Fantasy Baseball Today - 2023 First Round Breakdown! The Case For and Against (1/4 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

Happy New Year, Chris (1:30)! ... Trea Turner is about as safe as they come (5:40). ... What's the case against Jose Ramirez (12:25)? ... Should Ronald Acuña be the 1.01 (17:16)? ... Should Julio Rodriguez go this early (22:10)? ... Why is Aaron Judge going fifth overall (29:12)? ... Will Kyle Tucker improve (33:16)? ... News (39:38): Rafael Devers avoided arbitration with a one-year deal. ... Bobby Witt Jr. is being drafted too early (41:43). ... Shohei Ohtani is a unicorn (46:38). ... Will Juan Soto bounce back (50:40). ... Mookie Betts seems like another safe pick (55:15). ... Vladimir Guerrero Jr. sneaks inside the first round (57:40). ... Yordan Alvarez is an elite four-category contributor (1:01:42). Fantasy Baseball Today is available for free on the Audacy app as well as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you listen to podcasts.  Get Fantasy Baseball Today merch here: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-baseball-today?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-baseball-collection 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/ Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday 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. Where fantasy becomes reality. Now here's Frank Scott and Chris. Some might say that you can't win your league in the first round, but you can lose it. Welcome into Fantasy Baseball today on Wednesday, January 4th. Frank Stample joined by the Chris's.

The Chris I? I don't know, we'll figure out the plural for that another time. Chris Towers and Chris the Welsh, they are the gentlemen that are here with me today and today on the show. We're looking at the first round in early ADP, making the case for and against each of those players. Again, new year, new podcast. We're hoping that a lot of people that are rejoining us, you might want to know a little bit about the first round and maybe some of our thoughts on those players as well.

First and foremost, before we actually get into the baseball action, obviously unspeakable tragedy that happened on Monday night. The entire CBS family, both fantasy podcasts, of course, send our thoughts and prayers to Bill's safety, DeMar Hamlin. I know it's football, but that really doesn't matter. I mean, this is a human and it's an unfortunate situation. So obviously, we're hoping and praying for the best to happen here with Demar Hamlin. Hello there, Towers. How was the new year, buddy? How you doing? Good, good. I went out to a to a person's apartment for New Year's Eve and I managed to, you know, avoid having to like go out into the world. So that was fine. I managed to have fun without actually going out on New Year's Eve. And I think

that's the goal, right? Because I, I don't know. I mean, maybe Frank, you're a little younger. Maybe you're maybe you're still chomping at the bit to go out into the world on New Year's Eve. But I haven't wanted to do that in a long time unless it's like, I'll go to a concert. You know, if there's a fun concert, but other than that, trying to just avoid the crowds on New Year's Eve. So it was nice. you know, not too bad. Look, anyway, I mean, we had to, we had to keep it chill because we had to, you know, do a football stream at 1130 on Sunday. So, you know, it didn't go too crazy.

Yeah, I mean, that's basically the story of football season is that this, this balance of, you know, I want to have a little bit of fun on Saturday, but you can't have too much fun because you got to be up early on Sunday mornings to, uh, obviously fix rankings and do all this kind of stuff and live streams and all that crazy stuff. Anyway, uh, Welsh, what's up, buddy? How you doing? You guys just, uh, described, uh,

Being a parent. It's like, you want to have a lot of fun, but it's like, oh, I want to have a lot of fun, but I got kids, so I can't. I am good, my friend, nothing crazy. Again, I have kids. I was asleep before midnight, which is actually the first time I've done that in a long time. But, you know, you're always worn out and you're always exhausted. I don't, I don't fall asleep before midnight any day. I don't really either.

It was, I was kind of an anomaly. But, you know, there's some things that kind of you do on New Year's that make you fall asleep a little bit quicker and stuff like So, you know, no big deal. No big deal. I didn't go out anywhere. I noticed you New Yorkers. That's a common thing. Everybody I asked like, hey, what did you do?

Like, went to an apartment, went to apartment. Yeah. Did a little party. 340 people fit in like a 900 square foot place and we had a great time. And I'm like, wow, that's, this was like 12 people. This wasn't, this wasn't that kind of. But yeah, because like, you're not going into the city. If you live in one of the boroughs.

Like, that's just a bad idea. I did that one time and that was 12 years before I actually lived in New York City. And that was enough. I don't think we said this on air yesterday, Welsh. I think it was off air, but we both said just something we would never do. Like sitting in a crowd watching a ball drop while wearing a diaper just seems like the worst. The worst possible thing ever. And you guys live in New York and I was talking Frank about them like you ever done.

He's like, no, I'd never do that. That's a touristy thing. I'm like, listen, I always want to. It's a bucket list thing. I've never been to New York. I want to come sometime. Hang with you guys. But if I were to come, it would never be.

near New Year's and it would never be to do that. That would be the last thing on the planet I'd want to do. I did. I went to a 2008 into 2009. I'm looking at the poster. I went to see my morning jacket at Madison Square Garden. Great show. Awesome time.

They did the ball drop in the arena and they played until like two in the morning. Then we took a train out to Queens and we were leaving. We were driving home that night. And it was back in 2008. So it was poor before we had like good GPS. And I just plug in my address. South Florida, driving home from New York at 2 in the morning on New Year's Eve. And the Garmin, I'm just like, okay, I'm just going to follow whatever Garmin tells me to do.

I'm going to do. And then I realize, oh, crap, it's taking me into Manhattan on New Year's Eve while it's snowing, which is not something that I've ever driven in before. This is the first time I'm ever driving in through snow. And I'm driving into Manhattan on New Year's. It was one of the most stressful experiences of my life. What a shout out to Garmin, by the way. Shout out to that company.

Long guys. It's the blockbuster of navigation. Oh, yeah. Shout out, man. Good times. Anyway, as much as people want to hear about that, let's get into the first round here. We're using all of the NFBC ADP to this point,

which includes 182 drafts. So quite the sample size. I believe five of these drafts have been best ball. So those are point style. Everything else is five by five rotos. So this is mostly five by five ADP that we're going to be talking about. There's one player on this list that I will very clearly point out. should not be a first round pick in a head-to-head points league,

but I'll let you know once we get to that player. The number one overall pick so far in ADP. Again, we're going to be making the case four and against each of these players. We're starting off with Trey Turner, who is now a member of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Welsh, we will start with you, the case for Trey Turner, first overall.

Well, and this is someone I have taken first overall in some early drafts. Only player who went 2020 this past year with 100-100, only player to go 2020 with the highest-batting. average of any of those players with 20 or more stolen bases. And also it's just a true five category player. I mean, that's what you're looking for. I've always been a pretty big proponent of not chasing my stolen bases like late in

drafts. And I think the best place to find your stolen bases is early on in drafts because those players tend to have, you know, just the best overall floor in ceiling. You're going to get high homers with those stolen bases. So if you can pick and find that spot, that's where you want to do it. The five categories are fantastic. You brought up a great point here. You've got some great notes for us.

One of them, he has not finished lower than six overall in Roto in each of the past three seasons, which I think is a huge marker here. But also, we've talked about it in any instance we can. When you want to start maybe down talking him a little bit, and the stolen base numbers are not quite as elite as they were before, now you have some new stolen base rules. You got a little bit of bigger base. You got less pickoff attempts.

You might see teams being a little bit more aggressive. Maybe the Phillies are going to be more aggressive. early on. I think you could negatively maybe look at the team change as something. You know, that adjustment can be part of a problem. But he's a true five tool player. There are some of these guys in the first round, but there's not many like Trey Turner. So I think Trey Turner is a very, very easy pick in Roto and head to head. And hey, still has a lot of, he's one of those few guys that has value in points leagues that steals a lot of bases. The cliche that I started the podcast with, you can't lose your draft. You can't win your draft in the first round, but you can lose it.

Basically, I want to target the highest floor player possible early on in my draft. And Trey Turner, you mentioned it, hasn't finished lower than six overall in Roto each of the past three years. He's about as safe as they come. Chris Towers, if you had to make the case against Trey Turner here, first overall, what would it be? I think it would probably be that there is, when you're talking about a player who the primary argument is safety. And I don't think it's fair necessarily to say the primary argument for Trey Turner is safety, because the primary argument for Trey Turner is an incredible player who does everything well. But like you guys were saying, he's got a really high floor.

There's not a lot of ways things can go wrong. But you are talking about a guy who's changing teams that brings uncertainty. I think it's just mostly that there's a little more uncertainty in his profile. You know, he is going to be 30 midway through this season. He's changing teams. So it's just we don't know how much he's going to run. We don't know, you know, whether the lineup context is going to work quite as well. Is he going to hit leadoff?

Is he going to hit second or third? So there are just, I think there's some uncertainty. And, you know, stolen bases are the kind of thing, as we've seen with someone like Mike Trout over the last five years, where it can go from 30 to 11 to one pretty quickly. I don't think that's going to happen to Trey Turner. He's a very different type of player. And, you know, in Mike Trout's case, it's mostly injury related, I think. But, you know, it's that a lot of his value does come from.

being a really good base stealer. And if he goes from being a really good base dealer to 21 steals, you know, maybe the the margin for error isn't quite as wide as it could be for someone like Ronald Acuna who might hit 45 home runs. You know, I think that's most of the case is like it may not be a situation where if one thing goes wrong, he has enough to make up for it. But I don't really buy that case, to be honest. It's interesting you said that too, not to like keep belaboring this.

One of the things when I was looking at like positives and negatives, last year he did have a second half declined as far as his power numbers go. He had a homer on a flyball ratio that dropped to 8%. Only five homers over just around his last 60 games. So that might play in a little bit of part of what you're talking about that, you know, you can't have the stolen bases come back down because some of the other pieces don't necessarily hold it up. The only problem though is like that guy has proven to be an A plus hitter.

I mean, he's the most predominant batting average guy of those stolen bases. There are things in the works that work in favor of him stealing more bases this year. And the team context is probably honestly one of the crazier things. He just doesn't have the sexy counting stats that some of those other guys, because we're specifically talking about the case for being one overall here for Trey Turner. He doesn't have the home runs a judge has. He doesn't have maybe those big, big stats of homers and stolen bases combined as a cunia. and you can kind of go down the list, Jose Ramirez,

positionally, might be a little bit better to get those stolen bases at third base. There's some of that, but there's just this, there's this floor that I really think is counting, and he has turned himself into a little bit more, I don't call like a prolific home run hitter, but someone you can count on. But I didn't love that second half decline in homerunner fly ball and those homers overall,

especially with the context of moving to a new team and us not knowing where he's going to be hitting in that. I know a lot of people say that line of protection is not real and fake and stuff like that. But Bryce Harper is not there. Bryce Harper is not going to be there. Yeah. For me, it's less the lineup context because most of a player's runs in RBI comes from what they do. You know, like if you hit 35 homers with a, you know, 380 on base percentage,

you're probably going to get close to 100 runs in RBI in pretty much any lineup as long as you're hitting, you know, top three. But I think, you know, when you look at it, maybe the case would be like last year the Dodgers lead off spot got 762 plate appearances. Philly's got 738 from their lead off spot. number two spot in the Phillies lineup got 722. So, you know, you're, you're talking about marginal differences. You know, that's what a 5% drop off probably maybe a little more. That's not huge. But like, if he's hitting second for the Phillies predominantly,

he could, you know, lose 5% of his counting stats right off the top, in addition to it being a little bit of a worse lineup and not getting as many opportunities. So, you know, when you're talking about 1-1, I think the case for Tray Turner is there's probably not a lot of ways that things can go wrong. but there's probably not a lot of ways for things to go really, really right for him in a way where it's like, I'm so glad I drafted him one one. It's probably like you'll never be upset that you drafted him,

but you probably won't be thrilled about it. Yeah, I don't think he's an A plus anywhere in any categories, but he's basically an A minus in all of them and then maybe, I don't know, a B or B minus in power. So, but he's pretty much as safe as they come. That is Trey Turner. Second overall, and I hate to be that. host, but we've got to move a little bit quicker on these players.

Jose Ramirez, second overall right now. Towers will come right back to you. The case four, I think, is a lot like Trey Turner. The floor is so, so high when it comes to Jose Ramirez. Yeah, there's just, again, there's not a lot of ways for things to go wrong for Jose Ramirez. I mean, we saw what? One, basically one calendar year where things went wrong for him.

And it's worth pointing out in that calendar year, you're talking about a season where he hit 270 with 39 homers and 34 steals. and another season where he hit 255 with 23 homers and 24 steals. So like the floor, as long as he's this level of player is really, really high. He's 30. Maybe he runs less.

It's not a great lineup, all those things. But those things have been there for him. So I think the, this primary thing that Jose Ramirez has for him is just he's rock solid across the board. He's not going to, he's probably not going to be a great help in batting average, but he's probably not going to hurt you.

It's mostly just like Trey Turner's. He's probably an A minus everywhere and probably an A to an A plus and like run score. And third base is absolutely terrible. So if you want to make the case, if you want to make the case that you want to take Jose Ramirez first overall, I have absolutely no problem with that. I actually think in most roto drafts, one and two should be some form of trade Turner and Jose Ramirez. Of course, you can make the case for other players.

But if you're just talking about safety, I think it probably should be these two players and towers to your point before that you made. As long as a player is performing, even if they're in a not great lineup, the guardians are okay. They're probably average at best. Jose Ramirez just had 126 RBI. That is insane. That's just a testament to how great he was this past season, where, frankly, he was playing through half of it with an injury, which you could talk about right now, Welsh, because

what is the case against Jose Ramirez? Well, and these two things might coincide here and most likely do coincide, because I put some little tidbits in here. But let's preface it first with what you've got in here. He underwent right thumb surgery in November. He had a UCL ligament issue. That's going to take him out six to eight weeks. And that's not really necessarily a big issue.

But the suffering of the injury through the season could have led to some of these problems. These were a couple things I found that, you know, especially like players like this, you kind of said it the best. Like he's kind of a cheat code. You know, this position is not great at third base. That's why a lot of people are going to make the case for him being number one overall is because you get Tray Turner like stats, maybe a little as batting average. But you get it at third base. which is great. But in looking,

he had the lowest EV dip at 87 miles per hour, and it was since 2015. That was his lowest EV, average EV he's had. He also had the biggest slug versus X-slug differential of his career, from 514, his actual slug, down to an X-Lug of 407. And that was the lowest X-Lug he has had since 2015. So just a few of those kind of bigger hard-hit number, numbers that were at really low points,

but you could point to the injury causing a lot of those. So I don't know. It's something to take a look at whether it's the injury that puts you there or whether it's some of those underlining really maybe concerning slug numbers and EV overall hard hit numbers. Now, as Max EV is still through the roof, he still sprays the ball and everything like that. But, you know, sustainability might be a question,

whether it's injury or whether it's some of those hard hit numbers. Yeah, I think you could look at the injury as a reason. Apparently he suffered this thumb injury in mid-jury. June and, you know, basically playing the majority of the season and still had a ridiculous year, which he just did. But you see it in the numbers. If there was a player who, if he fell off from one year to the next just out of nowhere and we didn't really, you know, how did this happen?

I guess these would be some kind of indicators that we would see and be like, all right, maybe we should have paid a little bit more attention to that with the underlying numbers for Jose Ramirez. And where did you say the injury was? It was in mid June. Mid June. So July, he still maintained a 500 slow. just to throw that out there.

But it did drop in August down to 466 and a 389 in that September, October. But again, one of the big points to look at, I'd have to find the X numbers, which I don't have in front of me broken down by month. But the overall slug kind of maintained, but it was the expected that really, really dropped. And you actually didn't see the overall slug dip until after July. So just something to look at where we give the excuse 100% to an injury. we also look kind of like you said, there's a little volatility in Jose Ramirez's game if you ever wanted to make the case, but he's been doing it for like four full seasons.

That's what's tough to like go against them. Yeah, and he's got that really pull heavy profile, especially on his fly balls. So that always makes it like he usually does outperform his expected stats. Not every single season, but he he tends to. All right. Let's move on to third overall. And this might surprise some people. Ronald Acuna is currently going third overall in NFBC drafts.

And I'll just say it because Scott isn't here, and I know he would say it. NFBC, shooting for upside, there's some overall prizes. And Ronald Ocuna, I mean, if there's anyone who's going to go 40-40, it's probably going to be Ronald LeCunia. So he has about as much upside as anybody. And I think that's why when you factor in power and speed, that's probably why you see Ronald LeCunia going third overall here. But Welsh will come right back to you. The case for Ronald LeCuna, third overall.

So I like this. You said 2019, 41 homers, 37 stolen bases. He had a 2021, 150 game pace of 43 homers and 31 stolen bases. That's so interesting because a note I put as against is he has only hit 150 games once in his career. And he's on three straight seasons without full played. He's also seen a 5% hard hit dip this past year. And that was also something, you know, coming back from injury, he kind of went into the stolen bases more than the homers. And the projections even show you that's a little bit of anomaly.

But you saw a big barrel dip, 7. and a half percent and you had an overall EV dip of around two and a half miles per hour. Still very young, but those are just a few of the random against that I'm throwing out there if you want to play on those. But the 150 game pace, I think, is out there. Projections are well in his favor. 98th percentile max EV, 92 percentile hard hit, 95 percentile ex-Woba. And he stole the seventh most bases at 29 in under 120 games this past year.

I totally ramped out and I gave some of the against stats and I apologize about that but on the positive side I think there's so much to go for and I think maybe the biggest key one is something I've talked about here on a whole bunch is outfield.

Outfield, I can't, I'm glad to see more people are kind of joining me in this that something has been me for about six weeks is I don't like how outfield goes and you stare at Josea Mirrors, you stare at Trey Turner and you look at Ronald Acuna and you go,

boy, I could just check that right off immediately and I can get one of those outfielders before it really gets out of hand. And he is one of those key players where you get stolen bases with all the other key stats. So I apologize. My brain completely rewired and I went to the negative. But that is a positive case for Ronald

de Cunia. I played both of them. I gave you nothing, Towers. Hopefully you have something else. I did them all. I'll give Towers a chance to talk about him as well. It's still just 25 years old for Ronald Lecuna. One year further removed from ACL surgery. So you hope that he can get the power back on track. Towers, that's what really stands out to me here

is this huge rise in ground ball rate. It seems like he couldn't really get his legs underneath him. And you probably could make the case that that's due to the ACL surgery. Is there any other case against that you'd like to make for Ronald de Cune? I don't really think so. I mean, the leaps he's made as in terms of plate discipline, which, you know, he's always going to strike out a lot.

But like, it wouldn't surprise me if he had an average strikeout rate last next season. He's been getting closer. You know, he's been in that 23, 24% range. He walks a bunch. I'll say I find it a lot easier to make the case for him than against him just because I think Ronald Ocuna is almost, I don't want to say almost certainly. At this point in his career, Ronald Ocuna is probably a Hall of Fame. Like he will probably end up in the Hall of Fame. If you're as good as he is at the age that he's been in the majors, generally speaking, you end up in the Hall of Fame.

The only way it can go sideways, really, is if injuries screw him up. And maybe that's what we saw last year. Maybe the knee injury is just going to make it so that he can't be that same player again. I think the fact that he was still hitting the ball incredibly hard, the fact that he was still incredibly athletic and still running incredibly well, probably suggests that that's not going to be much of a concern. And I'll just, I've started working on my rankings and I'll just say he's probably going to be my number one overall player. I was going to ask you that.

I think it's just the upside is so like he could be 250. the runs plus RBI. Like if you're talking like 90th percentile outcome, like that's in the convert. Like it's possible he's like a top five player in home runs, steals, runs and RBI. Like that's not out of the realm of possibility in that lineup with the kind of player he is.

And so it's really just if he's healthy and he's not, you know, working his way back from an injury, you know, I think you tend to see the first year back from torn ACLs. You probably need like 10. to 12 months. Well, we're about 12 months. We're about, we're going to be about 10 months back from his return at the start of spring training. So I'm pretty much expecting Ronald Acuna to be that guy again.

And that guy is a, has basically been a thousand OPS in the two seasons before last year. So I think he's going to be that guy. I really, I don't have a lot to say against him. All right. Let's move on to fourth overall. Still probably not the player that you're expecting. Julio Rodriguez is the fourth player being drafted on average. right now. And of course, I've got to make Welsh do the case against because I know that he would love to make the case for Julio Rodriguez. So, Towers, you are up. Julio Rodriguez coming off a ridiculous ridiculous rookie season. Make the case for him going inside of the top four picks right now. I mean, we did this, what, three years ago with Fernando Tatis. We did this four years ago with

Ronald Acuna. Like, it's a freakishly talented young player who hit the majors and immediately was an impact player. Generally speaking, betting against that isn't a great idea. I know there's, you know, can they keep it up? Sophomore slump, all these things. But like the indicators are mostly really, really good. He is an incredibly talented player physically. He's, you know, an elite stolen base guy, sprint speed, 98th percentile,

hits the ball really hard. A lot of the same profile as Ronald Acuna, you know, at that same age. And Ronald Acuna, I think the knock against Holyo Rodriguez would be, well, does he have the plate discipline? the plate discipline hold him back. That was the concern we had about Ronald Acunio, was the concern we had about Fernando Tatis, especially. And frankly, Huli Rodriguez's plate discipline

wasn't really as bad as Fernando Tatis as a rookie. But, like, those things tend to improve. And so it's mostly just the case for him is freakishly talented player 40, 30, 40, 40, 40 upside. And he's young enough. He's on the upswing of his career that you probably just shouldn't bet against that kind of player. Yeah.

just finished 17th, he being Julio Rodriguez, finished 17th overall in Roto in his age 21 season. And that was missing, what, 20-something games? Yeah, it's absolutely ridiculous stuff. 90th percentile barrel rate, 97th percentile sprint speed. Welsh, good luck, bud. You have to make the case against Julio Rodriguez going in the top four picks. By the way, I want to point out, do you guys, I know, we're not even talking about this. Do you remember how squeezed he was in the first, like, six weeks of the season?

Do you remember he was getting just crazy squeezed calls throughout the whole thing? Just imagine if he had got that. I don't want to point one thing out in this process. I am playing a little bit of the game here, especially with some of those. When I'm making some negative cases, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm being like, go against this guy.

Oh, that's the whole point of the exercise. It's a good exercise. You should do this when you're like preparing for your, you should be like checking your own biases. This would be like exercise. Yeah, and I think this is almost similar to me in like radio. Like if you're, if people listen to radio,

every 10 minutes or so, program director would say, do a station check. Be like, yeah, everybody. This is Frank Stavele, Chris Wells, Chris Towers. We were talking about blah blah, blah, blah, you would do that. This is my check just to remind everybody, hey, we're just making the cases for funzies because I think it is hard to make the case, especially for these first four or five that we had, really moving them out.

But in that, I cherry picked a little bit. And I found an article talking about, what did you say? Sophomore slumps. This was a University of Georgia Baseball Analytics intern. Chris Gaither found that of the 12-position player, rookie of the years from 2010 to 2018. Only three improved upon the rookie's OPS overall and war per 100 plate appearances in their sophomore season. The only player to improve on both his OPS and war was actually Chris Bryant, who was the 2015 in a rookie there. Everyone talks about like sophomore slumps.

There's a million other things in this article I found. What is interesting about it, I just want to point out is it goes up to, it was a 2021 article, but it's only cited through 2018, which just happens to coincide into the Ronald de Kuni. Time and Fernando Tatis, the players that kind of broke this mold. And Julio Rodriguez, unfortunately, is a mold breaker. This is the type of player he is. I did find a couple interesting things, maybe just to chew on for everybody. He had a 39 and a half percent whiff rate on breaking pitches this past year.

And that accounted for around 37 percent of overall pitches he saw. And what is a very, very common thing you see with rookies from rookie year to sophomore year is an decrease in fastball percentage and an increase in breaking and off speed pitches. So you've already got something the pitches are going to be able to lock into, which is a pretty aggressive high whiff rate. He still had a pretty good batting average, I want to point out. But 37% of the time with a huge whiff rate on breaking pitches, on those breaking pitches as well, he had the lowest exit velocity run.

The other two on, this is on baseball savant for fastballs and off speed pitches. his EV average was still over 90, except when he got to these breaking pitches, which was 88. So take a little look at that. I think there's a little bit of a recipe for pitchers to potentially attack if they can. So if you believe in sophomore slumps,

maybe there's a few things in there, but he's a mold breaker. The one thing I would point out is one, he didn't really have like any ridiculous outlier stuff. Like it was a three, I think 335, which is high, but for a little high.

I honestly think it's going to be, I didn't mean interrupt you. I apologize. It was a 345 babup on the season. I wonder if that's going to be a little high overall. Yeah. There was a little bit of that in there. But like when I think of like rookie of the year sophomore slum, this is my Marlins fandom coming in. But Chris Coglin. He won rookie of the year in 2009, hit 321, 365 babb. Chris Coglin was not a guy who hit the ball particularly hard. He wasn't a particularly fast guy. Generally speaking, award winners perform worse the next year. because when you've won an award, that means you were the best in the league. And generally speaking, it's really hard to be the best in the league multiple years in a row. Mike Trout does it. Most players don't. And so that's what I would say is like, yeah, most MVP perform worse the next year.

I don't think there's an MVP curse. It just means like you had a great year. So that's one of the things for me. But like Julio Rodriguez, he's not one of those rookies of the year where it was like a fluke. He's not one of those guys where it was just like, man, everything went right for that guy. but this is a, you know, a 65 grade future talent, whatever the prospect grade. Like, this is one of the most talented players in baseball. Maybe some things went better than they might have in a different version of the universe,

but it's not, he didn't have like a freakishly outlier good luck season or anything. Yeah, I still think Julio Rodriguez's upside is next year he's the 101. He's the top drafted player. He goes 4040 and he just completely smashes once again. I do think his floor is a little bit lower, specifically with the speed, which I found interesting. He only had four steals in the second half.

He's clearly fast enough to run, you know, predicting steals. It's kind of fluky, I get it. Like, he started hitting for power in the second half, so maybe they just didn't want him to run as much, whatever it might be. But that just worries me a tad. Will he run as much? I think he's capable,

but it's just something that stood out to me as a little bit weird when it came to Julio Rodriguez. I think the floor is a little bit lower, obviously because we haven't seen a long enough track record for Julio Rodriguez. We have seen a track record for Aaron Judge, who is going fifth overall, and look, I'm just going to throw this out there because I don't know if you guys are going to bring it up. The case for Aaron Judge, according to the Razball player raider, Judge earned $62.9 worth of auction value in a 12-team rodeo league. Paul Goldschmidt was the next closest

at $40.7. Judge was 50% better than the next hitter in fantasy baseball, which is is insane. It's absolutely ridiculous. So I guess that's kind of like the preemptive case four, which Welsh you can continue to make right now. No, you know what? I actually,

I'm not going to make an executive decision. I'm on here once a week, but I kind of think I'd like to hear you make it for and against. I think you making both of these cases, this is one you're very dominant about. All the thing I would throw out here, and I would actually love to hear if you have any case for the negative, is that you can get into like,

you know, what Aaron Judge did and maybe there. there are some points of not believability. One of the things I keep going back to, besides the outfield stuff, is like if you take 20% of his production off, because I think most people's biggest argument is, hey, listen,

the repeatability is not going to happen. And projections would agree with you. Projections don't have him even hitting 45 homers after hitting 62, and that's almost kind of scoffy a little bit. But the projections, just throwing out steamers, are still over 40 homers, over 10 stolen bases,

over 100, 100, and the batting average is still over 275. So one of my biggest points is like, listen, if he is 85% or 80% of who he was last year, it still might be the best player in baseball. And he's still an incredible hitting environment with, I don't want to say, it's definitely not a worse division. Orioles are getting better. Boston is not getting better. Rays, you know, I think still maintain, Blue Jays still maintain and stuff like that.

But it's just, it's still a great hitting environment. And you can take off a significant amount of production from him and he is still incredibly valuable. the only things are things that we can't really probably identify. Like, will he stop stealing bases or will he all of a sudden not hit lefties or something like that? So I think it's a kind of lame argument to just be like, well, you just can't repeat. And it's like, well, that doesn't really matter because he's still going to be incredible. And what he did last year is something. He's the prolific power hitter at a position that's a little bit of a worry in one of the best ballparks on the Yankees.

it's a pretty easy argument. Yeah, and I will point out that he made a conscious change last year. If you look at the batter ball profile, he hit more fly balls than he normally does. Aaron Judge, before 2022, he was a hitter. He was a pure hitter. He was a line drive hitter. It just so happened those balls would go over the fence because he was just that strong. Last year, he consciously hit more fly balls and he pulled more fly balls,

which for Aaron Judge is just a recipe for a massive, massive power season. Towers, you are up the case against Aaron Judge. fifth overall. Historically, players who weigh 282 pounds don't tend to stay healthy. Now, that's kind of unfair because there's one player who weighs 282 pounds in Major League Baseball, who's been an everyday player, and that's Aaron Judge. He's probably the largest player in Major League history, and he has struggled to stay healthy in the past. And just because he stayed healthy two years in a row, we did with Giancarlo Stanton, who had, I think, 2018 and 2019, or he two healthy seasons in a row and then has continued to get hurt. So I think that's really the only

case against it is just maybe he'll get hurt, but maybe every player will get hurt. And we do this every off season. I get yelled at every off season because I don't care about injuries. And so you can tell that this is a slightly disingenuous argument from me. But it's basically just he's really big and maybe he'll have trouble staying healthy. Maybe he doesn't run as much as he did last year. Like, you know, 16 steals. That's a clear outlier for him. Maybe he gives you 8 to 10, something like that. Yeah, I think you should draft him expecting 8 to 10. As well said, even if you get 75% of the production you got this past season,

he's probably a top 5 player once again in fantasy baseball. The sixth overall pick right now, four outfielders in a row, by the way, is Kyle Tucker, who is entering his prime. He's turned 26 years old in mid-January, and he has been awesome. Each of the past three years continues to get better. Towers were coming back to you. The case for Kyle Tucker in the top half of the first round. sixth overall. I guess the case four would just kind of like what we have with

Trey Turner and Jose Ramirez is that you just you get really solid production across the board. He's not necessarily elite at anything, but he's in a good lineup or great lineup. He's a very good player. And it seems pretty safe. Like he's done it three years in a row now. he's been a very good hitter, the underlying stats, mostly back it up, he doesn't strike out, he walks a decent amount, he's just kind of good at everything. So he's got a lot of, this is something I've been talking about a lot with fantasy football is like, we tend to think about outcomes in terms of like a one, you know, he took a path to get there. But like there's a lot of different paths that players can take to being good. And Kyle Tucker is probably a player who has a lot of different paths to being. a good player. Like, let's say he has an outlier power season. That's within the realm of possibility. Let's say the power is not quite there. Maybe he steals five extra bases. There's a lot of different ways for things to go right for him and probably not that many ways for things to go wrong. All right. Well, the case against here, Welshie, when it comes to Kyle Tucker, I think we are

projecting a little bit because as great as he is, as he continues to get better. He still finished only 14th overall in Roto last year. Now he's being drafted sixth overall. So it seems like there is some projection involved in this ranking. What is the case against Kyle Tucker? Yeah. And I think it's interesting too. I mean,

I'm just going to point out, I think overall it's hard to make big cases against Kyle Tucker. But positionally, I think that's like what you're getting at. It is like we haven't broken that big top 10. The counting stats going up, I think are the big key. Same amount of homers this past year.

Stolen bases went up significantly. RBIs went up significantly. It's a killer lineup. The only thing that I continuously look at with him is the batting average is just not great. And that always leads me to worry about extended slumps. Luckily, he doesn't strike out a whole bunch. And he ironically did have a relatively lower babbip than, you know, at least he's carried for three straight seasons or his career average.

I mean, those, again, are things that kind of work in his favor. But, you know, he is pretty pull heavy. and the shifts haven't worked in his favor, but without the shifts, that is going to work in his favor. I would ultimately say that the lineup is great. He hits a little bit lower in the lineup with maybe any struggles of batting average.

That might be a problem. Also, you know, like the stolen bases are great. The Astros aren't historically a team that are hyper, hyper aggressive with stolen bases long term. They got to worry about health. I think it's this again, this is actually projecting on the other side. I think you can maybe project that that could start

to maybe taper down a little bit. But I think it's hard to make a bad case outside of like, he just hasn't performed at that level. So how much further are we going to go? I think it's a crazier thing to project a really high batting average, even though, and that's one of the wildest things here, is he has hit, I don't understand this,

maybe you guys can tell me, steamer projections, have him at 281. He has only hit over two, he has only only hit over 270 once in his entire career. and there's a massive shift in projections than this year, which if he were to hit that, I think that is something that pushes him

in why he's being seen as a six overall based on a lot of projections on something he really hasn't done. I think the batting average thing, it's sort of like Jose Ramirez, where you see the strike rate, you see the play discipline, you think,

this guy should be hitting for a better batting average. But like some guys don't. Some guys put the ball in the play and 75% of their plate appearances, but still, run relatively low babbps. And in his case, maybe there's some launch angle issues

and some inconsistency that he could iron out. But it also may just be that like Jose Ramirez, he's a, you know, the underlying, the total skill set when you look at like the, you know, the stat cast bars, it's all like 70th percent down. It's not 95th percent out. You know, we're not talking about Aaron Judge as a hitter.

And so it might be the kind of thing where like he gets the most out of a pretty good skill set as a hitter. but you have to trade something. He trades power for average, maybe, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And he did this also with the lowest hard hit percentage of his career, 41.9% launch angle was the highest of his career. And barrel percentage was still in the 10 percentile. So there's actually like there's like weird anomalies, I think, that look in.

I think this is the start. And maybe you guys would disagree. Maybe Julio is that. But this is kind of the start of the like, you know, this isn't like, even though you, it's hard to build some of them. Like, this isn't the lockdown guys that we've been talking about. I feel like he kind of identifies the first thing where we're reaching a little bit. You'd rather pick fifth than sixth for sure. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's a tier change.

I think there's a clear top five this year as well. Whatever order you want to put those five in, that is up to you. Last thing I'll mention on Kyle Tucker, Welsh, you brought up the shift being gone. And I will always reference this. It is a great graph. It's a great picture. Graphic that was put out by Chris Clegg, our buddy at Rodo Clegg on Twitter. and Kyle Tucker was shifted 91% of the time in 2022. His bat-up against a shift was 244.

His non-shift babbib was 425. The third biggest difference between shifted babbip and non-shifted babbip. So we could see some of that projection in the batting average there where maybe he can get up to 275 or up over 280. And last thing, the lineup spot has been so frustrating for Kyle Tucker because he is legitimately one of the top, 20 hitters in baseball, top 25 hitters in baseball, and he's batting fifth and six consistently for the Astros. Like, I don't care that Michael Brantley has been there, done that. Drop him in the

order. I want Kyle Tucker up at two, and then I think we could see the counting stats be even higher moving forward. Let's take a quick break. We got some news and notes that we'll get to, but we'll take a break and we'll be back right after this. All right, the news and notes, Raphael Devers, avoided arbitration by signing a one year $17.5 million deal with the Red Sox, and the two sides are still engaged on a long-term extension. Man, if Heimblum can't get this done, they are going to call for his head in Boston because I don't really know what he's done this offseason

and what he's been doing the past couple of years, honestly. John Henry was getting booed at the Winter Classic game yesterday. I don't know if you guys saw that. I do not blame anybody for doing that. The way that the Red Sox have handled their star players the past couple of years, like Mookie Betts and Zander Bogartz, it's, that's not really the way that the Boston Red Sox should be handling their players.

Carlos Correa and the Mets update are slated to resume negotiations soon. What does that mean? I don't know, but there was an update that the contract will look different than the one that came out initially, so I don't know what that contract is going to be. They're still kind of ironing things out. Would not surprise me if

maybe Carlis Korea winds up on his third team of the offseason at some point. You didn't see the other big update where he put on Instagram a picture of his kid with I love New York, like a little onesie on. I think that's a pretty big deal here, Frank. You're bearing the lead here. Yeah.

Going to the Yankees. Yeah, I heard that. You know, I guess it would have been the worst thing, but I don't know. They got some prospects coming. I don't want Carlos Correa. Anyway, Dominic Smith, we spoke about Willie Calhoun yesterday. Dom Smith is not on the same level as Willie Calhoun for me, but he's not far off either.

I love Dom Smith. I hope he gets it going. He signed a one-year deal with the Washington Nationals. from 2019 to 2020, he was awesome. He hit 299, 21 homers, 937 OPS. Since then, he has played 203 games, hitting 233 with a 643 OPS. So, hope he gets back on track,

but don't really have much to go on in recent years. The Orioles acquired Ryan O'Hern for cash considerations. Outfielder Rafael Ortega signed a minorly contract with the Yankees, and apparently the twins have expressed interest in Michael Waka, who quietly had a solid season with the Red Sox in 2012. 2022. Let's get back into the case for and against the first round. Seventh overall, Bobby Witt, Jr. You know, I kind of wish Scott was here because he'd probably just completely rip this one apart.

But this is the player I was going to reference earlier. He should not be a first round pick and head to head points leagues. I don't know that he should be a second round pick in head to head points leagues. There's just a clear delineation between his roto value and his head to head points value. He doesn't walk very much. He's a lower OPS kind of hitter. he should not be a first round pick and head dead points. So I'm just going to get that out there.

Welsh, it is your lucky day. You get to make the case for Bobby Whit Jr., which I know you've already done anyway. Yeah, I mean, I like Bobby Whit, but I'm not going to really disagree here.

I'm just going to throw this out here. I think this is too high. If he's going seven, this is way too high. This is also very clearly, I know I do this a lot and I apologize if it annoys people, but when we talk about the NFBC stuff, I'll always throw out when a catcher goes high.

Like, when we talk about M. Jim Lendez, I'm like, well, it's two catcher league. just remind about. This is clearly one of those things where it's the upside stolen base chase that happens. And this is to me going to be a stark difference between what you're actually going to see and like what we all play, you know, in our home leagues and stuff like that. Well, you're going to see in like a head-to league compared to what NFBC is going because I just don't think it's going to end up being like that. But he's one of eight players that had a 2020 season. The 30 stolen bases, I think are what stand out to a ton of people, not quite in the Julio Rodriguez range, but

He was able to maintain a relatively solid up to batting average with the 2030. And I think, again, come back to some of the projections, that projections working in favor, I think anytime you see projections working in favor of rookies, I think he can get excited. Derek Hardy is kind of famously someone who will kind of just kill the rookies and people get on his case about it. But once you have some data to work with, you're going to see them go up, you've got a lower strikeout percentage that's put in his favor, a higher batting average, more counting stats. and he put up 150 games last year. He's got some warts that he's aggressive on the base paths.

And like the Jose Ramirez saying, he plays at a position that you kind of get to take advantage up. And I think that's a really big key. It's a kind of poor position with elite stolen bases, solid power numbers. You can't call him a five tool player yet, but he's got the makings of a five tool player if that batting average comes up.

I guess you could also argue the runs in RBI are going to be relatively limited in Kansas City overall. But hey, if you're going to play the upside on Venetian, Veni Pasquantino moving up. Bobby Whit Jr. is going to play a big role in that. He's very polished hitter who's only going to get. I truly believe he will only get better.

But seven overall is pretty tough to stomach, right, Towers? Yeah. I mean, I think the case against him is just that he's more a collection of interesting skills than a fully formed baseball player. Like, you know, Frank, when you were when you were introducing him, you were using the word is a lot. You know, he is this. And it's like, well, based on what.

what he is right now, he's not worth this. And that's partially the case for him, I would argue, is that he was the 36th overall player last season while being very raw and very much not a finished product. Now, you know, the rawness doesn't come together in his strikeout rate, but his whiff rate was 65th percent. His chase rate, 16th percent. So he's a very aggressive hitter who's still learning how to be a good hitter. And so I just think a lot of it comes down to.

the case against him probably not going to help you in batting average right now probably needs to take several steps forward, you know, as a power hitter, as an overall hitter in order to justify this value. But, you know, I think when you can say all of that and also say that he was a top 40 player last year, like, that's not a bad bet to make. It's not a bet I'm going to make it seventh overall necessarily. but it's it's a justifiable like hey this is a guy that you should probably bet on if it's 12th overall i feel a little better about it it's kind of interesting seeing like bobbishet going behind him and it's a short versus third base but like that kind of seems there there's this crazy upside play of insane improvement put on bobby wit which i think is a lot of expectations and i think also sets him up to be a fantasy pariah if he doesn't live up to

those expectations. We turn on players like this real. And I think people can turn on Bobby Whit really hard when you're passing on guys like Boba Chet in favor of him. So yeah, look he is the odds-on favorite to lead third bases, a lead third baseman in steals. I mean, to get those out of position steals is just it is a huge asset. But there are still some downsides, specifically in the batting average, but Bobby Wood Jr. continuing to get better. Hopefully can live up to this draft stock for at least some people, the ones that are drafting him. 108, the eighth overall pick right now is

Shohei Otani for my office fans out there. My horn can pierce the sky. This guy is a unicorn. He is unreal. Back-to-back seasons, 34 plus home runs and 11 plus steals. And guess what? If you don't want to use him as a hitter, you have an elite starting pitcher on your hands as well.

Towers, I've already started to make the case for Shohei Otani, but you can continue it right now. I don't even like what wouldn't be the case for him? He's a freakishly talented player who has put together two elite seasons as a hitter in a row now. He's got power. He's got speed. There's hope that he could be more of a contributor in batting average than he has been.

What was it? 273 last season. It wouldn't shock me if he got that up to say $290 in a good year because he is fast because he is, you know, potentially going to benefit from this shift being taken away or significantly limited. And like, you're talking about a guy who could easily go 4520 with good batting average. You know, it's, it's a really easy case to make. It's just, I guess there's a little bit of concern about the overall ceiling in terms of playing time, you know, both as a hitter and a pitcher, but not really. All right.

Well, don't you have the. Don't you dare ask me this question. Don't you dare ask me this question. I mean, it's, it's one sentence, right? Well, it's utility only. Yeah, utility. Well, I could say you could potentially look at injuries. Yeah.

A tiny bit more injury prone when you take all of the stuff he's going to do on the mound that could take away from hitting. So I think that is he's extra injury prone or susceptible. Maybe that's a better way to put it. Injury susceptible because of what he's doing on the mound. But yes, 100% correct. He's util only. I actually did a dynasty mock draft for the. ITL pod and I took him one.

And then I just had this thing that happened in the second round where Bryce Harper was there. And I'm like, ooh, but then I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Bryce Harper's Util only. And I can't do this. And I can't figure. And I literally couldn't make it work. And I kind of did something in Dynasty that I didn't want to do. So yeah, it's a util only that really stinks.

But I think it's hard to make a case. And unless you get into like, he's a hitter, pitcher only. And then it kind of comes back to the same thing where it's like, okay, well, if he's hitter only, the only really argument against it is U. and the injury stuff. If he's pitcher only, he doesn't inquire all the, he's not necessarily like top five at that position.

He's still phenomenal, but he's not a first round pick as a pitcher. And I guess maybe you could make the case that like, there's a lot of moving pieces. And so like, if something goes wrong, maybe it's a little harder for him to figure it out because he has to do both.

But I mean, we've seen him. Like that's, you know, that would have been the thing four years ago. You know, we've seen him do it now. Yeah. Yeah.

When it comes to Otani, we spoke about this yesterday, Welsh. We were comparing Bryce Harper, where if he didn't have util only and he had outfield eligibility, how much higher would he go? Like, before he got hurt and all this stuff. And we said, you know, he'd probably move up around six or seven spots, like into the middle of the first round. If Sohei Otani was not util, if he somehow had outfield eligibility, he's a top three pick. I mean, he's legitimately in the running for first overall.

But in a daily format, he's the number of. an overall pick in whatever you guys want to talk about. But I know here we do talk a little bit more in weekly stuff. I have him in the Scott White Dynasty League and it is a difficult thing for me. It's a 2014 league. He could be a cheat code, but I do have to make the decision every week about where I want to place him. And he never gets the second start or almost never gets the second start.

If you want to hear a rant about Shohei Otani's eligibility, listen last week to Welsh and I giving out our New Year's resolutions for fantasy baseball. It gets me fired up. But people don't agree. And you know what I like is I did. get like hate about it. I got like disagreement, but I didn't get hate about it. I do feel very passionate for whatever reason about the nonsense that still surrounds him. All right. So we've got about 10 minutes left and we have four players left to talk about. So let's kind of zoom through

some of these. 109. The ninth overall pick right now is Juan Soto and Towers. You know that you have to make the case against for our buddy who kept calling him Juan Succo last year. So we're going to start off with the case for Welsh, you're making the case for Juan Soto. Yeah, I love this that you put on here. 150 game average before this past season, 31 homers, 108 runs, 100 RBI with 10 stolen bases and a 300 batting average. This coincided with a pretty difficult 2022, which I know so many people don't want to hear it, and I'll make this quick.

You don't want to hear about the idea that players have like real life thoughts and processes that go on. And the entire season, he was being built around moving off of the team that brought him in. And I think there's maybe a part of effect on that. The other one is pretty glaring, a 249 Babbip. which is almost 100 points lower than the previous year, and it's around 60 points lower than his career average.

I think those absolutely stand out. He still hit 27 homers. It's just the batting average absolutely tanked, and it coincided with the BABIP. He had an X slug that was 50 points higher than his actual slug, and he had a almost 25 point higher batting average on expected batting average than that. So I'd throw all of that out. You've got BABIP that's working,

against him. You've got ex-expected numbers that are way in favor of him. You have the trade. You have the potential trade all season long. Now you're going to put him in the Padres lineup for a full season with Fernando Tatis Jr. coming back. Yeah, I think it's a pretty easy case. I got to tell you, I think it's impossible why anyone is taking Bobby Witt Jr. over Juan Soto right now. I know why, but I'm not doing it. I'm not going to do it. Yeah, it's speed and it's third base, but you can make the outfield argument for Juan Soto as well. Last year, I will point out, splits against lefties. He had a 701 OPS.

That's never been an issue for him in his career. On his career, it's 841. So I just, I am betting on him, bouncing back against left-handed pitching, bouncing back overall. This is probably the easiest bounce back that we've talked about so far in Wansoto. And Towers, you now have to make the case for Wandsucko,

which is a bad version of Wonsono. Yeah, like, look, man, he's a 24-year-old. who's like he's arguably the best young hitter since Ted Willie. No, no, no. Make the case against. This is illegal. From a fantasy perspective, especially in the format that we're talking about,

which is Roto, he's never been outside of the 2020 short and season. He's never been like an elite elite guy because he doesn't really, he gives you very, very good batting average. And then mostly he's been good. You know, he's a good power hitter. He gives you a lot of runs in RBI, but not huge numbers. You know, what's his career?

He has 110 RBI season and 111 runs, which is very good, but he only has the 100 RBI season. So he's been a guy who, you know, the walks kind of take away from him in Roto. And head to head, the walks are great. You actually get points for them. But in Roto, you know, he's been like the number 12 hitter. I think if you look at 2019, 2020, and 2021, he's been like right. around 12 to 15 among hitters. He's never actually been outside of 2020

a first round caliber player. I don't believe that. Like, I think he is, but you wanted me to make the case against it. And it might just be maybe he walks too much to be as good as he can be in Roto. All right. Thank you, Chris,

because I know that that was tough for you. I have a feeling that you're going to rank Juan Soto much higher than this ADP. And there were some suggestions last year. There were some analysis that suggests that he, his style of hitting, you know, the parts of the park that he hits the ball to might be more susceptible.

You know, he hits to the power alleys, which is a misnomer because power tends to actually get harmed in the power alleys, you know, left center, right center. So,

you know, it's possible that the new debtor ball makes him a good power hitter instead of a very good power hitter, which is what he's been, you know, most of his career. So it's possible that that's there, but I, I think he just had a weird year. He's, he's arguably the best hitter in baseball.

All right. So we've got three players left, five minutes left. So each of you is going to make the case four and against each player that you are assigned. Towers are coming back to you. Mookie Betz is going 10th overall, the case four and the case against Mookie Betz. The case for Mookie Betts is that he's won in a great lineup. Two, he's done it every year. Like we've seen down years for Mickey Betts and he always bounces back.

He's just a rock. He's like a metronome kind of player for your fantasy team. He's good at everything. He's going to give you a lot of county stats. I don't really worry about like, he's one of those players that people can look at like, oh, well, his average eggs of velocity was down. It's like he's never been great in that regard. He's just such a good overall hitter.

He's got such good bat control that like he's going to steal a few home runs that maybe he shouldn't because that's the kind of skill set he has. I guess the downside would be he's not running as much as he used to. That was a big part of his value. You're starting to see it, especially in the batting average. You know, it might be a situation where he's cheating for power a little bit and losing the batting average, along with the steals not being there or the speed not being there. He's had some injuries. He's in his 30s now.

So there's a few ways that things can go wrong. And he could be like a, you know, 260, 25, 10, 25 and 10 kind of guy rather than a, you know, 35 and 20 guy, but I don't think there's really a lot of ways for things to go wrong for him, unless he can't stay health. Which of those two sides do you believe more, the case for, the case against?

The case four. Okay. I tend to think, like, when you're talking about Hall of Fame players, just bet on them. Like, that, like, I think we, like, it's one of those things where, like,

I love my advanced stats. And I do a lot of research and all that, but there are some situations where you can kind of lose the forest for the trees. And I think like, I think Paul Goldschmidt's a good example of someone who I've lost the plot with a bit over the last few years. Like, well, he is declining. And it's like, yeah, this guy's still incredible and you should probably just keep betting on him figuring it out because he's done it so many times. And that's that's with mooky bets.

Like he's figured out how to keep being great, you know, when he's lost something. It's funny when those guys, I'm not going to go long, but it's the falling knife syndrome. I did it with David Ortiz for years. years. Just thinking of Goldie, it's a, you don't want to be the one, you know, you don't want, you're worried it's going to drop and you don't want to be the one that's on the back end of that falling knife, but it never actually happens. That was David Ortiz for sure. All right. Let's move on to 11th overall Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Welsh, you are up the case four and the case against him. The case against, real quick, I think is really based off of, this is what

a baddieer looks like for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., by the way. This is where you are going to ding him. After it's 32 homers, just falls short of 100,00, has a career high and stolen bases at 8 at first base and still hits 274, which in this climate is like hitting, you know, 315 in the 90s. So that's still a really good place to be. The case against, I think, works in that big spot. Slug was down compared to last year, and I think it's all based on last year's stuff. Hard hit went down 5%, which I think people have a little bit of concern about. and his launch angle was the lowest of his career with some of those early struggles he had in the year, at least as far as the batting average wasn't really there, but just, you know, getting into the full counting stats.

One of the big ones was his struggle against lefties hit 295 in 2002. In 2022, he hit 245, you know, and he was pretty like 290 above both righties and lefties in 2021. And he sunk on that respect. So that really, really hurt him. I think the place in favor of it is this is still a dominant young hitter who has found ways to come back from that. I mean, he had a 279 batting average, which was solid. It was better than his 271 in the first half. He had a bad September, but between June and August, he was able to maintain his batting average over 280 with a 340 month in there.

And projections are dominantly on his side. They do not buy, even though there's just enough sample size in there, they do not buy the 270, It's 292. This is the guy that broke projections as a rookie when he was like a 300 projected batting average. They've got him over the 32 homers at 40, 100,00, and the little ad and stolen bases. I think what you're just seeing is comparing off of another year for an elite hitter, and people are discounting you and they're doing you a favor on Vladimir Guerrero. But if you want to make those cases against, I think there's a few pieces you can go.

And really it's just statistical from last year, which we're still really good. Yes. I love the durability for Vlad. He has missed three games in three seasons, which in today's climate of baseball and fantasy baseball, you just don't really see that very often outside of Whitmeryfield, who's, you know, this generation's Iron Man, basically. So love that for Vlad.

The case against, I tweeted this out today as well, I got to let you know a response that I just got to too, which is absolutely hilarious, and I love people like this. His average launch angle went from 9.4 in 2021 to 4.3 this past season. ground ball rate was once again up over 50%. So there's just inconsistencies in launch angle year over year, month over month, and that's why we see some massive years, some massive months, and then we see some still really good months out of Vladimir Guerrero,

but maybe the power is down a little bit in those months, the home runs, the slug is down a little bit. I think if he can ever consistently figure out how to just hit more line drives and fly balls, I understand, it's easier said than done. This might just be how he's wired. That's fine. He's still an awesome player regardless. But if he does lift the ball, then we can get back to 2021 levels when he was the top player in fantasy baseball.

I tweeted out a graph, like a line graph with launch angles and everything. This is a response I got. Did Hank Aaron care about launch angle? The thing I hate about that response is like Ted Williams did. Like we know that. He talked about it. He wrote a book about it and you can find it and read it. So like, I don't know if Hank Aaron did.

But like, Ted Williams was the, is the best hitter ever probably. So like, if that guy cared about it, that's good enough for me. I love those responses. Those are so hilarious. That's like, that's like, you know, did Blockbuster care about what Amazon streaming numbers look like this month? Like, it's just so outdated. Like, it's a great comment.

It's a great comment that has like no real warranted credit to it. I absolutely love it. 12th overall. And I'll quickly make the case for and against his player. It's Yordon Alvarez, the case four, he was ridiculous. last year. 306 batting average, 37 homers, nearly 100 and 100 on the runs in the RBI. 1019 OPS. That was the second highest OPS among all hitters behind only Aaron Judge. Speaking of Judge, I truly believe Yurdon Alvarez is the only player that really

rivals Judge in terms of how hard he hits the ball consistently. John Carlos, Stan. Well, yeah, I guess, yes, you can say that. But also for batting average, which is something that Yordaun Alvarez can do in one of the best lineups in baseball, in the Houston Astros. and he did all of this while having a terrible August hand injury. He hit 234 with a 634 OPS. So imagine what his numbers could have been

if he just had a regular Yordon Alvarez month in the month of August. I think the only case is against is that for Roto, he doesn't run. He's not going to give you steals one bit, but he is a legit, legit four category contributor. He is elite in those categories. And maybe...

Are we totally past the knee thing? Yeah, that's the only thing I was going to bring up to is like, you kind of have it in the back, your mind. Obviously he's still young and like he stayed healthy the past two years, but you know, degenerative knees for a, you know, 22 or 23 year old at the time. It is a tad bit scary. So I will say that as a case against as well. But man, if you have a turn pick this year and you get Yordaun Alvarez, some of the names we haven't even mentioned yet, you could pair him with like Freddie Freeman. Yeah. Is there a higher floor than those two hitters together

right now? Or Bobauchette, if you want to get some seals on your team there, Bobauchette and Jordan Alvarez together. Even Manny Machado, you lock up third base and outfield, man, I mean, if you're at the turn in a 12-team league. I can take a pitcher. That is nice. Yeah. I was going to say, that's one of the funny things. People are like, hey, did you guys just talk about first-round hitters?

No, no. That's the NFBC right now. There is no first-round pitcher going. And I think we're going to see that even outside of the NFBC, but we'll have other podcasts to talk about that strategy-related, why pitchers are going a little bit later than we have seen in years past. Just a quick question to wrap up with, guys. based on this ADP, everything we just talked about, which draft slot would you be eyeing the most in the first round using this ADP?

I think Chris said it earlier. I think five. I think five, I think is a really slick spot. Maybe four or five. I tend to be the type of person. Sometimes you can just take it into your own hands and you can just have one or two and just take your favorite guy. But like at four or five, you get kind of the drop on maybe the next player.

So I think I'm going to just say, let's just go with four. then maybe it's not I have to take the last of it. I get to kind of make a choice of the last two, get a really valuable player. I'll stick with the four here. Towers? Yeah, I think four is probably the place to be. Yeah, I think that's the right answer too,

but man, I really just talked myself into 12 picks. So in a 12 team, you know, one thing is historically one tends to have the highest win rate, I believe, which is like not necessarily. It's kind of what you would expect, but it's a little surprising. but like I think you always want to be near closer to the top than the bottom.

All right. We're going to wrap there for both Chris's Welsh and Towers. I am Frank. Thank you all for listening and watching Fantasy Baseball today. We'll be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye.