Fantasy Baseball Today - 15 Players Who Are Tough to Rank in 2025! (1/15 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

There are a bunch of players who are tough to rank in 2025, starting with Christian Yelich (2:58)! ... Matt McLain is set to return after missing all of 2024 (8:06). ... Which Gerrit Cole will we get this season (13:27)? ... Shane McClanahan is returning from his second TJ surgery (18:41). ... Was Francisco Alvarez playing through injury last year (23:11)? ... Luis Robert has big upside but also big downside (27:29). ... When will Jackson Holliday break through (33:05)? ... Hunter Greene is talented but comes with risk (41:41). ... Adolis Garcia might have been playing through injury (48:20). ... What's up with Brandon Lowe and Jurickson Profar (51:30)? ... When will we see Ronald Acuña (59:20)? ... Both Tyler Glasnow and Spencer Strider are returning from injury (1:05:30). Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday Download and Follow Fantasy Baseball Today on Spotify: https://sptfy.com/QiKv Get awesome Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: http://bit.ly/3y8dUqi Follow FBT on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fbtpod?_t=8WyMkPdKOJ1&_r=1 Follow our FBT team on Twitter: @FBTPod, @CTowersCBS, @CBSScottWhite, @Roto_Frank Join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/fantasybaseballtoday Sign up for the FBT Newsletter at https://www.cbssports.com/newsletters/fantasy-baseball-today/ For more fantasy baseball coverage from CBS Sports, visit https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/ To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ You can listen to Fantasy Baseball Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast." To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Fantasy Baseball Today podcast from CBS Sports. Got a fantasy question? Email Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. Get ready to win your league. Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. What's up and welcome into Fantasy Baseball today on Wednesday, January 15th. I am Frank Stamphill, joined by Scott White and Chris Towers. Our 2025 rankings are.

live on the site, as well as auction values. If you want to check out all that, CBSports.com slash fantasy slash baseball slash rankings. Lots of slashes. But they are there and you can look them up. With that being said, some players are really, really tough to rank. So that will be the focus of today's show. We'll be talking through like 15 players

that we found really tough to rank so far in the off season. And we will kick it off with Scott. Scott, give me a player who was really hard for you to rank this off season. Before I say that, I don't, I don't just want to glide past what you said a minute ago. Our rankings are live, everybody, for the first time this 2025 draft prep season. We have full live rankings. We've been working on them for a very long time. And you've been asking about them for a very long time.

Well, now they're here. And so we're going to dissect them. But yes, that's exciting. Christian Yelich is somebody I've had a difficult time ranking. and I can tell it's been difficult for me because I have him way ahead of everybody else, it seems like. And I guess I understand why there's this hesitation. He's coming back from back surgery,

and it cost him a good chunk at the end of last season. But let's remember how he was doing before them. He was performing like an MVP caliber player, to use this since it makes for an easy standard for comparison, head-to-head points per game. Christian Yelich had 3.78 last year. Mookie Bet's 3.75. So that's the kind of pace Yelich was on.

He is, of course, a former MVP. He wasn't producing like he did then in terms of power, but he had regained some of the power that he had lost because of backsornness in the years since he nearly went back-to-back. MVP awards. And also, he had gained a lot more stolen bases. He's been a player who's learned to take advantage of those new rules that took effect in 2023 and has become a much more prolific base dealer, has always hit well, like from a hit tool perspective, should hit for average. So it's a question of, I guess, just how healthy is he? But there doesn't appear, there doesn't seem

to be a question of readiness. So it's more just, will, this surgery take or will it cause him lingering effects? And back surgeries are tricky. I'll grant you that. But considering he had been playing through back issues for years, I almost see it as a good sign that, okay, now it's finally been addressed. And we'll see, I suppose there's a chance he's just never the same, but he already kind of wasn't the same, you know? So for me, I have Christian Yelich 16th among outfielders, which puts them around, I think, 70th in my rankings overall, but his actual ADP is like 110 or something, right? Yeah, something like that.

So the reason that makes it difficult is because, okay, if I stick to my ranking where I think he honestly belongs, I'm reaching for him, what, three, four rounds early? So how much do I want to negotiate that? How much do I want to test the rest of the league's limits with Yelich potentially miss out on a bargain because I'm trying to maximize the return of that pick? And the thing is most of your drafts are going to be with Frank and I. And so you can't push it that far because I've got him 92nd. Frank, I'm not sure exactly where you have him. But like, I'm not quite as aggressive as you are.

But clearly you can't wait for ADP because there was a point. the draft we were doing tonight on Tuesday night where I wanted to take him and I think I ended up passing on him but I I think I'm struggling less with where to rank him just because I'm being less aggressive with him and so I don't have to worry quite as much about you know am I too high I feel like I might be too high even at 92 but yeah I mean look the the thing about Christian Yelich is and and you know I had a decent amount of him last year because the quality of contact in 2023 was really really good expected Wobah was 362 expected Wobon contact was 425 again that wasn't what he was doing at his best when he was an MVP candidate but it was still better than what he

actually produced and so I thought there was room for him to outperform where he was being drafted last year and I still think there is right now it's just it's a third 33-year-old coming back from back surgery. And that's a, you know, how many times in major league history has that gone right? I can't imagine there's too many. Yeah, so I have him actually one spot lower than you, Chris. I have him 93rd overall.

If we're just looking at outfield rankings, Scott has him 16th. I have him 25th. Chris, you have him 24th. Again, that's Christian Yellich that we're talking about. My overall ranking, I actually understated it. I said about 70th. I actually have Christian Yellich 52nd.

I think I've just kind of. programmed it in my head. Okay, but don't actually take him there. Take them more around in the 70 to 80 range. So that's how high I am on Christian Yelich relative to the consensus. Yeah, there's no doubt about what he did last year. And if he's anywhere close to that player again, he could be a bargain. But again, it's just he's coming back from a discectomy, which is they removed a damaged

part of a disc in his spine. The hope is he'll be good for spring. It sounds like he will be good for spring. But again, like Scott said, it's. just what will Christian Yelich look like? That is the big question. Chris, over to you, a player who is tough to rank this offseason. Matt McLean is a tough player for me to rank mostly because it doesn't seem like anyone else

is particularly concerned about anything with Matt McLean. Like, I guess for the fact that he missed all of last season with injuries, he's being discounted a little bit. I'm sorry, I think his ADP is like 100th overall. in that range. And that's kind of where I thought he should have been ranked last year before missing all of the year with shoulder surgery and then a rib injury. And so I kind of feel like there's just very little discount on Matt McClain. And look, I get it. He was in the majors in 2023. He hit 290 with an 864 OPS, 16 homers, 14 stolen bases in 89 games. You project that out.

that's an easy 25 25 pace, 290 batting average is hugely valuable. And then you look under the hood. And there are a lot of things I think worth being skeptical about with Matt McLean. I think we'll start with one thing, which is that he was not a dominant prospect for the most part in his minor league career. He was a pretty good hitter for the most part in the minors. but at double A as a 22 year old, so young but not super young for that level, 816 OPS,

232 batting average, 127 strikeouts and 103 games, massive performance at AAA, hit 340, 1154 OPS in 2023. That was when he got called up. I don't know, maybe he's just a star, but the quality of contact metrics

as a rookie were pretty middle of the road, 50th percent on cent average exit velocity 59th percent hard hit rate 28.5 percent strikeout rate bad plate discipline overall I'm just not sure I'm not sure that this is a guy who is definitely an impact player and I feel like if you're drafting him a hundredth or let's let's get the actual yeah dead dead on the 100th player in ADP 101.8 overall that feels like you're really betting that Matt McLean is an impact player, given that he missed all of last season with injury. And I just,

I can see it and I don't want to be so low that I'm out on him, but I'm fighting with myself not to rank him lower than I am, which is about 125th in my roto rankings. So I'm looking at your shortstop rankings, specifically. You're next after McLean 12th. We all have McLean 12th at shortstop. You have Ezekiel Tovar, Anthony Volpe. Yeah, I can't really.

I think there's like a 30 spot gap at least between him and the rest of those guys. It feels like he feels like the end of a tier. I think he's his own tier. I don't have him in a tier with Adomis and I have Boba Chet well ahead of ADP. So I do have him ahead of Matt McLean. But I think there's a clear drop off after him. But I still am fighting with him. myself to not rank him lower than I do.

I feel like it is a lot of the same. Obviously, it's the same concerns we had last year because he hasn't played a game since then. And he entered last year with second base eligibility. And so a lot of times my reasoning with a player whose skill set is questionable is like, okay, but how badly do I need him here? you know and second base is light on studs it was then it is now okay i'm a little more willing to see

the glass half full so i think part of what makes mclean even trickier now is the acquisition of gavin lux how because he's not entering this year with second base eligibility but we presumed he would gain it really soon and maybe he still will i think as things currently stand what I've seen from baseball writers is that they still view him as their primary option at second base, but it seems like that could change. They tried him in center field. What if he spends all year in center field? What if he only occasionally plays second base and doesn't gain eligibility there until June?

I think those are legitimate concerns now that make you think twice when drafting McLean. All right. Let's take our first break when we return. More players who are tough to rank this auction. season. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in fantasy baseball today. Tough players to rank entering 2025. And I guess it's my turn.

Garrett Cole, one of the premier pitchers of this generation, but he's 34 years old and he had an elbow injury last year. So that is just kind of the simple take on it. Scott and Chris, you both have Cole at SP11. I have him at SP 13. On the surface, he was pretty solid last year in 17 starts at 3.41. ERA, 113 whip over a strikeout per inning, but his swinging strike rate dropped to 10.7%. That's his lowest since 2017 when he was still a member of the Pirates.

And he did seem hesitant to throw his best pitch, the slider. I don't know if that was related to the elbow or whatever it might be, but it's his best pitch. So he kind of does need it to rack up as many whiffs and strikeouts as he did in the past. On the surface, looked like he pitched well in the postseason. and he had a 217 ERA, but that came with a 128 whip, 6.8K per 9, 10% K minus walk rate. So just really didn't look like himself overall. It just wasn't as dominant. I think there's a wide range of outcomes here.

I think there is a scenario where Garikol is just back to being one of the top five pitchers in baseball. I also think maybe he's not over this elbow thing, or maybe it just continues to linger, or he can't throw his slider, and he's just not the same pitcher. So, and he obviously is getting older too, so that you just factor all those things in. And I have Cole at SP 13, but it just kind of feels like a stay away. Like, even if I see him in the fourth, fifth round of drafts where I think that's where his ADP is, I never really want to press the button and draft Garicol. Yeah, it does feel like he could regain that slider suddenly and further removed from injury

and be the top pitcher in fantasy again, which he was regarded as for so long. Or maybe the fact that that slider, it's not just that he wasn't throwing it as much. It wasn't as effective. And that's why he wasn't throwing it as much. So maybe that's an indication that the elbow is not quite healthy. And we find out early in the season that, oh, he needs surgery on that elbow. He's out for the year.

So that's one scenario for Cole. And then there's a middle scenario where he kind of just keeps doing what he was last year, not nearly as good as Prime Garrett Cole, but still plenty good to start in fantasy, having to work around not having his best pitch. And then there's infinite number of possibilities in between the extremes, you know, along with that midpoint outcome for Garrett Cole. So you really don't know what you're getting from him, and you just have to rank him in the spot, in a spot where the reward is worth the risk to you.

For me, that's a similar place to where you have him. I have Garrett Cole 11th at starting pitcher. to me, there are about 10 pitchers that I have ace expectations for, not just they could perform like aces, but I expect them to, 10 pitchers. So I rank Cole right behind them. But the deeper the league, the more I'm going to shy away from him where I rank him because I'm fearful of that disaster scenario where his elbow still isn't right.

And we've talked a lot about the slider, but he also no longer has a dominant fastball. He didn't in 2023 and he still won his first Sion. So that was kind of an interesting thing about Garrett Cole. But he's kind of had to switch from being an overpowering 32, 35 percent strikeout guy to more of a contact suppressor. You know, his fastball velocity is down two miles per hour since 2022. And we weren't too worried about in 2023 because he still managed to be very, very good and had the volume and suppressed home runs and everything else.

But I do think that he might just be a mid three ZRA guy now. So I'm yeah, I think he's really hard to rank. And I feel like the number 11 ranking that I gave him is sort of just a, okay, fine, it's Garrett Cole. I don't want to feel dumb for ranking him too low if he comes back. All right, let's move on. Going over to Scott's, Scott, you sent over a list beforehand. and look, Shane McClanhan is a name we talked a lot about.

We talked to Nick Pollack about him. And just talking to Nick, I mean, I think that kind of gave you, you know, the optimistic view where Nick Pollack has Shane McClainan-Han ranked as a top-10 starting pitcher. And then each of us have him between, you know, SP 39 and SP-45. So we're taking a much more cautious route with Shane O. Mack this off-season. Well, I don't know. The way I'm ranking him kind of goes beyond cautious, but it seems like. like the three of us are basically in the same place where we have them just outside the top 40 at starting pitcher, right? Or at least right around number 40.

36 for sure. Okay. Yeah. And the biggest thing is second Tommy John surgery. There isn't a lot of history from pitchers. There isn't a lot of history of pitchers coming back from that. But what history we do have, it's almost a coin flip that they regain their effectiveness from before and we just need to look at Walker Bueller last year coming back from a second Tommy John clearly didn't look right all year was pretty useless for fantasy after being nothing short of an ace prior to the second surgery now there is a little more optimism for him heading into 2025 because he showed some good signs in the postseason but that isn't much to go on and it it really doesn't refute the concerns I have for McLanahan

And I say that it's just the initial concern that how is he going to come back from the second Tommy John surgery. The other concern is I still don't really know how good he is when fully healthy because he didn't have years of dominance like Bueller had. He had one really dominant cyan caliber year in 2022. And then he came back in 2023, got off to a nice start as Nick Pollock pointed out the other day. but the walks were higher, the strikeouts were lower. It wasn't, I mean, I remember that year because Shane McClanahan was, wasn't he like the top pitcher and fantasy coming in? He was a borderline first rounder at least.

And I think people were pretty disappointed by and large after an initial win streak at the start of the season. And then, you know, everything started not to look right. So was that the elbow beginning to act up? Or was that just Shane McClanahan showing that that 2022 season where he nearly won the Cy Young was more of an outlier performance-wise? I don't know. A lot of control issues here, a lot of questions about who he is when healthy.

And, you know, I get where Nick Pollock is coming from because when I first put together my starting pitcher rankings and I saw where Shane McClanahan landed. It's like, Shane McClanahan. My knee-jerk reaction was I can't have him that low. It's Shane McClan-Han. And I'm not saying Nick Pollock ranks his pitchers in a knee-jerk way. I know he doesn't.

But that was the initial reaction. But the more I thought about it's like, look how deep this is. Look how many pitchers I more or less trust. Look how many of them there are in this player pool. Who am I willing to pass up to take the chance? chance on McLanahan, not knowing who he is, not knowing, thinking he has maybe a coins-flip chance of returning to form after this Tommy John surgery. And it just caused me to put him lower and lower. Yeah. And on top of that, he's pitching in a new environment this upcoming

season. I mean, all the race pitchers are. They're pitching in George M. Steinbrenner Field, which has the same dimensions as Yankee Stadium. And they're going to be playing outside in the Florida heat and humidity. And we're expecting offense to be up. Tropicana is a place where strikeouts and stuff typically does play up four pitchers. So you have those two things. And then we've already been told he's only, he's going to be capped around 150 innings. So just all of those things combined,

it's like, yeah, you can get him as maybe a low end SP3, your SP4 where, okay, you have kind of an established baseline before that. But anything higher than that, it kind of feels like you're playing with fire a little bit with Shane McClanhan. So I totally understand ranking him that low, but he's an electric arm. There's no doubt about it, right, when he's healthy. So I totally get that.

Chris, over to you. Another player who was tough for you to rank Francisco Alvarez. And this is a name that I found incredibly tough as well because, you know, he was this top prospect, incredible power. And then last year, we saw all of that go away. Now, was he playing through injury? He did deal with multiple things. I think that's a possibility. But, yeah, there are some pretty big questions here with Francisco Alvarez.

Yeah, I mean, he had the thumb surgery in April. And look, that's a perfectly viable explanation for why he didn't hit for power last year. The problem is we haven't really seen the truly special hitting ability from Francisco Alvarez through his first two seasons here for power in 20203. But that came with a 209 batting average that was also matched by a 209 XBA. So it felt like he had to sell out for power. it was like a 90.1 mile per hour average exit velocity. That's good for a catcher, but not necessarily like this was a guy who was supposed to be a great hitter, not a great hitter for a catcher.

And this is just as a side note, I'm always skeptical of the like, if he doesn't stick a catcher, he'll be fine somewhere else. That I feel like we don't really, because like if you're actually good enough to be a good first baseman as a catcher, and you can play catcher, you should probably be like a really highly ranked prospect. But anyway, Francisco Alvarez was a really highly ranked prospect. And I just don't know how much of his struggles last year to attribute to the injury. I don't know how much of the struggles to attribute to like, there were some quotes from the Mets hitting coach last year that were like,

we know you can hit for power. We need to see you hit for average first. And like, I feel like that never works out. Like make, let play. players do what they're good at. So I don't know, man. I just, we're not running out of time.

This is a 23-year-old catchers tend to take longer to develop anyway. He's ahead of schedule in that regard, but it's just he's supposed to be an impact player, and I'm ranking him as if he still has that impact potential. But like, I'm not more confident in Francisco Alvarez than I am, you know, Tyler Stevenson, the guy behind him, or even like, I don't know how different the likeliest scenario is for Francisco Alvarez versus Sean Murphy, right? Like, that's a guy who,

yeah, he struggled last year, but it's not like Francisco Alvarez didn't struggle. And we've seen Sean Murphy be that impact bat before. So I just, I struggled. I mean, everybody a year ago was ranking Murphy ahead of Alvarez, right? So I think to me there is a very big tier of catchers who are either merely decent, like the Tyler Stevenson's of the world. Like, okay, we know they're going to be decent, probably not any more than that. And then ones who potentially could just blow up. And it includes Logan O'Hoppy, Francisco Alvarez, this is the order I rank the Mennohoppy,

Alvarez, Tyler Stevenson, Gabriel Moreno, Austin Wells, Sean Murphy. And then I put, yeah, I put Joey Barton, Ryan Jeffers in there too. They're kind of in between being merely decent and maybe there's still blow up potential there. But that, I see that as a very big tier. Alvarez, the most upside of that group, but probably also the most downside of that group, I would say. Yeah. So you both have Francisco Alvarez that catcher 11 and I have him 12th so one spot lower but he's just another name that's been tough for me to click on so far this off season. I really don't want to take batting average drains too and I just feel like the batting average is likely to be low again. I mean at least based on everything we've seen from

Alvarez and maybe he just takes a huge step forward it's still possible like he's 23 years old but yeah I think as of now if I'm projecting it like a 220 or 230 batting average for Alvarez this upcoming season. One name for me, Luis Robert, who we know is extremely talented, but he is injury prone, and he plays for the worst team in baseball, the Chicago White Sox. As of now, by the time of recording this, which, you know, January 14th, but when you're listening, it's the 15th. I wish Luis Robert had been traded already this offseason, but if that were the case, he might not be as difficult to rank. So, Scott, you have him at number 22 in the outfield rankings. Chris, you have 19th. I have him 20th. And again,

This is Luis Robert. He's definitely lower in head-to-head points. He has terrible plate discipline. His strikeout rate ballooned to 33% last season for Luis Robert. But the upside, we saw one year prior when he hit 38 home runs with 20 steals. He was a top 30 overall player in Roto. He was a top 15 outfielder in head-to-pointe leagues that year. So that's the upside.

Maybe last year what we saw is the downside. But he's had trouble staying on the field. He's only played more than 100 games once in his. career and just the fact that he plays for the White Sox, right? It's maybe there's a lack of motivation or whatever it might be. I mean, when you play for a team that loses 120 games, it's got to be pretty tough. So it's natural. I'm hoping for a change of scenery.

Maybe it doesn't happen until the trade deadline for Luis Robert. But Scott, I know he was someone that we both agreed on that just we understand what the upside is, the talent is there, but just the situation and the injuries, it's, he's a pretty Hard wants to rank. Yeah, I don't know what happened to him last year is the thing because he just, he struck out so much more. So in a way, I guess I do know what happened to him. He struck out so much more.

So even though he was hitting the ball just as hard, like all the expected stats were terrible. He looked like he had that strikeout issue beat in, in 2022. But then it went up last year. It went up in 2023. It went way up last year to the point. that it made him, it made Louis Robert not a useful player. He did miss two months with a hip flexor strain. So you could say, okay, that's a significant injury.

Maybe he was still feeling the effects from that. But I would think it would show up somewhere other than the strikeout rate, you know? It mainly comes down to that strikeout rate, which makes me wonder if it's a matter of, if it's something more psychological happening, him playing on such a miserable team. Does he feel the same motivation? And I can't answer that. I don't think anybody can.

I think this year, if Louise Robert is still on the White Sox, it'll tell us a lot more whether that theory has any merit to it. But injury prone, on a terrible team where his RBI and run numbers are going to suffer,

even if everything goes right. And then on top of it, we don't know if Louise Robert is really going to be Louise Robert when healthy because he clearly wasn't last year. So, yeah, difficult player to rank one that one that I kind of only want to draft at a discount. And yet I understand that even where I rank him, that itself could be a huge discount. It could be top 10, top five outfielder even. Here's some evidence that he wasn't healthy. You know, Saris earlier today sent out a post on Blue Sky. 10 biggest bat speed losers from early in the season, April and May, to late in the season, August and September.

Louise Robert was the biggest loser in bat speed, 3.1 miles per hour lower at the end of the season than he was at the beginning. Now, to give you some context, the number 10 guy on this list was Raphael Devers. He dealt with a shoulder injury late in the year. that makes perfect sense. He lost 1.4 miles per hour off of his swing. So that was a more than double drop for Luis Robert. So that does suggest that he just wasn't 100% healthy. He missed time with that hip injury.

But I don't know. I came when we first did our rankings way, way back in October or November, whenever it was. I had Luis Robert 15th. and I was pretty confident about a bounceback, but then you start looking at it. It's just nothing was good for him last year. So it's basically you just have to write off last year entirely. And I don't know how comfortable I feel doing that given.

I don't know if there's a single player who's more a single hitter who's more likely to miss time than Louise Robert based on his track record. You know, even his amazing 2023 season, remember, that season ended with him suffering a, I think it was a grade two MCL sprain, if I'm remembering correctly, that might have cost him like six to eight weeks if it had happened in May. It just happened on like September 17th or whatever it was.

Yeah, it was, yeah, the end of September, it was a spring MCL. I don't have the grade on that, but you're absolutely right. It sounds like that would have forced Luis Robert to miss time, but it happened towards the end of the 2023 season.

The ADP right now for Luis Robert is, If you look at just January drafts at the NFBC 30 drafts have been done 91.1. And I mentioned he was the 26th overall player just two years ago. So there could be big profit potential. It's just I think there's a pretty low floor here for Luis Robert as well. Scott, let's go back to you. Another tough player for you to rank is Jackson Holiday, who was arguably the top prospect in baseball entering last season.

He struggled his first go-around. Plate discipline looked like pretty big problem. for him, which was supposed to be his calling card, basically entering the majors. You have him as your 16th ranked second baseman. I have him up as my 11th ranked, and Chris has him 12th. Yeah, so I guess I'm the one who's bearish on Jackson Holiday right now, but I think that disparity shows how difficulty is to rank. Because actually, when I first entered names into my ranking spreadsheet in October, I had Jackson Holiday close to where you guys do, 12th at second base. And it goes back to what I was saying about ranking Matt McLean,

where the greater the need is at a position or in a category or whatever else, the greater the need is the more you want it to work out, the more you're willing to overlook a player's flaws, just in the hope that you get that miracle solution. And so 12th at second base, that's about when we're looking for a miracle solution there. Jackson Holiday, the consensus number one prospect in baseball last year, of course, still has the potential to be that miracle solution. But he can't be who he was last year.

And I mean in the minors, too. His zone contact rating was much lower at AAA. His output was not the same. He seemed like, and it was evident as early as spring training. He seemed like... He struck out a lot in spring training. We're all like kind of annoyed he didn't make the opening day roster, but I was looking back and it was he had like a 30% strikeout rate in the spring.

Right. He performed except for that, except the strikeouts. And that ended up kind of defining his whole season where Jackson Holiday went from looking like this, this 20 year old hitting savant who was former number one overall pick was just going to cruise to the majors to this guy looks like he needs to work. just in terms of making contact, when as you said, Frank, that was supposed to be his most developed skill.

So last year threw such a curveball into his trajectory, his development trajectory, that I don't know where things stand for Jackson Holiday. He spent some time in the minors. He came back. He was hot for a week or two and then slid right back into being strikeout prone and eventually the Orioles were sitting him again.

I don't think it's a sure thing he makes the team. out of spring training. They could go back with Jordan Westberg at second and Ramona Rias at third, or they could have Kobe Mayo play third and Jordan Westberg at second and leave Holiday to get more time at AAA. Even if he does make the team out of spring training, I don't know what to expect from him because his two stints in the majors last year were so underwhelming. So it may just turn out to be a wasted pick. And as somebody who in a lot of those deeper roto leagues already wasted a pick on Jackson Holiday once and ended up struggling to fill that lineup spot all year in leagues where the waiver wire is thin.

I'm reluctant to do it again. I'm looking back at baseball prospectus's write up for Jackson Holiday and their prospects. And this is like one that really raises like looks really worrisome. now. And it's, if you really want to quibble further, his contact rate fell to merely very good as he moved up the latter this season. And then struggled with contact in AAA last year.

And like not quite Zach Geloff bad, but he had a 75% zone contact rate last season. League average is 82%. His chase contact rate 42%. League average 58%. He just did not make contact when he swung at, anything close to an average level, let alone what was supposed to be, as Scott said, you know, a plus tool for Jackson Holiday.

So it's concerning. On the other hand, he's 21, you know? Yeah, there was an element of maybe he was rushed a little bit last season, which is kind of hard to say when you look at what the other Jackson did, Jackson Trio, just had an amazing. What Jackson Holiday did in the minors, you know? Like, it's hard to argue that they rushed him given how he performed. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. And second generation, major leaguer, son of All-Star Matt Holliday, who himself is kind of a hitting guru. So he came in with all kinds of developmental advantages to, former first overall pick, like I said. It really seemed like, okay, this kid is just going to cruise. And it turned out to not be that way. Now, he has only 21, like you say, Frank.

This, to me, isn't a question of if, I think there will almost certainly be a time when we regard Jackson Holiday as an impact batten fantasy. But is it going to be this year? Yeah. And how much are you willing to invest in that possibility? All fair question. Spoiler alert for me, he is in my breakouts 1.0 because I trust in the prospect pedigree. I trust in the bloodline, the fact that he has that resource to go to, his father, who is legitimately a hitting guru in Matt Holiday, and just trust the Orioles development too, right?

Like, they've had other top prospect hitters come up, struggle at first, and then the next season come back, or even within the same season, breakout. Like Gunner Henderson, his first two months, struggled. Colton Couser got called up in 23. He was bad last year. He was runner up for A.L. Rookie of the Year. and I read some quotes. They're still very bullish on Jackson Holiday,

as they should be, obviously. I agree it's going to happen at some point. We don't know exactly when. I'm betting on it happening this year, and the ADP is 244. So, you know, in a deeper league, I understand that's still like a legitimate starting spot on your roster, but it's not egregious, man.

Like, you know, someone who was just the number one overall prospect last year, I think that that price tag is totally fine for Jackson Holiday. so. Yeah. So you guys both have holiday in the 180 range. I have him 241,

and you said his ADP is what? 244. Okay. Okay. Yeah, which makes sense. Let's take our final break, and when we return, back into players

who are tough to rank this offseason. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in, Fantasy baseball today. We usually hit some news and notes. There's just not really anything going on. I don't think people want to hear about the Mariners

trading for Miles Mastrobony or the Yankees signing Dom Smith to a minor league contract. So we'll just keep things moving here. And Chris, over to another player who's tough for you to rank, a name we've talked about a lot this offseason already, is Hunter Green, who Scott has at SP 24. You have at SP 31.

I have at SP 34, an electric arm, but he has an injury history, and he still pitches in Cincinnati. So I think there are concerns here with Hunter Green. What do you think? Yeah. The biggest thing with Hunter Green is if you look at like FIP, XFIP, those kind of, this is not a derogatory statement, but the dumber pitch pitching indicators, just that they're very straightforward. Strikeout rate, walk rate home runs is all they care about.

He doesn't really look like a particularly different guy, especially by XFIP, I believe, where which adjusts home run rate to, average either way. And then you look at XERA and it totally backs it up. He had a 303 XERA. And that's because Hunter Green went from legitimately bad quality of contact allowed in both 2022 and 2023 to the second lowest expected Wobah on contact of anyone in baseball. He gave up less damage on the contact he allowed than anyone but Justin Steele, who maybe has some.

regression of his own coming, but had established a multi-year track record of being at least better than average at quality of contact suppression. Hunter Green was the opposite. He had been just bad for two full seasons and then had a really, really great season. The problem is that is a stat

that pitchers have control over, but it takes a long time to know how much of that is skill and how much of that is variance. And I have made the case many times before, but I'll point to what Dylan Sees went through. In 2021, he had a 383 X-Wobon contact. 22, 313, best in baseball that year, I believe. 323, 383.

And you remember, Dylan Sees pretty bad in 2023 because what happened in 2022, quality of contact improved. Strike rate actually went down a little bit. Walk rate actually went up. Kind of the same thing with Hunter Green. His walk rate stayed flat, but his strike rate. out rate was down three percentage points. And so it all comes down to how much you believe that Hunter Green went from being one of the worst pitchers in baseball at giving up hard contact to one of the

best. And that's especially important because he does not play in a forgiving home park at all. He plays in maybe the least forgiving home park for giving up hard contact, especially in the air. So I just, I think you can make an argument that Hunter Green's command got better. The command metrics that we have don't really back that up, but I think the command metrics that we have and the people who've created them will admit they're in their infancy. There's a lot of work to go. I think you can make a case maybe that the just mere existence of a splitter, that he did not throw before 2024 and that he threw 8% of the time last year, the mere existence of that made hitters struggle to get the barrel of the bat on the ball. Maybe.

I think you can certainly make that case. I don't find it a particularly compelling case. I think he is in many ways a very similar guy to the one he was prior to 2024. And that was a guy that I think I did rank around 30 to 36 in SP last year. Not a guy I want to draft as an ace, certainly, especially when missed out with an elbow injury last year. Yeah, I mean, Ace, you won't have to draft him as an ace.

I do think it's worth pointing out because you're using Dylan Seas as a cautionary tale for what Hunter Green could be. We all do have Dylan Seas as a top 10 pitcher now. So things ultimately went well for Dylan Seas, clearly. I am the highest on Green of the three of us, as you mentioned, Frank, I have him 24th. I originally had him 16th. And so I've already moved him down quite a bit. And part of that is just, okay, I could have picked any starting

pitcher 15 to 50 for this exercise, right? I keep, I keep hammering that home that 15 to 50, there's so much more or less equivalent talent in that range at the start at starting pitcher that I almost don't care what order they're in. And so I could be talked into moving Hunter Green lower. I don't necessarily want to stick my neck out for him. But part of the reason why I ranked him so high is I felt like he did turn a corner in season. His walk rate got much better over his final 12 starts. And his ERA was 172 during that time.

Prior to it, it was 361, which is probably closer to what you're expecting from Chris. So it seemed like, okay, he started avoiding walks. Maybe that means he was commanding the ball better in general. It doesn't necessarily mean he'll be able to sustain it. But Hunter Green, to my recollection, already had so much helium in fantasy that for him to surge to the end of the season like he did, surely everybody's going to be enthusiastic about drafting him again. It doesn't seem like that's the case.

So that might be reason enough for me to move him down in that range of starting pitchers where I'm not particularly tied to anyone being anywhere. Yeah. For me, it's not even a talent thing. Scott, I mean, you pointed out like his numbers, the command improving and the ERA down the stretch of the season. I think he is truly talented and an elite, it could be an elite arm.

It's more so just kind of the circumstances. He throws 98 miles per hour. He had an elbow injury last year. He has a history of shoulder trouble in the past as well. and then there's Tommy John surgery. There's just the pitching in Cincinnati part of it too. So he's a fly ball pitcher where I know he did a great job limiting hard contact last year, but just merely being a flyball pitcher in Cincinnati,

it's like it just feels like things could go wrong more times than they go right. So it's just the circumstances like if he gets traded to, I don't know, the Padres. I feel like I would love to draft Hunter Green. But it's, yeah, I just don't love the whole Reds part of drafting Hunter Green. So that's why I am actually the lowest of all three of us so far on him this offseason. Gonna bring up Adolius Garcia here. He finishes a top 20 player two years in a row, 2022 and 2023. And then he took a tumble last season.

Really, the entire Rangers lineup just took an entire step back. I don't know if it was a World Series hangover, whatever it might have been. But, you know, now we see him ranked in the ADP much lower. Scott, you have Adelis Garcia as your fourth. 40th ranked outfielder, Chris and I have him down at outfielder 36. And if you look just the quality of contact, took a little bit of a step back. Plate discipline, and it's always not great, subpar, I would call it, for Adela Garcia. And then towards the end of the season, he dealt with a strained Patel attendant in his left knee.

It turns out he could have been playing with that, playing through that injury for quite some time. He also has had the same injury in his right knee. So now we're talking about an outfielder who's past 30 years old. He's had injuries to both of his knees. But, you know, as recently as two years ago, he was a top 20 player. So it's kind of like that Luis Robert where we know the upside is still really high for someone like Adola Garcia. But, you know, just getting a little bit older and having trouble with the knees and things like that. It makes Adola Garcia a tough player to rank this off season.

Yeah, I haven't found him particularly difficult to rank myself because I just kind of feel like it's over. Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. All right. No, I could be wrong. It could be that his knees weren't feeling right all last year. His, it's worth noting his exit. I maybe you already didn't know this.

His exit velocities were very strong last year. As last year was playing out, I kept feeling like Adolese Garcia was going to bounce back. But he didn't. He did a little in August in September, but not to Adolice Garcia of old, not to being a truly impactful bat and fantasy again. So he just kind of suffered through it all year. It's on the wrong side of 30, as you said. He didn't have much of a pedigree to begin with.

It was surprising that he became the player he was, and he just kind of fizzled out. That's my feeling, but maybe this year he'll show up. Those knees will be feeling great, and he'll be good again. Yeah, I think kind of a weird part of it. You mentioned the exit velocities. They were, you know, it was down a little bit from that Monster 2020 season. But not terrible.

I mean, 91 average, X-Exivity, 12% barrel rate. You know, that barrel rate is basically in line with what he did in 2022 when he hit 27 home run. So I think if the Rangers lineup just bounce back, they all just kind of bounce back together like I think we're mostly expecting, then, you know, he'll just improve with them. Or maybe he's just done and like, you know, it could be. But yeah, it's like that range of outcomes for me is what makes it tough to rank

Adola-Carsia because I still see a path where he could, bounce back and be an elite level player. I'm just not really betting on it right now, I guess I would say. All right, let's see. We got about six players left and 10 minutes left to go. So let's do two players at a time. We each have two players left. Scott, you have Brandon Lau and Jerksson ProFar.

Brandon Lau, a very good per game producer. He's getting a strong environment upgrade. Again, moving from Tropicana to George Steinbrenner Field. but obviously has dealt with a lot of injuries the past couple years. And then ProFar, just this random mid-career breakout. He's still a free agent. We don't know where he's going to play. So I would say two very different players,

but two curious ones this offseason, Brandon Lowe and Jerks and ProFar. Yeah, it's kind of the same old story for Brandon Lough, but every year it seems like drafters get more disheartened with him and allow him to slip even more. As I pointed out a couple times in this podcast, second base is pretty lousy. And on a pro-game basis,

Brandon Lowe is about as good as it gets there. If you're just doing OPS over the last five years, I think it's Al-Tuvae, and Cotel Marte may have surpassed Lough, but then Lowe's right there, right after them. So, like, he can produce. He gets a lot of home runs, especially, for that position.

But he hasn't played even 110. 10 games in a season since 2021. And even when healthy, the race is not a strict platoon player, but they tend to sit him. They tend to sit him against lefties in a way he probably doesn't deserve. So I would have been more enthusiastic about now if he'd gotten traded. Doesn't look like that's happening. Yankees, trade him to the Yankees.

That would be awesome. He's playing in Yankee Stadium this year, Chris. So he should be fine. But even so, given the state of second base, given how how productive he can be even with some of the playing time concerns

I have him where do I have him at the position I have him 10th at the position I believe yeah you have him 10th I thought I was the high guy you're not you're only 11th oh man why do I hate Pran and Lao but by ADP he is

21st yeah his buried his prices And as we talked about in yesterday's pod, and we've talked about a lot when we're talking about this early ADP, guys with injury concerns get buried in the NFC format. And that's the ADP we're going off right now. So that explains some of it. It explains some of it. But if you just do a side-by-side comparison, Lao and Andres Jimenez who played 152 games last year.

So Lau 107, because he missed time as usual, Jimenez. 152. Okay, Jimenez has a eight run and five RBI advantage over Lough.

Lowe has 12 more home runs. Jimenez has more stolen bases, of course, 25 more steals. Similar batting average.

You know, that is with Lowe missing all the time he missed. They're pretty close. They're pretty close in terms of just

the actual numbers they put up. And so you just think if LOW manages to play 130 games, it's going to be a big difference between the two of them. And LOW is going to provide the power that's probably more in demand at that point. Well, definitely more in demand at that stage of the draft. And yeah, Hameda is going way earlier. So now I'd rather shoot for the upside of Lowe.

It's just with that disparity between where I think he should go and where he's actually going, sort of like the game with Christian Yelich. How long can I let Low slide beyond where I have him ranked before I just miss out on him entirely? So that's Brandon Lowe

and what makes him difficult. And I'll also point out, Coutel Marte is the only second baseman last year who hit more than 23 home runs. That's a really big edge that Brandon Lough could give you because he might hit, I mean, if he stays healthy,

35 is a reasonable expectation. He was third at the position in home runs last year while only playing 107 games. With 21, yeah. And the year he stayed healthy, he hit 39. So, okay, so that's Brandon Lowe. Jorickson Profar is, I think, the clearest example of, man, I am so far ahead of the consensus on this guy

that, like, I almost have to move him down to avoid reaching, but just because everybody else is doing the wrong thing, like, I don't want to risk doing the wrong thing, too, you know? And what's, what's funny in ProFar's case is I don't really want him. I don't trust what he did last year. It is an outlier over, for, what, an 11-year career, Jarex and ProFar has never come close to producing like he did. And yet he did, and he did in a way that's backed up by the underlying numbers. And so maybe he hasn't. He hasn't, worst, I think a coins flip chance of of being a must-start caliber player again. And I thought putting him about 125th in my rankings would be building in enough of a, enough risk aversion that,

okay, if it doesn't work out, I can live with it, you know. But he's going even like 100 picks later than that, right? He's going more like 225, which, Again, that's such a big gap for a player I don't even want. And yet it seems like if I leave him there in my rankings, I'm going to get him everywhere. He's going to sign somewhere. Yeah, for sure he's going to sign somewhere. It's not like he's just going to lay. I don't know, maybe he goes and plays in the KBO or something.

At the very least, the Padres would take him back. Yeah, like he's going to have a job. I'm very confident of that. I think it's just the suddenness of all of it, right? Because if you look at his career from 2019 to 2023, he had a collective 704 OPS. Jurexon ProFar did last year, 839. So this really just came out of nowhere.

And I understand it was supported by batted ball metrics. He hit the ball extremely hard. The expected stats were great. We kept waiting for him to fall off. And it never happened. But just because it happened that way last year, will it maintain? And obviously you don't need him to do that again

because if you were expecting that, he would be like a top 50 player or a top 60 player. But I think people really have concerns that he just kind of turns into a pumpkin again. I have them too. Like I said, I don't really want him. But you're forcing me to take him because you're making them free. Yeah. So you mentioned you have him around 125th and the 80P is 220.

I have him at 182 and Chris has him at 169. So, you know, even if you dropped them like two more round, Scott, to like the 150 range, you would still be clearly ahead of Scott, Chris and I. So well, and then there's this other angle of what do I want my rankings to represent. Do I want them to be an accurate reflection of what I think will happen or do I want them to be more of a draft guide? Well, I'm a fantasy baseball writer. So I probably want them to be more of a draft guide. But not everybody thinks rankings should be done that way. Yeah. And again, we're going based off NFBC ADP. Maybe when, you know, ESPN or Yahoo ADP, maybe he's a top 100 player or a top 150. You just, you know, once. other things start to come out again. We're really early in the process here. Like we'll get Fantasy Pros ADP over the next month and it'll kind of accumulate everything. And, you know, that could boost some of these players up. So again, by the time we get to March, ADP and things that we're talking about could look very different.

So just keep that in mind. Chris, over to you. Two other players that were tough for you to rank, Tristan Kossis. Happy birthday, by the way, Tristan Kossis. Turns 25 years old today. I'm sorry that we do have to talk about maybe some of the downsides that come with drafting Tristan Casas. And then Ronald de Cunia, who I think we all agree wholeheartedly. We have talked about him a lot this offseason, but given his kind of uncertain status and when will he play for the Braves again, that kind of makes ranking and drafting him right now a pretty tough, obviously. And to be clear, I think it won't be tough in about a month and a half. Like I think once we get close to March.

We're going to have a pretty good idea of what Ronald Acuna a Cune's timetable is. It's just right now, he suffered this torn ACL about 45 days earlier in the calendar than his last one. And he came back on April 28th, the last time. You do the math, and he should be back by mid-March, right? But there was a Mark Bowman report earlier in the offseason where he mentioned very much in passing, not like.

Oh, they don't think he'll be, but it was very much in passing. It was he could miss up to most of the first third of the season, I think, was the way he put it. Just recently on Twitter, he said he's expected. He was, he was, it seemed like he was referring to himself, something he had said previously, but he said six weeks. He's expected to miss six weeks. It didn't sound super official again, but yeah, semi-official. That's, that's scary. That is scary.

That's wild because he suffered the, the injury on. May 26th, that would be basically a full calendar year, which is a timetable, even in the NFL, you don't really see. Like I guess Jonathan Brooks is an example of a guy who missed about a full calendar year, but it's very rare for guys to miss a full calendar year. Maybe they're just being more cautious because he struggled when he came back in 2022. And maybe they just want him to be more comfortable. But I also saw him doing batting practice in a video the other day.

So I like, I don't know. I just, I genuinely do not know. I think I'm a little higher on Acuna than you guys are. He's 21st in my overall rankings. My outfielder number 11. I, but I have met 24th overall and Scott has him at 28th. But maybe he should be 40th overall. Yeah.

Or maybe he should be 15th. And it's just that right now we're, we're kind of flying blind on this. one. So apparently something in a Mark Bowman story was misprinted as six months, Acuna missing six months. That would be surprising. The tweet I'm referring to is Mark Bowman saying, nothing has changed,

still thinking he misses at least six weeks. That mistake has been fixed in the story. So it sounds like he's getting kind of his own opinion. And he's been kind of an outlier on this one. So I don't know how much of this is Bowman's report. I'm not doubting him. I just don't know how much of that is speculation versus what he's hearing. And I think

possibly in 29 days when pitchers and catchers report I don't know if the Braves actually report in 29 days but whenever they do around them they'll just say hey he's going to play in games at the end of April and be back by March May 1st that would give us clarity

or they're going to say yeah we don't expect him for the first month and a half of the season I mean if he's playing if he appears in a spring game I think he's a a top 20 pick easily. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, this is tough in a way that like a lot of these are tough just in general. Like we just, we really don't know how we feel about the player.

Acuna, hopefully we'll have a better sense. But right now we just don't. As for Tristan Kossis, I don't know how much of his struggles again were the result of getting off to a slow start and then getting hurt at the end of April, which is what happened for Francis Gavras as well, versus did what we, was what we saw last year, kind of an insight into what Tristan Casas is,

because we're at the point now where he's 25, he hasn't played a lot, but we're about 800 played appearances into his career, I believe. He's played at a really high level for about two months at the end of the 2023 season. It was probably more like three months. I think it started in July. And he was awesome in those three months.

He was like a 40 homer pace. Yeah. And I think he has like that kind of raw power. I think there's still a Matt Olson outcome here. But hasn't proven himself against lefties. He's tough park for a left-handed power hitter. And the strikeout rate jumped up last year. So I just, again, this is one where I don't, I just don't know how I feel about the player.

And I don't know how much more of the benefit of the doubt we could give him. I could also make the same case, by the way. for Vinnie Pasquantino, who I did struggle a little bit. Not so much in the, I didn't really struggle with these guys in the first base rankings. It was more how high to, like are they really top 100 guys? Casas and Pasquantino, neither of them are for me. With Casas, I still feel that he will break out at some point. I don't know if it's going to happen just, you know, coming up this season.

But last year, 13 home runs in 63 games, that is a 33 home run pace over a full season. So, I mean, if he hits 250 with 30 home runs, that's probably a starting first baseman. That might be like a low end, but that's still pretty good there. And we expect that Red Sox lineup to be pretty good, and he should be in the middle of that lineup, too. So, yeah, I mean, he has dealt with some injuries, some stuff against lefties. So I do see kind of the variance here, the range of outcomes that we could get on a Tristan Kossis. We're kind of up against it here. So I'll just quickly mention the last two players that I had, both.

are pitchers and both are either well both are returning from injury let's just say that because tyler glass now the last time we saw him he was not pitching he uh dealt with right elbow tendinitis in august he went on the iL he did not return the dodgers obviously made a deep run they won the world series tyler glass now nowhere to be found it sounded like he was never even close to returning in the playoffs so and this is just more the same glass now super talented there's no doubt about it he has yet to more than 22 starts in a single season. This is the thing I think is so funny about Tyler Glass now is like he was a top 10

pitcher by ADP last year. I know he had the elbow entry, but like we didn't really learn anything new about Tyler Glass now last year, right? Like he was just the same guy he'd always been and people were just hoping that he would stop being the same guy he'd always been. But I just find that so interesting that like it was it's the elbow. It's the elbow. But like it's the fact.

He had Tommy John surgery two years before last year. And he had, I guess he missed with an oblique injury in 2022. Was the big injury for him there? Yeah, well, it's different knowing he's injury prone just in a general sense and knowing he's coming back from an injury that often we don't see pitchers come back from. A report came out in November where he said he had imaging on the elbow. And to quote him, it looks like it's fully healed.

And that was enough for me to move him up 10 spots in that 15 to 50 range. Just that line, it looks like it's fully healed. Okay. I guess I'm a little less stressed now that it's not going to be healed than he's going to have to have surgery. But at the same time, it's not much either. So I took him from about 34 to I think I'm 24, Tyler Glass now, which is still lower than last year because there's still that kernel of doubt. But, you know, part of it's the pitching pool is,

You've got Glasshouse 16, by the way. Oh, I have been in a row. Okay, so I moved to him up more like 50. Yeah, I'm the one who hates him. I've got him 32. Yeah, and I have him 19, and I just don't really know what to do with Tyler Glass now, because I think, you know, if I'm just projecting him,

I would probably project him for 20 starts. He'll probably make, you know, two thirds of his starts or something like that this upcoming season. And then you'll have to replace those, that other third of the season with another pitcher. You know, that you don't get a zero. when Tyler Glassnow goes out. And despite him only making 22 starts last year,

he did finish as a top 20 starting pitcher in fantasy last season. So I rank him there, but would it surprise anybody if we get to May and he's got to have a second Tommy John? I don't surprise me if we got to February 27. Exactly. So, yeah, it's just scary. It's scary drafting a pitcher like Glassnow.

And maybe you could say the same thing for Spencer Strider, who we know before this injury, was one of the best pitchers in baseball, one of the best strikeout pitchers in all of baseball, but now he had internal brace surgery on his right elbow, and like a cunier, we're not exactly sure when he's going to return in the season A, and B, what is he going to look like, right? Because we don't really have a big sample of starting pitchers returning from this internal brace surgery and how they look just over a large sample of innings after that surgery happens. So there are added layers of

of risk here with someone like Strider and you know the ADP is is not I think he's being drafted around like SP 30 or SP 35 so it seems like people are kind of playing it safe for now as well but he's just I have no idea what to do with Spencer Shrider so yeah look he was the consensus number one pitcher and fantasy coming into last year because the previous year he was an outlier like number one with a bullet for strikeouts so like the upside as as much as people are tripping over over themselves to draft Jacob de Grom for the upside when I'm frankly pretty certain he's going to miss at least half the season. It may just be the back half of the season. I'm a little surprised there isn't more enthusiasm for Strider for what it's worth on Corey Klobber's podcast. Strider said he expects to be throwing to hitters before the end of February and expects to be back in the majors toward the end of April. But that's himself assessing and players tend to set high expectations for himself. So it's not conclusive by any means,

but it is a fairly positive outlook. And the ADP4 Strider in January 151, he's going just after Brian Wu and Jack Flaherty. So that probably puts him actually closer to SP40. I think it also depends on the format, right? Like if you're playing a 15-team league, you might not want to take on that added risk, but if you play in a 12-teen points league

and you have IL spots and you could draft Strider as your SP4 and you could just kind of stash him for the first month or even first month and a half and then he comes back and even if he's not the pitcher he was before if he performs like a low end SP1 or high end SP2

you're probably gonna be pretty happy that you did stash him so I think it also depends on what format you're playing in when considering injury risk and someone like Spencer Shreder. All right we're gonna wrap there for Scott Chris I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning in some fantasy baseball today.

make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify, and we will be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye. Paramount Podcasts.