Fantasy Baseball Today - 10/18 Fantasy Baseball Podcast: Prioritize Pitching in 2018?

Episode Date: October 18, 2017

Chris Towers wanted to wait on pitching in 2017, will he change his strategy next season? We begin the show with that topic before discussing how good (or bad) In-N-Out Burger is (15:26) ... Early auction values for some key players such as Clayton Kershaw (25:25), and Kenley Jansen (29:05) ... WAS and CLE have been eliminated, so we tell you one player on each team that will be better next season and one player that will be worse (33:24) ... 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

It's Wednesday, October 18th, We're in the thick of the league championship series. Welcome everybody to fantasy baseball today. We love baseball, so let's talk about it year-round. Once a week, the entire off season. Maybe not Thanksgiving. We have a feeling we'll take that week off. But we'll be here almost every week,

giving you some fantasy baseball content. Please feel free to email us at Fantasy Baseball at cbsi.com. Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. And we say hello to Chris Towers, not on paternity leave, Chris Towers. What's up, Adam? How you doing, man? I'm good. NBA seasons back.

MLB playoffs are raring. Last night was the craziest sports night in a while. What? No, it wasn't. Yeah, it was. You had a great, exciting Yankees Astros game that was a tense back and forth affair. You had NBA season opener with Gordon Hayward suffering a great, gruesome injury five minutes into his first game with his first team.

You had the Golden State Warriors losing in a shootout. You had Ezekiel Elliott's suspension being overturned. It was a crazy night here in the CBS Sports Office. I didn't leave until 1030. Okay, you know what? That's actually a good point. What the heck were you doing here until 1030? I waited until the Ezekiel Elliott story came down so I could write it.

You can do that from home, you know. What? You do that from home. Yeah, but like it was like 630 by the time I was ready to leave. And at that point, I was like the news could come out any moment. So I want to just be able to react quickly. And then by the time I wrote it and got it up on the site and updated Jamie's waiver wire column to reflect the latest information, the game already started. So I just hung out into the end of the Cavaliers Celtics game.

Okay. And you know, you don't should have hung out longer. It was Lance McCullors. I don't know what they were thinking there trying to put DeVansky in against. the lefties because he's good against lefties. I just think that was a terrible decision. Costs the Astros, the game. And we'll see if it costs them a series.

But that was a mistake. Oops. Well, anyway, let's talk fantasy baseball. And let's start with a couple of emails. Now, I've told you listeners a lot about our email or Isaac. He's got email of the day. Isaac is the listener that we're not sure if he likes us or not. Because he listens all the time.

Well, why are we giving him such high profile? if we don't think he likes us. It's hilarious to me. You know who gets emails on the show? The people who are nice to us. Let's not give this guy the Pavlovian reaction that he wants. You're giving him positive reinforcement for his negative behavior. It's so funny to me.

He listens all the time and he just seems to hate everything we say, but he's got a point on one thing. So he sends us an email, Isaac who may or may not like us. And the subject line is Ace Hunter, one word, ace hunter. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Asa Hunter, yeah, Ace Hunter, right? Yeah. A key hunter. There you go.

He says, Luis Severino is considered to be a talented, young, possible stud with lots of potential in March of 2017. However, I missed on him. I was much more focused on McCullors, Paxton, and Velasquez, as were you. In 2016, it was Michael Fulmer and Rich Hill that stood out.

Al Malkyor was high on Rich Hill. You were not. I don't even remember any of you, mentioning Michael Fulmer's name prior to the season. Your strategy is a losing strategy. Take your L. Stubberness is not a virtue. So I responded, what exactly is the, quote, strategy, end quote.

That is such a bad strategy. And his response to my response was, Ace Hunting, Minimizing Your Spending on Pitching. The delusion that you can pick out next year's new aces. I thought it was obvious. No one can do it. Get it? Okay.

So then he wrote another email. He wasn't done. But here's an email that you, Adam, read on the air. Chris's response was, quote, ridiculous, end quote, if I remember correctly. Is it ridiculous or is it right on? And then his email was, spend about 150 on pitching in a roto auction equals dominate pitching categories. Spend 150 on hitters equals crapshoot. Yes, I think that's ridiculous.

I think, look, there's no full-proof strategy to winning in any fantasy sport. We're all, quote unquote, experts. It's the blind leading the blind. Look, we're all making the best educated guesses that we can. And so when zero RB strategy or zero SP strategy blows up in your face, it's easy to say, well, we shouldn't use that strategy. And that's fine. But then you look at the average draft position for starting pitch.

Clayton Kirschall was awesome. Max Scher was awesome. Madison Bumgarner was not. Not. Noah Cindergarde was not. Chris Sale was awesome. Corey Klover was awesome. Jake Ayada was not. John Lester was not. Justin Verlander was not. You Darvish was pretty good. Johnny Quato was not. Wait a second. Wait a second. You're saying Verlander was not, but Darvish was? They both had up and down seasons. You're helping my point. Chris, if you didn't look at last year and say to yourself that you need to prioritize pitching more this year in 2018, I'm sorry. If you didn't look at at 2017 and say to yourself, Chris, if you didn't look at at 2017 and say to yourself, that you need to prioritize pitching more in 2018. I feel like you're missing the boat.

Okay, which pitchers? You know what? No, no, no, no, no. This is, but this is the question. Which pitchers, knowing what we know in 2017, should have been prioritized before the season? Match and Mumgarner? The same, yeah, absolutely. The same ones that you read.

Noah Cindergarde? Yeah, look, I get, I get that there are, hey, hey, I get that they are going to be busts. I get it. But the ones that hit are still going to be worlds better. Worlds better than the other guys. It's not about there are going to be busts because there are hitter busts. It's about the inherent fragility of the starting pitcher position. It's about the fact that these guys are going to get hurt.

It's something like 40% of starting pitchers spend time on the disabled list every season. Yeah, but the problem I think now with your approach is, you know, This would change. I would go back to, you know, considering what you're saying, if they change the baseball. But I don't think there's enough pitching depth anymore. So I don't think you can just easily stream pitchers. Pitching stinks now. Hitting is much better.

So that's, I think, what has changed here. Pitchers are injury prone. But everybody has to deal with the lack of depth of pitch. But if you get that pitcher right, if you take two of those guys early and even one of them hits, you're going to have an edge. I mean, I don't think it's a bad idea. In fact, I'm going to prioritize pitching certainly more now. The guys who have the experience, this is with Scott Hammers, you know, guys who have done it before, throw in 200 innings year after year,

it's very valuable. Sure, there's going to be busts. There's going to be Cole Hamels in there. But we're hopefully not going to miss. Hopefully we're going to hit more than we miss on the pitchers. I guess I should use that terminology. The thing is, you have to take into account multiple factors. It's not just the inherent fragility of the position,

although that's a big part of it. It's also the inherent unpredictability of the position. even among the guys that we think are reliable. You look at someone like, who was the, not the best, but I would say coming into the season, someone that we might have considered the single most predictable pitcher in baseball. Probably John Lester.

Maybe John Lester. You know who it might have been? Oh, no, he's had major injuries three of the last four years now. Okay, you look at his numbers, they're pretty predictable. I would say. Chris Sale. No, not. sale. Jose Cantana.

Oh yeah, yeah. Just metronome-like consistency. And he wasn't that this season. No, he wasn't. He had bad year. It was surprising. Because there's so many factors. And this is what it comes down to is when you're trying to predict things. This is something that, you know, Nate Silver talks about a lot. He has the one book, The Signal and the Noise. I think that's him. You're trying to take the things that we do know, the signal. and separate it from the noise,

which is the things that we just can't really predict on a year-to-year basis. And there is so much more of that in pitching, because we see it every year with guys like Louis Severino. It was sort of predictable that this really talented young pitcher could put it together. But whatever it was that he did put together, nobody really saw it coming. Like, I had Luis Severino in a few leagues, but that's just a dart throw at the end of the draft. And what I'm saying is it's about volume.

It's about throwing those darts. And if you want to invest a lot in starting pitcher early on, I think that's a viable strategy. I just think you have to invest a lot. You can't just go with two guys. I think you have to go all the way one way or the other. I don't think so. I mean, I think if three of your first five picks are starting pitchers and they're all top 20 guys and like the worst one is Carasco or something like. or somebody on par with that,

you can certainly afford for one of them to be a bust. Sure. But that's a huge investment in starting pitchers. Yeah, that's fine. I mean, that's the kind of... But that's what I'm saying is you can't half acid. That's a huge investment? I don't even think 150 on starting pitcher is enough if you're going to go with strategy

in a $250 auction. I think you're looking at 175. Maybe. I mean, I kind of want to invest more in closers now than I have to invest. See, that's another one that it's just like, closers are so unpredictable too. But I feel like, I mean, you tell me, did your pitching strategy work this year?

I feel like that strategy would not have worked. There weren't enough breakout guys. And the ones that you were, like, you were right about Paxton and McCullors. They pitched great when they were healthy. And Robbie Ray and Dylan Bundy? Right, but Bundy only got you half a year, you know. There were guys, Chris, but nobody's going to have all of them, right?

So you were right about the two guys that you wanted the most. Like, you nailed the Paxton. But at the same time, they got hurt. There's always going to be selection bias when we do this, but the league that I pay the most attention to, the league that I'm most invested in, the league that I did the best in. Here's my starting pitching staff at the end of the year.

Danny Duffy, up and down year. Denelson Lament, up and down year, but I would say a very useful guy that you found on the waiver wire. Charlie Morton, the same. Louis Severino, the same. Justin Verlander, I bought low on him in the middle of the season. Luke Weaver. Like, there's no, I think the thing we have to get away from, and I'm absolutely guilty of that in this conversation.

There's no one strategy that's going to work. Correct. You have to be flexible. But I just look at it and I see enough guys come through in the middle of every season that that's where I want to, that's the strategy I want to go with. I want to go with looking for those guys who have upside and throwing darts. Well, certainly you need to get some of those Like my best pitching staff, now that I'm looking, my best team Well, no, my best team was the editorial league where I lost in the semifinals,

but we were like 32 and 0 or whatever it was. We played two opponents a week and just kind of flamed out. That team, I mean, we nailed it. You know, we had Keiko, we had Stroman. Gosh, I don't remember. We had the best pitching, you know. Jamie and I did that draft together. And that worked.

for me. Now, I'm looking at my other team, Categories League team. I had DeGrom and I had Verlander. And I had Garrett Cole, was a huge miss for me in a lot of leagues. If he had had a good year, I would have had a much better season. But I also had Alex Wood. I also had Luke Weaver. Sunny Gray acquired at some point, Eduardo Rodriguez. Yeah, Luis Castillo. So I get what you like, obviously you have to have some of those guys to pick up off waivers. But I would love to have my staff anchored by reliable 200-eating guys, 200 strikeout guys. I would love to have my staff anchor. But I'm going to invest in.

I'm going to do a lot more to make that happen than you are. I'm not just going to hope that... But how many reliable 200 inning guys are there? I don't know. Ten? You definitely would have put Clayton Kirshon, Madison, Baumgarner. Yeah, but even, Kirshon's so good. He's so good that it didn't even matter that he got hurt.

He still... It kind of did. Yeah, but he's still... What was he? A top five pitcher? This is one of those ones where I think it mattered. both in terms of, I think he was a top five guy in Roto

because the season long aspect of that matters. That hurts in head-to-head when you lose those weeks. It does, yes, it does. I'll tell you where Kershaw was in points. He was fourth. But he still missed all that time. He threw 175 innings. He did miss those times, yes.

Look, Clayton Kershaw, I will take Clayton Kershaw on my team if I get the opportunity. Yeah, now I want to go back to something I said, you get three top 20 pitchers and your worst one is Carrasco. I couldn't think of a name off the top of my head, but he's probably, he could be a top 10 pitcher next year. So it's going to have to be somebody lower than that.

And the thing you look at when you look at the average draft position is the top 10 guys were actually pretty good. It's after that that gets really bad. Yeah. Well, then take two top 10 guys. The answer might be get three top 10 guys and just avoid the 11 through 30 class because that's where all the busts were. The 11 through 30 class is awful.

I think when you look at, like, every year when you look at the top 10 starting pitchers, there are some surprises in there, but it's also a lot of, like, really good pitchers that you're not surprised to see on the list year after year. This year it's Kluber, Sale, Scherzer, Kershaw, Granky, Carrasco, Severino, Strasberg, Verlander, and I think Irvin Santana is 10, followed by Jacob de Grom. So, I mean, it's not as unpredictable personally as... I think the difference is at the top. I think what we're seeing is outliers are where...

I think the top guys are more predictable on a year-duty basis, and I think this is actually what we saw in the late 90s, is the really, really good pitchers stood out even more. Yeah, right. And I think that's kind of what Scott. has been saying this year. I think if you can get three of the top 10 guys coming into the season, even if, you know, that meant drafting Scherzer, Areeta, and Verlander, you're probably still in pretty good shape. But if it meant drafting, but if it meant investing heavily in starting

pitcher, but you got, you know, Scherzer and then two of the 11 through 20 guys, I think it's a lot riskier there. Okay. Okay, well, that's email of the day number one. Email of the day number two is from Eddie, and he wanted to talk about In-N-Out Burger, Chris. Now, what is your official stance on In-N-Out Burger? Um, I'll just say it. You know me. I'm not afraid to take my lumps. I think In-N-Out is not good. Okay. Okay, well, I think you're stupid, but Kings rookie De Aaron Fox did a Q&A with Rolling Stone, and Eddie, you know, sent us a link. And here's the, the... Rolling Stone Q&A with DeAaron Fox. I heard you're really into breakfast food.

Have you found your favorite brunch spot in Sacramento yet? Yeah, but I can't tell you because then people are going to meet me there. All I got to say, you can tell everybody that lives in the state of California, In and Out is not good. What's your beef with In an Out burger? Their burgers are overrated. They're okay. Even animal style?

Yes, people always say, you haven't tried this. You haven't tried that. I'm like, yeah, I looked up the secret menu. I've tried it all. It's just not good. That's controversial. What's the best fast food spot then? Honestly, for me, I don't count Chick-fil-A

because it's way too good to be considered fast food. So I'm going to say Wendy's. Fat Burger in L.A. is better than In-N-Out. My fans know I keep it real. I've told so many people I hate In-N-Out. It's funny. Now everyone can read about it. I am Team Deerrin Fox.

I am 100. Like, the fries suck. Like, the fries are... The burgers are pretty good. Like, it's a... It's hard to mess that up. You know, the Secret sauce, the Shake-Shack burger. Like, that's pretty good.

I can do that at home. The animal-style fries are terrible. Like, that is disgusting. Well, it's disgusting in the sense that, like, you just feel disgusting when you're eating it. No, it's disgusting. But I think it's delicious. No, I think it's delicious. No.

I think that In-N-Out burger became a victim of its own hype. And everybody went to it in an Outburger expecting this, like, magical experience. And at the end of the day, you're going to a fast food joy. Yeah, it is. It's very good. It's fine. Yeah. But people treat it.

Like this is, this is what always happens. I said this on Twitter the other day. Every regional food item is overrated, except for public subs. Uh, ha ha, public subs are terrific. Public deli counter is the joke is so good. Public subs are probably overrated if you're not from Florida because we have this tendency of just taking, look, this thing that I grew up with is amazing. Yeah, yeah.

But then you go and like, like, Like Wawa. Wawa was a perfectly fine gas station food option. But I'm not from Philadelphia. So I've heard people in the Northeast talk about it for their entire lives. It comes down here and it's like, yeah, that's fine. It's a nice gas station. It's not dirty. The food's pretty good.

If I was a drunk college student when Wawa came to South Florida, I would have loved it. But I'm an adult and I don't have to unless I'm on a a road trip, eat crappy gas station food, so I'm not going to. That's a fair point. But I will tell you this, there is no question about Seat Geek as the best, most efficient, awesome app to get your tickets. And it's going to save you money. You want to save some money?

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You download that Seekkeek app. You enter the promo code Fantasy. Promocode fantasy for $10 off your first Seekkeek purchase. News and notes for you. These games are getting so long. The playoffs have been a problem. Yeah, three hours and 35 minutes entering Tuesday's games. That was the average game time for a nine-inning playoff game.

That's just awful. Commercial breaks are really long. The time between pitches. It's gone up over the years. Yep. So it's an issue. Gotta get fixed. I've gone to two playoff games.

I'm actually going to game five. I can't. Like, I wouldn't be able to, like, you go to a game and the game ends at 1130, and then you have to, like, that's just. No, man, I went to the wild card game. I got home, I think after one. It was an 8 o'clock game. I think I got home after 1.

I went to the game three of the Yankees, the Charlie Morton-Sabathia game was 8-1. I left in the seventh inning. I got home like 1140 or something, so that was fine. But I'm going tonight, and I'm thrilled that the game is at 5. Yeah. I actually get to get home at a reasonable hour.

You'll get home at 10.30. Yeah, exactly. Eduardo Rodriguez had knee surgery, and he could miss the start of the 2018 season. easy. Bad knee issues for this guy. I mean, we knew, but like he kept pitching through them if he needed surgery. How, I mean, how do you go from like pitching through it all season long when we knew he had this knee issue to needing surgery that requires six months of rehab? Yeah. It just blows my mind. And he's a guy that I've always liked. I mean, the whip is always high. It's like around one,

three. And he gives up some home runs. But when he's, he's a guy. He's right. I mean, before his first injury this season, Eduardo Rodriguez is like a 270 RA. He doesn't pitch deep into games. He's not the most reliable guy. He goes six innings basically every time out. But he's a perfectly good streamer.

He's like the best of the streaming. He's not a streamer. He's a must-own guy when he's right, Eduardo Rodriguez. This makes me like him more next season. I guess. Because he's going to be a late-round pick, knowing that he was hurt all year,

explains some of his mediocrity. There's upside here. This is someone I'm going to, to be targeting in the later rounds. I don't even know he's going to get drafted if he's not ready for the first, for the opener. If I can get him with one of my last three picks next year, I'll be thrilled. All right, that's Eduardo Rodriguez. Now, Hanley Ramirez also having shoulder surgery.

He's expected to be ready for the start of the year. There's no way. I say this as the biggest Hanley Ramirez fan in the world. There's no way you can draft him next year. First base is too deep. Is he DH only next year? I don't think so. You tell me, but I'd be

You need 20 appearances. He didn't make 20 appearances? Let me see. What do you think about audience? 18, he is age only going into next year. That's a killer. I don't think you can draft Hanley Ramirez. I'll tell you why.

I could see him having like a Victor Martinez bounce back year. I definitely could. And he's a good, I'd bid two or three dollars on Hanley, I think, in like a 12-team mixed roto league. Yeah, I'm not saying he's like, Like, if you draft him, you're an idiot. I'm just saying, like, he's not someone that you can target. He's someone that's going to go undrafted in a lot of leagues.

And I think there's upside there, but you can't invest anything in him. And Brad Osmiss could end up being the Red Sox manager. They stole a ton of bases second most in the American League this year. Ossmiss, that wasn't really his thing. Didn't have that kind of team. The last two years, Detroit's been 23rd in the league in baseball, not just the American League. in stolen bases. Sometimes you can get something out of that, but I don't know.

Like he had Rajah Davis. It did some steals. I don't know. We'll see. But you'd like to see these guys be aggressive. There's a lot of steals potential on the Red Sox. Yeah. I think everyone on the team is pretty much a bounceback candidate next year,

except for Chris Sale and Craig Kimbril like we talked about last week. And we're going to talk about who's going to be better and worse on the Nationals and Indians. First, I have some random auction questions for you. I'm going to give you a 12-team Roto League. I'm going to give you a $260 budget. How much for Mike Trout? $50. I'll take him.

I'll get him at 53. I get no, I'm saying 50's the floor. He's not going for less than 50 for sure. I've gone as much as... I want to say I got him this year for 57 in one league. Yeah. He's just... Never know when to stop, when to keep going.

He's just so dominant. And, like, he was... probably, was he a top five outfielder this season in Roto? Let's find out. I bet he was. Just by missing all that. Actually, I don't think he was. But you'll be shocked to know who number four was, by the way.

What? You'll be shocked to know who number four was. Yeah. Marcel O'Suna. I mean, you know, you know I'm a Marlins fan, and I've still never quite bought into him being really good, and I can't understand why I struggle with it. 124 RBIs.

He had a phenomenal season. He sure did. Trout was like 10th. Yeah, and that's with missing 48 games. He missed a third of the season. That was the best Mike Trout we've ever seen. Oh, yeah. He had about a 1050 OPS.

He was 1071. 1071. He led the league in slugging and on base percentage in the American League. I just, there's 40, 30 potential with elite. He's a five-category player. He's the best player in fantasy, and getting him on your team is a huge boon. High 50s for Mike Trout

out of a $260 budget. How about for Clayton Kirschaw? How much am I spending? How much is someone spending? Someone's spending probably $45 on it. I probably wouldn't go to $40. Yeah, I wouldn't either. I think there's risk.

There's just a lot of risk as good as he is. Yeah, I've never done. I've never gone that high. See, that's the difference between a draft and an auction to me is like, I'm totally cool investing draft picks early in pitching. I'm not cool because it depends how many hitter spots you need to fill. The more hitter spots you need to fill, which is the case in our roto leagues compared to our points leagues. Like, I'm not cool spending that much money on pitching. And the thing with auction especially is you can get every single sleeper pitcher you want, too.

It's a lot easier to get those guys on your team. Yeah, I think if I'm playing in an auction, league where there are, there's no middle infielder and corner infield, there's three or four outfielders, then okay, maybe I'll go into the 40s for one starting pitch. Probably not, but maybe. But if there are a lot more hitting spots than pitching spots, yeah, I'm going to have to be careful there. No way am I spending that much on Clayton Kirsha. All right, Gary Sanchez. How much? 260 budget. Top of my head, 35? Is that too much? I don't, here's a cool stat. So I looked in Roe.

Roto Leagues, Sanchez was the number one catcher. So if you look at CBS Sports.com, you go to a Roto League on CBSports.com. It'll tell you where the guy, where the hitter ranks. So I'm looking at outfield right now. Charlie Blackman was the number one outfielder, and he's got a little one all the way on the right, and that's his rank, and that means Charlie Blackman was actually the number one most valuable player in our Roto calculations. The first five most valuable players were hitters.

Corey Klobber was sixth overall. He was the number one pitcher. Now, it's very team-dependent. You know, if you need steals, if you need homework, whatever. But Blackman, based on our formula, was the number one overall hitter and the number one outfielder. Gary Sanchez missed a month and was the number one catcher. He was the number 56 overall player, so that's not great.

But he missed a month. But here's the thing. There was a 60-spot gap between the number one catcher and the number two. two catcher. Yadier Molina was 116th overall, and Sanchez was 56th. So 60 spots. What were the gaps at the other position between number one and number two? Six spots at first base, five spots at third base, seven spots at second, seven spots at short, Blackman, Stanton and Judge, were one, two and three in Roto. Ozuna was 11. Two spots at starting pitcher, two spots at relief pitcher. So no more than seven separating number one or number two at any position,

except for catcher, where Gary Sanchez was 50 spots better than Yadda Irmolina. Yeah, he's a stud. I mean, you look at his career per 162 games since getting to the majors, 103 runs, 49 home runs, 121 RBI, 59 RBI, 59 walks, 163 strikeouts, 283 batting average. And for most catchers, 162 games is not a target. 150 might be a realistic target for Gary Sanchez. He played 118 while missing a month. He dached 18 times.

He's probably going to catch 120 games next season and DH 30. Yeah, he'll go on some cold streaks too, but man, he comes out of them. He just destroys pitches. Okay. How many dollars for Kenley Jansen? Who was the number nine overall pitcher in Roto leagues, number one closer? 20. That's a lot.

I mean, it's not a lot. for Janssen, it's a lot to invest in any closer. Right, and he's one that you, when you talk about closers, you have to worry about multiple things. You don't just have to worry about them getting hurt or underperforming, which happens to a lot of players, and that's the concern with starting pitcher. But you also have to worry about them losing their jobs, and that's not a concern with Kenley Jansen. If he's healthy, he needs to be bad for like 20 games in a row to lose his job. And then it'll probably just Get it back in a week.

Right. So with the elite guys, they're worth an investment, although Zach Britton wasn't. No. And he was right there. Chapman wasn't either. Yeah, those guys were right there, too. Chapman appears to be back, which is a nice thing. He changed the grip on his fastball when he just wasn't getting any life on his fastball,

wasn't getting swings and misses. They made a very minor change to the grip on Chapman's fastball, and he's been lights out. And finally, James Paxson, just throwing him out there randomly. James Paxson, what would you have been on him at a 260? 15? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. So I'm sure there's going to be one person in every league that really buys into Paxon, takes the plunge, gets him, and we'll be rewarded while he's healthy.

Yeah, I think he's potentially a top five starting pitcher if he's healthy. I think the skill set is that impressive. He just, this was so disappointing because I really thought, you know, 2016, his injuries were all fluky. He actually threw like 180 innings between the majors and the minors and he just got hit by a dang comebacker. And then last season he just had actual issues.

You know, earlier today, you were talking about how earlier today, like 25 minutes ago, you were talking about fantasy predictions, it's the blind leading the blind. Yeah. It's like, where are the so-called experts? I wish I'd said it then because it's like not even funny anymore

but I'm dying to make this reference. Uh-huh. It sounded like you were saying, like, you know, you can get advice anywhere, but you, you know, you come to CBS sports. And I was going to go, you know, people can get a cheeseburger anywhere. They come to Chatskies for the attitude and the atmosphere. No, that definitely, we are experts. We're the best in the business. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, right. No, there's no question. I mean, just ask Isaac. All right. Speaking of best of the business, I got to wish a very happy fifth anniversary to Blue Apron. It's their fifth anniversary, and they're bringing back their top 20 recipes throughout the past five years as picked by the Blue Apron community. So that's your favorite Blue Apron recipes back on the menu for a limited time only. And I can tell you there are so many good recipes.

I can't believe they're narrowing it down to 20. There better be some pizzas on there because the pizzas are the absolute best. I had like a mushroom and mushroom and zucchini pizza or something. I couldn't believe how good it was. That was a few months ago. I need another pizza from Blue Apron. I want you to go to blueapron.com slash fantasy baseball. Blue Apron.com slash fantasy baseball.

And you're going to get some of the all-time customer favorites. Now, Blue Apron is just under $60 a week for three meals for two people. So it's $10 per person per meal, a little less than $10 per person per meal. I went out. I got takeout last Friday night for me and my wife. It was $57 for one meal for the two of us. So this is obviously a huge way to save money. If you love cooking and you're not doing Blue Apron, I don't even understand what you're doing.

I hated cooking until I started Blue Apron. Now I love it. It's one of my favorite activities. It's very relaxing. I was cooking actually. Last night I was cooking Blue Apron, watching the Yankees game on my laptop, and made a great meal with fig compote. I made fig. Who am I?

I'm like Gordon Ramsey over here, fig compote. Anyway, go to Blue Apron, get $30 off your first meal with free shipping. Blue Apron.com slash fantasy baseball. Blue Apron.com slash fantasy baseball for $30 off your first delivery. That's Blue Apron, a better way to cook. All right, let's recap the seasons for the Nats and the Indians. Start with the Nationals. Who's a player that will be better next season?

For the Nationals? Yeah. Trey Turner's, I think, the easy call. Not just because he got hurt, although he missed 64 games. I just think you underperformed a little bit. and I think you can expect more than what he did. You know, specifically, I think batting average is probably the biggest place he was. He probably strikes out a little too much to be like a 310 hitter,

but I think he's someone who should probably hit more like 295, 300. He had a 329 Babbat last season. I think his true talent is something like 350. Not wild about the way he spells his first name, T-R-E-A? Just feel like it should be T-R-A-E. Like, how do you spell the lead singer from Fish's name? I believe that's T-R-E-Y. Yeah, I don't know.

T-R-E-A is strange, but T-R-T-R-E-A is strange. But T-R-T-R-T-R-E-A-A-R-Movny for improved player. He batted 284 this year and batted 342 as a rookie in 2016. And I'll go with, you know, a very obvious one, but somebody that, obvious in that, you know, of course, it's going to get better, but somebody that we may have forgotten about,

Adam Eden. Adam Eaton. Sure. Tours ACL. but he played 23 games, and there was some talk at the beginning of the season that he might not lead off, that he might batte toward the end of the order,

or the bottom of the order. Well, he batted second, right? He batted first or second every game. So, but in the spring training, we weren't sure where he was going to bat. They were talking about, like, Jason Worth. Yeah. Batting second.

I think Adam Eaton was hitting, like, fifth in the spring for a little while. Yeah, it was dumb. He scored 24 runs in 23 games. So I think next year he scores, I'll say 110 runs. That's a good call. And Aiton's going to be a really, really good outfielder for you.

Who's going to be worse next year from the Nationals? I think there are two obvious calls, maybe three. So I'll rank them in order of obviousness. Geo Gonzalez is the most obvious. Ryan Zimmerman is the second most obvious. And a little bit of a hot take. Anthony Rendon will not be as good. Yeah, so that's the one I was looking at.

I went with Geo as well, 296 ERA. Last six starts of the year, he had a 585 ERA. finally started giving up some hits. Only 7.1 hits per 9 in the regular season. That's unsustainable. He had one of those years. Yeah. And actually for the Indians, I have somebody that I think had one of those years,

but I'd be interested to get your take. But Rendon, okay, so that was a tough one for me. Yeah, I don't know, man. Elite prospects. It's one of those ones where I don't think Anthony Rendon's going to be bad. I think Anthony Rendon is going to be a very, very, very. good player. He had a 930 OPS and he had like that crazy two-month hot stretch.

And then he looked more like Anthony Rendon. I think he's someone that you can expect like an 850 OPS from. I think he'll be very good. But I don't think he'll be quite elite. You're going to go with Adrian Beltrae or Anthony Rendezo next year? I'll still go with Anthony Rendon. Jake Lamb or Rendon? That one's tough just because Lamb has the.

that one glaring flaw against lefties, but I'll still, I'll go with Rendon. Yeah, Rendon, 84 walks, 82 strikeouts this year. That was the best thing we saw. Fantastic plate discipline. Yeah. And wasn't even close to that. I mean, he didn't have bad plate discipline before, but 2016, he had one walk for every two strikeouts.

He went to one to one this year. All right, for Cleveland, who's a player that's going to get better in 2018? Is Danny Salazar too obvious? I don't know. I don't think he's too obvious because I'm not convinced he's going to get better. Like he's going to be better, but is he going to be good? Yeah. Yeah, I don't think he's going to be great.

I don't think... I mean, look, there's always the chance that Danny Salazar has one of those seasons where everything clicks and he's a top 10 pitcher, right? But you're not going to have to draft him for top 10 pitcher upside. You're going to have to draft him for top 30 pitcher upside. And at that point, I think he's going to be a very nice value. Okay. I'm going to go with Jason Kipnis.

And I think it's easy to give up on Kipness. He's not young. He's going to be, I don't know, maybe 33. Yeah, that sounds about it. Where's he going to play? I imagine he'd play second base. Okay. With Ramirez at third, but we'll see.

I mean, they were batting him second in the playoffs. So they obviously like Kipness. and he had a terrible year, but in 2015, he was 8th in points, 10th in Roto. In 2016, Kipnis was 11th in points, 13th in Roto. He had back-to-back 40 double seasons. I see him more as a points guy. But, you know, I think he'll be better. I think he'll be the kind of guy that doesn't get drafted in a lot of leagues, gets picked up,

and is top 12-ish at second base. Does Michael Brantley count for this? Yeah, I don't know what to expect from Brantley anymore. He had $2.99. which is really good. On a per game basis, he actually just kind of played like you would have expected.

Had 99 combined runs in RBI and 90 games, nine home runs, 11 steals, 299. You put that over 150 games, and that's very good production. Yeah, he's just an outfielder

playing those 150 games. He's an outfielder who doesn't homer a lot or steal a lot. He gives you a little bit of everything. I guess it's not dissimilar from Adam Eaton. Or Christian Yelich. Yeah, or Christian Yelich. All right.

A player who will be worse for Cleveland. Player who will be worse for Cleveland. Okay, well, Corey Klooper's not going to have a $2.25 ERA again. Let's get Bauer out of the fight. I went with Trevor Bauer. And the thing is, like, I see why he turned it around. The pitch selection change. He's got a really good curve ball.

And just like Anthony Rendon, this was the top pitching prospect. Rendon hit her. So maybe he just came into his own. It just, without really diving into the data, it's just a gut feeling for me tells me that this second half stretch for Trevor Bauer will be the best of his career. And I don't know that he has the stuff to be a consistently reliable starting pitcher. I think he might disappoint people next year. I think that's fair. The problem for the Indians with me with this question is the two guys that I think this applies to the most are Jose Ramirez and Corey Kluber.

And they're still going to be really, really good. You know, it's like Anthony Rendon. They're still going to be extremely good players, even if they, if and when, they regress. Yeah, it was a tough one. I think you could have gone with, you could have said everyone in Carnacion, you know, maybe he continues to fall off a little bit,

more and more each year. All right, let's read some emails. Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Chris wants some keeper help. Not Chris Towers, other Chris. Chris Bowers. Yeah. Do you know anybody with a very similar last name, like Chris Powers? I do know, it's not my friend, but someone that I've, like a friend of a friend on Facebook,

is named Chris Stowers. Hey, it's a terrible last name. That's the closest I've ever come. I guarantee that guy's name is Chris Towers, but somebody heard it wrong and then just put it on his birth certificate. Like there's no way. It stowers that's terrible. Well, it's probably Christopher, which gets the S double S sound. Maybe.

You would know. I know some, I'm Adam Scott Aser. I know an Adam Scott mazer. I know an Adam Scott. The guy on the TV shows? Yeah, he's great. TV. My cousin.

Programs. This is from Chris Bowers. So he, I think he needs four. He needs four out of this list. Machado and the four. first round. It's six by six by the way. Machado in the first, Stanton in the second, Dozier in the third, Bregman in the 12th, Severino, Berrios, Hoskins in the 15th, and if you keep multiple 15th rounders, each player moves up a round. So Machado in the first, Stanton in the second,

Dozier 3rd, Bregman 12th, Severino, Berrios, Hoskins in the 15th. Okay, I think Severino's a must keep. And then I struggle with Machado and Stanton because that's basically their value. And you're always trying to get surplus value in these spots. But if you have an opportunity to get two first-round caliber players, you kind of have to take that. So I'm going Severino, Machado, Stanton,

and probably Bregman. Yeah, over Hoskins. Hoskins is the one that gives me, what he did in his limited time in the majors is absolutely unbelievable and all the peripherals back it up. But I don't know, first base is so deep. So Manny Machado is not shortstop eligible next year. Got to keep that in mind. That changes things a little bit, but does he get shortstop eligible very early on in the season?

There's always that possibility. Could always happen. Okay, here's one from... Who are you? No name here? I'm sorry. Also, Adam, since he's not shortstop eligible coming into the season, he's due to get shortstop. Is that how that works?

I think so. Okay, I got to find this guy's name because I feel bad. Okay, here it is. It's from Brandon. There you go. Dear Josh, Justin, and Joe. The Jonas brothers, obviously. Oh, really?

No. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Oh, okay. Thank goodness you didn't know that. Watch it be Hanson or something like that. Okay, keep her question. 13 team auction, Roto League.

You can keep a player for up to three years, so here we go. I'm going to keep Aeronado at $16. Pick two of the following. A $13. Yohanna Cespitus for three more years. A $14. Nelson Cruz for one more year. an $8. Anthony Rendon for three more.

$1. $1.000, Kemp for three more years. $1. Trevor Story for two more years. $1. $1. Kenley Jansen for three more years. I think it has to be Jansen, and I think it has to be Rendon. Boy, Trevor Story at $1 for two more years. If he bounces back...

Because a year ago, if we had asked this question, Trevor Story was the most obvious answer. Yeah. For sure. I just, there are so many holes in his game. That's the story. And we're sticking to it. And that's it for the show today.

Thanks, Chris Towers. Thanks, Adam Scott Azer. There it is. Not Adam Scott Mazer. You're Adam Scott Azer. I'm Chris Paul Towers. Oh, how about that? Celebrities over here.

So, thanks. That's it. I'm done. Wrap it up the show like I always do. Awkwardly. Bye, everyone. Talk to you in a week. Thank you.