get to, I get to a point in the 10th round where I have four outfielders, and I look at Scott, and he has one, or zero. So you can do it either way. I think there are too many great players that are outfielders to continue passing on them. There's too many times, simply,

where the outfielder is the best player available for me. And like we like the Winker and Santana and Reyes class. Don't skip Bowers and Bowers. I got confused. It's okay. I got confused by the way the email was worded. We like that class, but if two of them are top 50 outfielders, we would consider that a pretty good. Right.

A pretty good sign of our prognostication powers. As long as it's Santana and Bowers. Exactly. It's funny, though, because if they finish, like, if they play a full season and they finish 50th, that's terrible. You know, to think of, like, a top 50 outfielder. Yeah, I mean, you know. Because there's so much streaming, you know. Like, if you're a starting pitcher and you play, if you pitch like 180 or more innings and you don't finish in the top 30, didn't have a very good year.

Like, David Price was 22nd last year for reference. Rick Porcelo was top 25. So if you pitch a full season... It was great. By some measures. So just throw that out there. Last email here is from Chris in Cambridge, Ontario. Dear Warren, William, Hank, and Cy.

I mean, I know they're old baseball players. Old pitchers. Warren Johnson. Saw Young. Walter Johnson. Warren Spawn. Yeah, Warren Spawn. But there's no... Who's William?

William. William is. Hey, Garon. I don't know. I think it's Peaky Blonde. I play in a Wild West's head-to-head categories league. I'm listening to you guys talk about going RP heavy in this type of league. How many starting pitchers are you looking to take with this type of strategy?

A couple of aces. I have two SP spots and the rest are open-ended. Yeah, I wouldn't mind it all just starting with my normal approach of wanting to get two of those top 24 starters and then never taking another starting pitcher. Would you consider going with two repasps? Not probably. Relief pitchers is starting pitchers? So Wild West, how do you interpret that? Is that no starting pitcher spots or no allotted?

No, I think this is well this is more like not like the new frontier, not quite to the Wild West. Because this does require, I think this is probably a. Typical league on one of the other sites that runs these types of leagues and you have two starters. You have two relievers and then you have three bench spots or pitcher spots. I was thinking you can only draft like Houston Astros, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, that kind of league. Oh, yeah. It's Wild West. I like that.

That's good. All right. Let's do some news and notes. Finish up the show. We got team name Tuesday as well and a lot of stuff I didn't get to get to. but in the News and Noid segment, are there any spring standouts that you guys would like to talk about?

Do it, Chris. Come on, be a Homer. This is the wrong duo of people to ask. But yeah, Louis Brinson's been awesome. He's been hitting the crap out of the ball. He's got like a 2000 OPS or something. He had a 950 OPS last year, which is really good, but he's doubling it so far.

So he's going to be twice as good as he was last year. He might have like a 750 OPS. I don't know how much it matters. I've used something like Lewis Brinson having a really good start to the spring as less of like, oh, wow, Lewis Brinson's going to be really good this year. And more of, hey, Louis Brinson still exists. Remember him? Yeah, I know. Don't forget about him.

I want to draft him now. Like, I'll give in. Sure. I want to draft him. Yeah. In a reserve round in either a head-to-head of Roto League, I think the upside's high enough. He hasn't. He didn't change his swing.

There's been a lot of talk about his, like, quote-unquote, more patient approach. I don't know if that's going to stick. He's had a good six games. I will say the Rocky's second base competition is just absolute fire. Ryan McMahon's now 10 for 21, four doubles, a triple, a home run, and a 1466 OPS. Garrett Hampson, five for 16, two home runs, three stolen bases, and 1109 OPS. I'm really getting concerned this is going to just be both of them are platooning.

Can we just get Garrett Hampton and Centerfield? He could probably play it and then we could just not worry about Ian Desmond. Wouldn't that be great? That would be great. The Mets first base job is very similar and I think Dominic Smith is a lot less interesting than Hampson or McMahon

or frankly Pete Alonzo who he's battling with but he did change his swing this offseason and the question was never the hitting ability. The question was whether the power would play up. Now, neither has been there in the majors, but he's young enough that there could be a Justin Smoke, Yonder Alonzo-type career resurgence, and personally, I'm rooting against it.

I would rather just see Peter Alonzo get that opportunity, but it's happening. They're both crushing the ball right now in early spring. Greg Holland pitching poorly. and potentially battling it out with Archie Bradley for the closer's job there. That's one to keep an eye on. They're going to be very patient with Greg Holland. And Jeff Samarge is pitching well.

This is all just stuff from Scott's column yesterday. And, you know, he could be somebody in points leagues in particular that helps you out by throwing a lot of innings. If you want to listen to last year's starting pitcher preview for a great Jeff Simarge debate, there was some screaming and yelling and finger pointing in that one. News and notes, Chris Davis is questionable for the first two games of the season because the A's have those games. on the 21st and 20th and 21st, I think, right around there, maybe 21st and 22nd, and he may not be able to make those. He has a calf strain.

I think Malick Smith is in the same boat. Yes. And Heath, I saw you tweet about Marcelo Zuna's shoulder. Things looking better for Marcelo Zuna? Yeah, yeah. He said he was pain-free, and I moved him up considerably. He's back in my top 25 outfielder, I think, just barely. I probably still won't get him as high as some will, but it's encouraging.

George Springer wants to run more, which would be nice. He doesn't run. He lost like 12 or 13 pounds in the off season with the focus on running more. Andrew Hini has left elbow inflammation. We talked about that yesterday. It doesn't seem to be a huge deal. Kevin Gosman on track to pitch this week. Jimmy Nelson making good progress.

We didn't mention him in the late round picks, I don't think. Are you guys interested in taking a shot on Nelson? I think I might have mentioned him. Yeah, there was some concern. because he did a bullpen session. They had to pull him back. And he's coming back from that shoulder injury that he suffered at the end of 2017. It was not a setback with his shoulder in that bullpen session.

I think what happened was he, like, caught his cleat on the mound while throwing and, like, fell and landed awkwardly on his forearm. But he was able to throw like a day later or the neck or two days later. So it doesn't sound like that was a huge concern. Obviously, the question is whether he can come back from the shoulder injury. sustained the games he made in 2017, when he was one of the best pitchers in baseball. I love taking him in the late rounds and just hoping that he can be 80% as good as that. All right, it's Jimmy Nelson. Aaron Hicks has back tightness, and as ESPN.com article pointed out,

Aaron Hicks has been on the DL every single season of his career. Travis Jankowski, Padre's outfielder broke his wrist. He's going to be out a few months. You know, removes a little bit of a logjam, but he wasn't going to be a starter. Sonny Gray, he's a little injured right now, but Gray has a chance to be ready. for opening day for the Reds. He has an elbow issue, and he trashed the Yankees yesterday. No, you know, it was legit.

You're right. You're right. Extreme. He said the Yankees wanted him to use his slider too much, that he doesn't command his slider all that well, and it was getting him in bad counts, and also negatively affecting his curveball because he wasn't throwing it enough. So...

I like Sunny Graymore now. Yeah, he... Do you really? What he said is the Yankees? I do. I think Sunny Gray is being undervalued. I think he's in the 70 to 80 range, and we know he has upside beyond that. He said the Yankees were trying to get him to throw his slider for strikes, and he just, he said he can't throw it that way. And when he tries to throw the slider in the strike zone, he says, I think the quote is something like, it's just a spinning piece of bleep or something like that. He wants to bury his slider and throw the curveball for strikes. And it's a really, interesting piece on The Athletic about how he used pitch tracking data in the offseason to improve his repertoire, especially his fastball.

Okay, and Matt Kemp sounds like the odd man out in the Cincinnati outfield. That's good news for Winker, good news for Senzel. Angels third baseman Zach Kozart has a grade one calf strain. He will almost certainly open the season on the DL. Tommy Lestella could get some starts while Cozart's out. And they're making a Sandlot TV show, apparently. Sandlot TV show. Okay.

Yeah. I'll give it a look. All right. I hope it's good. We got Aaron coming up with his Aces interview. Let's finish up with some team name Tuesday on a Wednesday. I'm supposed to sing this one. Mun C to Shining Sea.

That's awful. The singing or the team name? Yep. Well, how about, oh, say, can you see? Cacucci? You say. Not UC. I mean, it's a slant rhyme, Heath.

This one I'm supposed to do in the Jonah Hill voice from the movie Accepted. Ask me about my winker. That's good. I know Chris Towers likes that one. I drafted Jose Abraeu and named my team name, Testicular Torsion. The guys in my league won't appreciate my graphic avatar. Last Man, Stanton. Good.

That's okay. Last man, Stanton. Last year I had. Here's his favorite show. Stanton Deliver. Soto Popinski is great Bregman Turner Overdrive is great Risency Baez is great

Comfortably Numb is great Fantastic I think we've had all of them Thank you Heath and Chris Appreciate it Thank you for letting us be here today And thank you for listening

Thank you for letting us into your home Please enjoy a wonderful interview With Aaron Sosseda Talk about Aces, talk about pitchers Who Have the Best Stuff to talk about why Clayton Kershaw, Tyler Skaggs and some others didn't measure up so well with the Aces metric. Here's Aaron Sosseda, and we will talk to you tomorrow. All right, Aaron.

Welcome to Fantasy Baseball today. First time on the show. Great to have you. How you doing, man? It's March. Beautiful day here in Southern California. Baseball is coming here talking to you guys. What's not to like about that?

Oh, my gosh. You're in Southern California. You were going to get up at 5.30 in the morning to be on our fantasy baseball. Now, you know, we're pre-recorded this the day before. But you were going to do that? Yeah. It's the prestigious fantasy baseball today podcast. Why wouldn't he at him?

I don't know. I don't know. But Aaron is a sportsline contributor. And tell us about the... Oh, wait, first of all, the sport... I probably gave this already in the show. But the promo code for Sportsline, first month for a dollar, is Vegas. Vegas.

Sign up on Sportsline.com. Use the promo code Vegas. And get the first month for a dollar. then it's only $9.99 after that. Tell us about the ACE's metric, Aaron. Yeah, definitely. So we covered it in the piece on CBS, but so I've been following Enosaris's pitching work since his fan graph's days. He's now at the athletic. And I think his general pitching excitement just rubbed off on me and loved his concept previously of those arsenal scores. Basically, what he did was measure whiffs and grounders of each of a pitcher's

pitches, summed it to overall score. So I really liked that, but wanted something a little bit more about the stuff. So like when you see you guys like Noah Sinneagarden, Garrett-Cole pitch, you know, you look at it and you're like, okay, clearly has good stuff, but what about others and just wanted a more systematic way to measure that? So we've had VLO and movement data for a while, but a huge missing piece of that was how well could a pitcher command their pitches? So, you know, we see now a step forward in that from stats. So they've introduced a command plus metric and able to see now at a per pitch level what that command was. So I thought, hey, wouldn't it be great to, you know, combine all of those things

in those single metric, reached out to Eno about it. He liked it and, yeah, we just ran with it. Chris hasn't shut up about it since it's great. It is pretty awesome. I love, because I love, and we've seen this a lot the last couple of years where we can start to quantify the things that we've been talking about in baseball for 140 years. You know, like we can now quantify power or raw power even based on, you know, average exit velocity or average exit velocity on fly balls. And now this is getting us to a point where, you know, we can take some of those scouting terms, you know, stuff or command and all. And we can put numbers to them. We can stop guessing at least a little bit and stop saying, well, this guy's got better stuff than that guy.

Well, you know, what if we have a way to measure that? That's why I think this is so fascinating. I think it's really, I've had some really interesting insights as a result of it. It started to, you know, I talked about Nathan Ovaldi on Tuesday's show. I started buying into him more when I saw that he's, I think, 95th percentile in this stat or something really high. Yeah, 99th even. What goes into that? What goes into that?

Tell us why Nate Avaldi, who's not a big, and maybe it's Nathan Avaldi, never know. Not a big strikeout guy is fourth on the Aces list behind Garretta, Noah Cindergard, and Justin Verlander. Right. Well, it's really a component of three things. So it's velocity, movement, and command. So velocity just being, you know, the velocity of the pitch movement, both horizontal and vertical movement, and then command as measured by command plus. So it kind of just amalgamates the three based on different weightings for each pitch. And then you sum all of those up weighted by their pitch mix. So, you know, if he throws his cutter 30% of the time, it's going to be weight, his cutter score is going to be weighted by that. And, you know, voila, you've got, you know, a full arsenal or ACEs metric based on that. So do you think Okay, how far back does the data go with Aces?

Like has Evaldi always been great in this metric? No. So yeah, it goes back two years. We've only had Command Plus two years. We have it for 2017 and 2018, and he missed 2017 because he was returning for Tommy John surgery, so we don't have it for him. Okay.

Yeah, because I was wondering, because maybe he was always a guy who had great stuff. And you know what I'm saying? Like, if we knew that and he still wasn't so good, then it wouldn't have as much of an impact. I guess. But who are the pitchers when you put this together that really popped at you in either a good or bad way? Well, I think he's definitely won in the top 90th percentile. I think it's hard not to start this conversation, even though it's pretty obvious with a guy like Noah Cindergarde, where he's just got, he's pretty, he's got everything that you want.

He's got velocity. He's got moving all those pitches. He's got above average command across the board. He's got a wide depth of arsenal. I think he throws five pitches more than 10% of the time. So he's, you know, he's one of those just sort of the, like the poster child of an analysis like this. and I wrote up a few others that were maybe a little bit more surprising on CBS, and these guys are all going after Pick 200. One of those guys that really surprised me was seeing Zach Eflin at the 93rd percentile. He's going after Pick 300. You know, he saw an uptick and velocity last year that really helped his performance jump, and he was really good in the first half.

And again, you want to be careful using splits like that. But I'm pretty intrigued by his stuff and seeing if he can maintain that kind of VLO going to this year, especially after Pick 300, it's really not a huge cost at all. And in his case, I think there is a pretty good explanation for both why he got better in 2018 and then why he wasn't able to sustain that around the half season mark. And that was because, you know, he talked about pretty openly that he had dealt with some leg injuries in 2016 and 2017, and he just wasn't able to get his legs under him. And so there was a really good fan graphs piece on this midseason where, you know,

I think his arm slots lower because he's able to get more drive. He's able to push off his legs and get further down. the mound. He generated more power. His velocity was up, I think, almost two miles per hour from 2017 to 2018. And then, I think on his July 3rd start, I think he had a finger injury, and that's when things started to go wrong for him. So I think he's one that you can kind of tell a pretty good story about. Okay, that's Zach Eflin. And yeah, so Chris, do you think he'd be drafting a lot of Zach Eflin? I think Aaron is responsible for all three Heath, Scott and I. liking Ethlyn now.

You know, I think we've all pretty much, we probably all, I think we all mentioned him as our, as a sleeper on Monday show. If not, we were fighting over it. So I think we all definitely like Ethelan as a, you know, 18th to 20th round kind of guy with Upside. Yeah, and Iron,

we also established that the Astros cheat. But, no, but the Astros get a lot out of their pitchers. That's what I meant to say. say. Cheat is an acronym. It's like Aces. Right. I'm going to figure out what it stands for.

Yeah, back into it somehow. Yeah. But what can you tell us about some of the arms that they have and who might surprise us this year? Well, I mean, Josh James was everyone's favorite, you know, quote, sleeper for the longest time, even though everyone was talking about him. So he was definitely a favorite of Aces as well, scored in 97th percentile last year, even though we only saw him for 23 inning.

So he was super intriguing. I actually think if you liked him before, You ought to like him more now as his price is probably falling. But now I think you got to kind of look at what his injury vacates there. And I think the two guys that are probably going to see the most benefit from that are going to be Colin McHugh and Brad Peacock. And because those guys were largely relievers last year, I don't really have the aases on them. But projections really like them. And I think on a per start basis, they rank pretty highly.

So if you want to lean into some unpredictability and volatility there, I think those are pretty fair bets, probably going after pick 200, probably rising after the James injury, but I think those guys are definitely the biggest benefactors of James injury. By the way, collectively help everyone achieve things. That is the cheat acronym. That's very good. Yeah. That definitely describes what the Houston Astros do. Collectively help everyone achieve things. Now you need to come up with another one for pine tar. That is great. Okay, I will do that. Of course, that means I won't be paying attention. attention to anything that you were Aaron. Jordan Liles is 92nd percentile.

That's pretty good. And he had some moments last year where it was like, hey, should we be picking up Jordan Liles? What are we thinking there? He's one of those names where, you know, you do something like this. And he's one of those that pops out. And you're like, okay, like, did I do something wrong here kind of thing? So you're not expecting to see a name like his. But I looked into it.

I mean, he does have good stuff. He wasn't bad in 2017 either. He went from 73 percentile in 2017 with San Diego to 92nd. in 2018. And Fangraph's Jeff Sullivan, at least at the time, now with the raise, he even noticed that a change in Lyle's pitch mix last year where he started emphasizing more of his top pitches, is forcing him his curve and less of a sinker and slider. So I think that was at least part of why we saw his Aces rise.

And then, yeah, he got signed to a pretty reasonable free agent deal this past winter. And so he'll be battling for that fifth rotation spot on the Pirates with Nick King. I'm not someone that I'm prioritizing a ton, but I think last I saw his ADP was after like PIC 600. So in those 50-round draft and holds on the NFBC, that's definitely a nice target to have late. And Scott had him, I think, in a deep sleeper's column that he published this week. And, you know, you look at Sierra, he's at 388 last year,

which is it's not elite, but it's certainly mixed league relevant. Very relevant. It's not that far off from what, like, Luis Castillo, I keep going back to him. And that's probably getting annoying, but it's not that far off from what he's done or from what Jose Barrio's done. I don't think he's as good as those guys. But there is a little – there is some evidence that he's better than maybe we give him credit for, or maybe even that he appears.

So that's – sorry, that's Jordan Lyles we're talking about. And Castillo also measures very favorably in the Aces metric at 96%. Okay, so who will? I'll just give you the floor. Aaron. Who else you want to talk about here? Good or bad? Well, I wanted to talk a little bit more about maybe this Dodgers situation here. And I don't think necessarily there's a ton of Aces exploitation to be had other than maybe Ross Stripling. But we've already seen Kershaw get injured. We know how they manipulate the, you know, the IL and such. So I think maybe looking at, you know, more of those guys

and being willing to take on some more of that, you know, weekly upside. And that's where I'm coming from. I play a lot of weekly league. So from my perspective, the way I think about it in season is, is this guy likely to see my, you know, my rotation for this week? And so as long as they're in the rotation, guys like Rich Hill, guys like Kenta Maeda, guys like Ross Tripling, will absolutely see, you know, they'll be pretty high-end starts for me. So I'm looking at those guys as long as they keep falling, I'm interested in scooping them up and then just starting them, you know, whenever, whenever I'm able to, especially in leagues where I can go play the wire and, you know, if they do end up missing time, which they will, you know, filling that somewhere else. And a very relevant thing to bring up here is Walker Bueller, who obviously has his rotation spot locked up. Ninety-second percentile by aces, throws five pitches at least 10 percent of the time, and every single one of them ranks, I believe, in the 76th percentile or better. So that's very good.

He's 21st overall in baseball by this measure. Obviously, nobody doubts whether Walker Bueller's good, but another one where it's nice to get some confirmation. And Clayton Kirchall was 24th percentile last year. He rated really poorly. How is that? How is that? Oh, my gosh. Tyler Skaggs is 33rd percentile? This is garbage. This is garbage. Adam, I know you had raised some questions about maybe what are the limitations of ACEs. And I don't really want to talk about this as if it's some, you know, perfect measure of anything. And I think one of the big limitations probably is the way that we look at lefties because it is, weighting velocity, you know, roughly 50%, lefties just on average throw, they don't throw

as hard as Ritey's. And so I think they're going to be potentially overly penalized in a metric like ACEs. So at the end of the CBS piece where we introduced this, I talked about, I identified basically eight questions, eight key questions for how we can further evolve this kind of research. And one of those was, should we be treating Ritees and lefties differently? And the other big one was just how important are velocity movement and command? That's a really tough question. It's not a trivial question by any means. So still just trying to figure out just how important each of those components are. We have a good, you know, educated guess as of now, but certainly more work to be done there.

All right, that's really interesting because, you know, it does, I guess, give me a little bit of calm that Tyler Skaggs is there with Andrew Heaney, Rich Hill. Oh, Zach Granky. Yeah, Zach Rankie stinks, man. Junjun Ryu, John Lester, other South Balls, Jose Katana, who have been good in recent years. And it does make me wonder if maybe the command outliers can continue to outperform. You know, a guy like Granky or a guy like Kershaw who we think probably stand out even above the standouts in that way. You know, maybe this is one place where they can continue to outperform their expectations. And I just want to bring up two more guys as we wrap up here.

By the way, would you say these players are putting in necessarily? effort to achieve results. Because if they are, they're using the pine tar method. Yeah. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So, Zach Wheeler and Nick Povetta.

Yeah. Are both very high on this list. They are. They are. Two really popular guys. I mean, I really like them. I think everyone does. I think the problem with them is probably just their ADP.

Like, I was looking at the NFBC ADP, and Wheeler's cracked into the top 90. I really like him, but I also wrote up his teammate, Stephen Mats, who, who's going after pick 200 and Matt's doesn't rank nearly as highly by Aces. Again, he's a lefty though, so maybe that's overly penalizing him. So I think I'd rather just take, you know, the 150 pick plus discount and take Mats, even though, again, yeah, I really like Wheeler. Pavetta I really like as well. He's been maybe one of the most contentious guys to talk about this draft season just because

of his poor results last year. But as long as he's roughly kind of in that pick 150 range, I am interested, I just fear that he's going to be a guy continually getting pushed up because of things like Aces, because of things like you look at his. Because ERA estimators last year, they're a lot better than his actual ERA. I think people are starting to get on the Philly hype train, maybe even just things like Bryce Harper signing there are probably going to raise the collective price of Philadelphia players. So like both these guys, I think everyone else does too.

And so I think it's going to be reflected in the price. Yeah. I'm going to do my part to lower the collective praise of the Phillies. Everybody expects the defense to be better. Reese Hoskins dropped an infield fly ball today. So drop all your Phillies. No, he dropped a pop-up, Chris. You know, I said it was a pop-up.

I said it was a pop-up, and Heath was like, I thought he was playing the infield. So, there you go. But, stupid Heath. Okay, Aaron, thank you for coming on. I hope we can have you on again. And please see his work on Sportsline.com. You want to try it for just $1 for the first month. And then only $9.99 after that.

Vegas is the promo code. Aaron, thanks so much. Yeah, anytime, guys. You have a good one. That is going to wrap up our episode of Fantasy Baseball today. On tomorrow's show, we're going to recap all of the position previews. If you missed anything, stay tuned for that. And send us your emails, fantasy baseball at cbsi.com.