Fantasy Baseball Today - 2024 ATC Projections! Undervalued Targets & Overvalued Fades (1/31 Fantasy Baseball Podcast)

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Before we get into projections, let's start with Corey Seager's injury (4:25). ... Jorge Polanco was traded to the Mariners (8:20)! ... Justin Turner signed with the Blue Jays (12:53)! ... Will Walker Buehler's season be delayed (19:30)? ... What are ATC projections and why are they important (26:22)? ... Why is ATC higher on Josh Naylor, Jake Burger and Willy Adames (39:40)? ... Taylor Ward and Kerry Carpenter seem undervalued (49:16). ... Why is ATC higher on Zach Eflin, Shane Bieber and Nestor Cortes (53:18)? ... Which players are ATC lower on entering 2024 (58:40)? 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.  Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/FantasyBaseballToday 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 lead. We're fantasy! Now here's Frank, Scott, and Chris. Why do the ATC projections love Zach Eflin and hate young players? Let's find out.

Welcome into Fantasy Baseball today. Frank and Chris here on Wednesday, January 31st. Today on the show, we're talking ATC. And we have some pretty big news to discuss. Corey Seeger had sports hernia surgery and there was a trade. Not the biggest trade, but a trade nonetheless. So we'll get to that in just a little bit. You know if we're talking projections, we had to bring on a special guest.

He is the founder of the ATC projections, host of the Beat the Shift podcast. He contributes to Fangraphs, Roto Baller, and that's right, CBS. Also, hell of a pickleball player. Welcome to the show, Ariel Cohen. What's up, Ariel? Oh, thanks so much for that warm welcome. I'm most proud of the pickleball, of course. Yeah, yeah.

I played pickleball with Ariel a couple of weeks ago. Not the best decision, you know, brought them around some of my friends who are, you know, still kind of beginner level. And Ariel's just out here. Just crushing them. Smacking everybody around. Not the nicest thing, Ariel. It's fine. Oh, good.

A couple of nice friends who was nice to hang out with you and get some exercise, you know? Yeah. And look, a little quick aside on the pickleball thing. don't knock it until you try it because I see a lot of criticism out there and oh it's for old people if you play a competitive game of pickleball I have a feeling

you will rethink that opinion I'm not opposed to playing pickleball when I see it on TV and I watch it it's not the most exciting viewing experience I will say

that's that's all I can't dispute that it is really fun to play anyway big congrats to Ariel Not only were you just nominated for Fantasy Baseball Writer of the Year by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, but the ATC projections were ranked as the most accurate projections in the industry for the fifth year in a row. So there is no better time to have you on not only to talk about projections in general, but specifically to talk about these ATC projections. Just show off your feathers.

You know, this is your time. Spread the wings and fly, baby. Well, glad to be on the show. It's nice to be back and talk some baseball. Yeah, let's get into it. Shout out to Scott, by the way. He was nominated for Fantasy Baseball article of the year. And to our five-minute podcast, how about that?

FBT and 5, which was nominated for Best Short Form Video. Look at us, Chris. Look at us. We made it. We made it. All right, let's get into the latest news and notes. We will start with Corey Seeger, who underwent surgery for a sports hernia on Tuesday. The injury first occurred in the postseason, which makes his World Series MVP and just his postseason in general.

even that much more impressive. But for those wondering why he didn't have surgery right after the season ended, the initial thought was that rest would be the best remedy for Corey Seeger. The Rangers are hopeful he'll be ready for opening day. According to my extensive medical research, sports hernia surgery typically takes anywhere

from six to 12 weeks to recover. So opening day is just about eight weeks away. You know, it's definitely up in the air at this point, Chris. I don't want to overreact, but I have lowered Seeger in my overall rankings. I moved him down from 17th to 26th in Roto. I moved him down from 9th to 16th

and head-to-head points. What say you? Yeah, so I'm looking on baseball prospectus's injury tool and last season, if you remember, Randall Gritchick started the season on the IL after undergoing sports hernia surgery. and it was about two weeks later in the timetable. He had his, or it was least reported on February 14th.

He did not play in a game until April 29th. So, you know, you apply that same timetable and look, every player's different, every surgery is different, all those caveats. It would imply a couple of weeks into the season. So there's a chance he's ready for opening day, but I think the thing you have to keep in mind, is injuries are really hard to predict.

They are slightly less difficult to predict for a player like Corey Seeger who seems to have something every year. So that was already being baked into his projection. And you can already, you can say, oh, well, great. He got it out of the way. That's not really how it works, though. So like if you're projecting him for 135 games out of 162 and he misses the first two weeks of the season, at least my perspective would not be, well,

we'll just take those 14 games he's going to miss at the beginning of the season and subtract that from the 27 we projected. And he's good like that. I would still expect Corey Seeger's chances of suffering and injury would be higher than the average player. And that's especially true coming back from a surgery. So I moved him down like the 37, 38 range of my rankings overall. I believe, let me confirm, 38, right ahead of Michael Harris, right behind Jose Altuve,

which that feels like a pretty good range. Like, those are very good players who Altuve's got his own injury concerns given his age and recent history. I don't know, but it was about a 15-ish, 20-ish, I think 20-ish spot drop in the rankings for me. Yeah, I mean, look, that's obviously not nothing. and we'll see how the market reacts here as well. Ariel, I noticed that ATC had Seeger projected for around 137 games,

kind of baking in the fact that he usually misses time with at least one IL-Stint per year. Do you foresee the projections pulling this down even further now after the sports hernia surgery? Yeah, I think a touch. I think it's going to go down in my next iteration of ATC. We'll see what that does. But yes, part of it was baked in and part of that will definitely go down as well. I'm interested to see how it affects the 10. Texas lineup.

Will there be less RBI opportunities for the rest of the squad? We might see that. And always to remind you, if you're playing in a league with playoffs, well, his value should not go down. In fact, it could be a buying opportunity if others take his value down. All right. We had a pretty decent size trade. I would say the Mariners, they can only go so long without making a trade, Chris.

And here they are. They acquired Jorge Polanco from the twins in exchange for four players, two major leaguers. reliever Justin Topa and Anthony Desclanee and two prospects, Gabriel Gonzalez and Darren Bowen. Let's start with Polanco, who will step in as the Mariners starting second baseman. He's now 30 years old, still a productive player, but has had major issues staying on the field. He's missed 140 games over the past two years dealing with recurring left knee and left hamstring injuries. It's also, on paper, it looks like a pretty rough park shift going from target field, which is right around league average. in offensive park factor to T-Mobile Park in Seattle, which is dead last.

It's a solid real-life baseball move for the Mariners, but Chris Polanco is kind of an afterthought and fantasy right now, is ADP is 271. Should that be the case? I can't say it should go too much higher, but it seems like a decent value to me. This is someone who, you know, when he's on the field, last season he played 80 games, had 14 home runs, 48 RBI, had 789 OPS. Like, there's been some. some decline from that 2019, 2021 peak for Jorge Polanco, but he's still a pretty good player. He makes a decent amount of contact that tends to lead to,

you know, high-ish RBI totals relative to his overall production. So I'm perfectly fine with making him a late round target. It's staying healthy has been a big concern for him as well. So I don't think this injury or this trade changes how I'm viewing him, but it's one of those where it serves as a reminder. Like, oh, yeah, Jorge Polanco. Don't forget about that guy. Yeah, I think he could be a solid player

if he manages to stay on the field. It's kind of a pseudo-contract year. I think he has, there's an option involved at the end of this year. It might be a player option. I think it's a player option for like $12 million. Right. So we'll see what happens if he could stay on the field.

But in terms of quality of contact, Jorge Polanco last year, career high 13.8% barrel rate, second highest among second baseman. with at least 200 batted balls. So still does have some pop. Now can he stay on the field? On the twin side of things,

Edward Julian will slide over to second base with Alex Kirilloff at first base, whenever he's healthy. And this does open up more playing time for Willie Castro. Who is somewhat interesting? He's 26 years old. Last year he hit 257, nine homers, 33 steals in only 124 games.

His ADP is outside of the top 300. Ariel, any interest in the twins? inside here. Edward Julian, Alex Kirilloff, Willie Castro. Yeah, I think it bumps up everybody. Julian now gives him a shot at maybe getting 500 at bats for the year. Willie Castro, I had him on a lot of rosters mid-season last year. Very dynamic, and he has dual eligibility at third base and outfield.

So if you're drafting in a league, he might be a very versatile bench player now that could gain some value. And I'll throw out another name that I think could gain. Nick Gordon, he's been pretty interesting. he has maybe 10, 10, maybe 15, 15 upside, depending upon playing time. He's gotten some bats in the past. He might see some increased time across of this. And of course, you know, Alex Cherloff could get injured at any time.

So that would open up more playing time too. So Nick Gordon, a name to pocket in some deeper, deeper leagues. There probably is not another lineup in baseball that has more injury concerns than the Minnesota twins. Just year over year, Royce Lewis has. struggle to stay on the field. Obviously, Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton. Biron Bucston. Biron Bucson is going to stay healthy. It's great.

The aforementioned Alex Cree-Law. Starting center fielder. Yeah, we'll see. But look, obviously things could open up. So, yeah, if you play in a deeper league, I think Nick Gordon could be a name to remember. Anthony Descalfani provides some depth to a rotation that currently includes Chris Paddock and Louis Varland. So

probably going to need that depth at some point, I would imagine. Two Twins prospects to keep an eye on, Brooks Lee and Austin Martin. now have an easier path to the majors, and both are former first round picks. So big upside with either one, and I do think there's a chance we could see either, both at some point this year, for the Minnesota Twins. Lastly, Gabriel Gonzalez seems like a pretty damn good prospect. 20 year old outfielder, I think it's a really nice get by the Minnesota Twins in this deal.

One D.H of the many has finally been scooped up. Justin Turner signed a one year $13 million deal with the Toronto Blue Jays. Turner is entering his age 39 season but proved he still has some juice left last year. He hit 276 with 23 homers, 86 runs, 96 RBI. He finished as a top 60 player in Roto and averaged 3.1 fantasy points per game.

Great season overall. It was the perfect situation for Turner who was in Fenway Park, obviously the green monster. It's a great place to hit for right-handed batters. He now heads to Roger's Center in Toronto where offense was down in 2023 following their new renovations.

I don't know if that's just like a small sample blip if it's something that's going to carry over, but for the one year that we had these renovations in that ballpark, offense did not really play well. Chris, you'll get the first word here. What do you think about the fit Justin Turner to the Toronto Blue Jays? You are muted, sir.

Classic. One thing that I would keep an eye on with Turner was he was playing through a bone bruise and his heel at the end of last season. It was one of those like he probably shouldn't have been playing, but he wanted to tough it out. And there were a bunch of quotes where he said, uh,

something like, you know, if, if, if I'm able to play, I'm going to play, you know, I want to put out a,

a good, I want to make a good impression for the young players and all that stuff. So like he was really bad towards the end of last season that might have had something to do with it. The counterpoint to that would be he suffered the end of at the end of July. He had a great August and then had a terrible September. So I don't know how much of it to put on that. But I think he's definitely still got some juice left. He's a very boring player because he's 39 years old and anyone over 27 is boring in the fantasy baseball community's eyes.

But yeah, I think he's still a useful corner infielder who once the season starts, like he's a viable first or third basement in a lot of situations. It's just you're not going to, and you won't have to draft him that high to take advantage of it. The only thing with Justin Turner, Chris, I know you mentioned first and third. He only has first base eligibility to start. There is a chance he could gain third base. I was watching MLB network earlier. They said there's a chance Turner could get some starts at first, third, just to kind of give some guys days off, but obviously will mostly be the DH for the Toronto Blue Jays. Justin Turner's NFBC ADP is 252. And Ariel, I've been targeting Turner in some of these early drafts that I've done,

draft and hold formats, where you get them this late as either your corner or utility, because he provides solid batting average and pop later on in the draft. You know, at that point, it's not the easiest thing to find someone that can hit 265, 270 plus without hurting you in other places. So I actually really like the cost. It'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. And he had 96 RBI last year. He's a guy that he finishes as a top 60 player and his ADP goes down year over year.

I love these kinds of players. Nobody wants them. I don't know why. I mean, he's returned. I'll give you the auction equivalent values in 15 teamers for the last three years. $22, $15, $19. He's going for an auction equivalent of three. I mean, how is it not profit?

He can play for half a year and still be profitable. Yeah. I'm sorry. Frank, you said like, oh, he'll hit 260, $2.60. 260, 270. You want to know the last time Justin Turner hit below 275? It's probably five years ago. More, more, more. 2012. Wow. All right. The last time Justin Turner hit below 275, Mitt Romney was running for president. The last time he hit worse than 260 was never. Yeah, yeah, crazy stuff there. So we'll see. Look, normally, it's been weird with some NFBC ADP markets.

sometimes they wait for players to sign and then the ADP goes up. I mean, for a lot of these guys, we know that they're going to play somewhere and they're going to have a starting job. So he'll probably get a little bit of a bump, but probably not enough of a bump. And I do think Justin Turner is a nice name to target there in deeper leagues. Let's take our first break when we return. We also got some news on Walker Bueller. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in.

Let's talk about Walker Bueller, who not so great right now. Now, the Dodgers are considering delaying Walker Bueller's season debut as they look to manage his workload coming off his second Tommy John surgery. Apparently, Dave Roberts had this to say about Walker Bueller, quote, he'll be ready to go in spring training. But when we decide to make his debut in 2024 is going to be determined, whether it's the first week or a month later, we're going to kind of wait and see how spring goes. Apparently, Robert said that back in December, I'm not exactly sure why we're only. kind of hearing about it now or it's coming to the surface. Chris, should we react to something like this because,

look, Bueller was probably projected to miss time anyway, right? If you look at projections, it's like 1.30, 140, inning, so he was going to miss time at some point. It's just kind of unfortunate when you know that time could potentially be at the beginning of the season. Yeah,

it'll be harder. Like, if we get to March and he's not, like, stretched out all the way, it'll be harder to jump on him. but like when you're going 110th, you know, you look at some of the guys around him and like, okay, Dylan sees zero injury concerns beyond the fact that he throws hard and he's a pitcher.

After that, the pitcher's going off the board, Joe Musgrove, Cole Reagan's, Justin Verlander, Sunny Gray. Well, Sunny Gray, I guess, doesn't have a lot of injury concerns, but the other three guys there, quite a few workload innings performance concerns. That's the stretch at starting pitcher where you kind of expect that there are going to be. be some wards. And I'll look back to 2019, if you remember, there were similar concerns for Walker Bueller. If you remember, they didn't stretch him out in spring training. It was a deliberate choice. He didn't end up throwing 90 pitches in a start until April 17th. You know, it could be something like that.

Now, I would guess it's going to be a little later than that. And there are going to be times throughout the season where they skip starts. And, you know, that's going to be true. I think of a lot of pitchers on the Dodgers. So I think, I think, downgrading him is potentially an overreaction given how good he could be, although I do have some performance concerns. But where he's going probably doesn't need to change too much, I wouldn't think. I do have some questions about Walker Bueller, because if you remember last year, he was ramping up for a late season return. He pitched, I think, one or two innings in the minors, and then immediately stopped, and the Dodgers just kind of said, nope, we're not doing this. let's put it off until spring training next year.

It just kind of feels like maybe something happened. I don't know. I could be reading into it a little bit too much. ATC projections have Bueller as the SP 50 projected for 133 innings. He's currently the SP 29 in NFBC ADP. Ariel, my guess is after this news, Bueller will probably drop down ADP at least a little bit. How much that remains to be seen.

Yeah, he'll drop down a little bit in ADP. He'll also drop down in projected value. with the news coming out. I mean, I have reservations about anybody on the Dodgers, to be honest with you. Like, Shohei Otani, is he going to get full playing time? Are they going to rush him back right away? Tiaska Hernandez, is he going to get playing time? They might save him for the playoffs.

Anybody on the Dodgers, I just have concerns that they're going to be extra, extra cautious. And Bueller hasn't been healthy recently. To me, it's too high a spot to pick somebody a pitcher. You want a nice and solid investment. when you're around your SP 50, I would take a chance on somebody else and not take the risk of Bueller. Because honestly, you don't know exactly the story. We're just finding out bits and pieces now. Yeah, I had Bueller at SP 30 in my rankings. I updated some things on Tuesday. I dropped him down to

SP 39, just behind Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, and Carlos Rodan, who obviously has his own injury concerns. But not far off from where you were originally, Chris. I know you were lower on Bueller. You had him around SP 35. so I kind of just got him down to where you had them, maybe even a little bit below that. So we'll see what happens. If Bueller does miss time early on, Gavin Stone and Emmett Sheehan were mentioned as names that could step in. And personally, I do think that Sheehan has some breakout potential

if given the opportunity. Old friend Aaron Hicks signed a one-year deal with the Angels. And before we just collectively scoff at this, Hicks was pretty good with the Orioles last year. 65 games with Baltimore, 275 batting average, seven homers, six deals, an 806 OPS. Rasta Resource currently has Aaron Hicks as the small side platoon with Mickey Moniac. The Pirates announced Tuesday that Paul Skeens,

the first overall pick in last year's draft, has received an invitation to Major League Spring Training, and if he's not up on opening day, he should be up early in the season. A generational pitching prospect, everything we've heard is best pitching prospect coming out of college since Stephen Strasbourg, so do with that what you will. Reese Hoskins said Monday that he expects to be a full go at the beginning of spring training.

He missed the entire 2023 season due to a torn left ACL and signed with the Brewers last week. Carlos Correa said over the weekend that he, quote, started turning the curve. It's kind of a weird way to phrasing. I guess he meant turning the corner, but he is turning the curve with the recovery from his left foot injury in mid to late December. Big actual baseball news, the Angelo's family has reportedly sold the Baltimore Orioles to a pair of private equity billionaires for $1.725 billion. I'm not sure how quickly will feel the impact of this, but if the Orioles decide to spend money at some point this offseason, like on pitching, for example, like a Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery or anyone like that, then yeah, I think they could be pretty damn dangerous. I mean, they're already going to be dangerous, but it just kind of feels like they need a little bit more pitching.

So we'll see if we feel that effect right away here with the Baltimoreals. Quick few things to promote. Our first mailbag will be out later this week, and we have a new segment Prospect Spotlight. If you have a top prospect, you'd like us to evaluate, leave a five-star rating on Apple and drop the prospect's name in a review. We'll choose one prospect to highlight in each of our mailbags,

and you could also send your questions to our email address, Fantasy Baseball at CBSI.com. CBSI, the letter I.com. Make sure to sign up for the Fantasy Baseball today newsletter. Chris does a great job with it. Sends you a bunch of information and articles right to your inbox for free. Head to CBSports.com slash newsletters. Click on the FBT logo, punch in your email address.

It's as easy as that. Let's talk about what we were meant to talk about today. ATC projections. Again, statistically, objectively, objectively, the most accurate in the business over the past five years. Arielle, I'll throw it your way. You can let people know,

what are ATC projections? Where can we find them? How do we use them for fantasy? So the ATC projections are a smart aggregation system where I blend many other projections available plus some history,

some three-year history together They're in a smart way. So I'm not just taking a straight average of them. I give more weight to what projections do best. If a certain projection is great at predicting homers, I give more weight to that. If another one is better at predicting pitcher strikeouts, they get more weight in that model. And I have a model for every single statistic you can imagine here. And by doing this, ATC minimizes parameter risk, which is why it's been the most accurate over the past five years.

So you'll never get an outsized projection. oh my God, Aaron Judge is going to hit 70 home runs. You'll never see that. But what ATC does is it gives you a very good bypass signal. If a player that ATC undervalues, you'll see better buy percentages, better hit rates, I should say, for players at ATC signals as a good buy and better not hit rates, right?

Less failure, better failure rates, I should say, for players that ATC says is wrong. You can see ATC right here on CBS Sportsline. You can actually get it in a downloadable Google sheet really handy. So be a subscriber to Sportsline. It's also available on Fangraphs, RotoBaller. And big announcement, now it's going to be available on RotoWire, starting tomorrow. So check it out, RotoWire for ATC projections.

Definitely use them. I like you, Frank. I go to the Fangraphs auction calculator. plug in your league settings, right? If you have a three outfielder league versus five out of fielder league, put in exactly what you do in your league, select ATC projections, and it'll spit out a ranking of all the players

and actually dollar values, so you can see just how much better a player is for the next. Yeah, and I cannot stress how valuable that tool is. So go to Fanggras.com. If you hover over the projections tab on the top, you'll see something on the bottom of that drop down. It'll say auction calculator. You click on that, and like RL said,

you punch in your league settings. And from any type of categories, if you're playing a points league system, you can customize it to set up the points however you want. And it spits out a dollar value based on what these players are projected to do by ATC. And it's really, really valuable, especially when you go through the auction calculator,

it has NFBC ADP on the same page. So it's so easy to see, all right, well, this player's ranked higher and the ADP is much lower than that is someone that you should be targeting. It's like a very clear bargain. So I would say obviously use that tool. I use it a lot. It's not obviously the basis for all of my rankings, but it is something that I like to use personally myself. Which brings us to another kind of talking point here, Ariel, why are projections so important? I mean, I'm sure you get asked some version of this question. I mean, we talk about it every single year and normally Scott's

here to tell us why he hates projections. He uses rankings. And obviously there's a debate of fantasy analysts rankings versus projections. But if you think about it, and Scott I think has made this argument, when we're ranking players, we're kind of coming up with a projection in our head, right? We're kind of trying to figure out, all right, what is this player going to do? Is that better than the player that's ahead of him, the player that's behind him? And so we're just kind of weighing those things anyway. And for me personally, like, when I'm making my rankings, it's a combination of projections ADP, just my notes, and things that, you know, I have looked up throughout the course of the offseason.

So that's what goes into like my rankings anyway. But that's a long winded question, long way of asking Ariel, why are projections so important for fantasy baseball? Yeah, I mean, it's statistically the best guess. It's the betting average, right? If you want to bet on what the, what's going to be, you might as well bet on what has transpired to be the best, right? Look, there's always going to be flaws and there's going to be blind spots and projections. projections, what they don't do well is if there was a significant pitch mix change, or let's say a hitter changes swing, developed some real different skill, right?

If there's a new skill that you just don't see in the data, it does it badly. Let's say last year a player played through an injury. Projections aren't going to see that, right? But assuming everything is not, it is mathematically the best thing. So the right way to use projections is you start with projections, get the ATC ranks, And then you use your own intuition and say, wait a minute, this guy changes swing, he's going to be better than that projection. Pump him up, right? Start with the base of projections, work off of that, and then use your own eye for things that you know that the projections don't know, right?

Don't all of a sudden say, oh, this guy is the 10th best pitcher, right? Start with a projection that's calculated by the computer and say, no, no, but this guy, he's going to, he's throwing his slider more. He's going to have more strike ads than projected and do the math. So Chris, where do you lie on projections? Are they a big factor when your rankings players and your process? How do you feel about projections? It's a huge factor. For me, a part of it is just like, Ariel Cohen's really smart. He's much smarter than I am. And he like, I can fake my way through an Excel spreadsheet, okay, but he's got like real tools and, and knows like, I don't know, the word regression and stuff.

Like, I'm, I'm okay. You know, I'll fake my way through sounding smart, but like I want to rely on the best tools available. Now, I think the thing to keep in mind, though, is I found this tweet from Dan Zimborski, I believe is how you pronounce his name from Fangraphs. Smart guy, the zip system is his projection system. And I really love one thing that he tweeted back in November.

It's his pin tweet on Twitter. and what he did was he went through the Zips percentile rankings, which is one thing that I really love about that projection system and baseball prospectus as well. They do like, what does a player's 10th percentile outcome look like? What does a player's 90th percentile outcome? And what he did was he went and looked through last years and found that 49 percent of

players exceeded their 50th percentile outcome in ERA Plus. and 51% of hitters exceeded their 50th percentile outcome in OPS Plus. That's exactly what you would expect from a well-tuned, but it also points out that 50% of players beat their projection, and 50% of players didn't. So that's the thing that you have to keep in mind with projections is they're going to, I don't even think it's right to say they'll fail, to identify outliers? Outliers are just that. They're outliers. They're doing something unexpected.

And the thing about fantasy baseball is you need outliers. You need outliers on your team. You need to avoid outliers the other way. That's the whole, the blending of art and science. I think when you're drafting and building a team is trying and often failing to identify who those outliers are going to be. and that's why we do sleepers and breakouts and busts. These are all industry terms for effectively what projections are or are not trying to identify. And so you need to find guys who are going to beat the market. And sometimes projections will help you do that because there will just be a guy like Justin Turner, who is underrated for bad reasons.

I don't know if that's the right way to phrase it, but just like he seems pretty clearly undervalued for reasons that have to do with. biases and just are our kind of anti-old guy biases and all that. But you don't, you probably don't want to just, well, here's the projection, I'm going to draft in that order. Because there are swings that you need to take. There are swings you need to know not to take. And so I think you have to keep all of those things in mind. And that's why it's, it's art and.

science. It's soothsaying. It's, it's, uh, alchemy to a certain degree when you're talking about building a fantasy team. You don't need necessarily that player that's going to provide you the $15, $20 in excess, right? Ronald de Cunia, who provided $70 worth of value in a 12 team league last year. Obviously, it's nice to have that player on your team, but if you can, over the course of 60 to 75% of the players on your team, if you can gain a three to five a profit on each of those players, then you're probably doing pretty damn good. And I think that's kind of a way that I try to look at it.

Ariel, I don't know if that's what you were going to say, but it's kind of a way I try to look at players from a profit potential kind of mindset. Yeah, you have 23 roster spots. You want to turn a profit, even if it's small on every single spot, and those little profits turn up to a big aggregate profit. Look, some spots are going to get a lot of profit. some spots you're going to get a loss. But on average, you want to get there.

The thing I want to point out, though, is that I think that people are so wrapped up with the magnitude of success. Oh, I want to find that guy that's going to have 62 home runs. The truth of the matter is that it's less important to get the magnitude right and more important to get the hit rate right. You want to be correct directionally on more players than not. Because if you're correct on a player and you buy the player, it really doesn't matter if he turns a $10 problem. profit, $20 profit, $50 profit, you're going to realize the entire upside, right? If you thought a player was worth $7 and you bought him for two, if he ends up being worth 30, you realize just the same because you've already bought him, right?

You said undervalued by, it doesn't matter how much you get the whole upside. So you're going to randomly find guys that have huge upside and some upside. When you take a projection system, which is really good at the hit rates, and identifying stay away from these guys. These are profit losers. The more hits you have, you'll end up having some of those big ones, some of the small ones,

and you'll be directionally more. So don't focus on the magnitude, focus on getting more players directionally correct. Lastly, Ariel, regarding just macro-level view of the ATC projection, I think many people would be interested in learning about how it factors in environmental changes in the game, right? So last year, obviously, steals were up in a crazy way

organic offense was up. There was just more base runners. As a result, ERA and WIPP was also up across the league. How does ATC factor in environmental changes year over year? Oh, that's the hardest thing is to guess where the environment is going to be. I mean, projections rely on things being the same. Sure, if you think that the deal is going to be up, just take everything and scale things up. Question, of course, do you scale everybody evenly?

Do you scale only the top players, right? There are different ways to do it. For homers, of course, you know, when you have... the juice ball. It wasn't the guys who hit shot, hit moon shots. It was the guy who were just to defense. Those are the ones that gain the most. So it's not, it's a little bit complicated on how to do, but we try our best in terms of where we think the growth would be. All right, let's take our final break when we return. We'll finally get what you wanted to hear. We're going to talk about which players ATC is higher on and lower on. We'll do that right after this. Welcome back in. Let's talk

players that ATC projections are higher on entering the 2024 season. Josh Naylor is first up, and Josh Naylor is an interesting one because ATC was also higher on Josh Naylor last year. I remember it vividly. I think I was on your corner infield episode of the Beat the Shift podcast, so his name just kind of stands out in my mind. But he was very good, and he was projected, is currently projected as the 10th best first baseman this upcoming season ahead of names like Yandy Diaz, Tristan Kossis,

Spencer Torkelson. The ATC projection, 283 batting average, 22 homers, 88 RBI, and 8 steals. Josh Naylor coming off a great year. He improved versus left-handed pitching. He makes a ton of contact and he chips in a little bit of speed at first base. The downside, Ariel, is that Nailer has not played more than 122 games in her major league season. He hasn't hit the ball particularly hard either, but the fact that he makes as much contact as he does, it feels like that's something the projections would really like about him. Yeah, he has 86% contact rate. I mean, that gives you a high floor of production where he's getting on base.

I mean, he batted 308 last year. He's going to have a lot of RBIs. I like the guys to get on base who are playing on his team. He got Stephen Kwan, Jose Ramirez. These are guys who get on base. So, I mean, he had 97 RBIs in limited time last year. I think that he could push that 100, very, very possible. You know, he's a guy that just has a presence in every single category.

and I think the comp is Paul Gulchman. He sort of feels like a Paul Goldschmidt type of stats across the board that you're getting a lot cheaper than him. So I really like him for this year. And Josh Naylor, it feels like he's been around forever. He's still only 26 years old, right? I mean, it kind of feels crazy that he's just kind of entering the prime of his career now. Chris, based on the skill set,

Josh Naylor is a player that should theoretically excel in both formats too, both in Roto and head-to-head points. Yeah, because he doesn't strike out much. And that's one thing when you look at the RBI and you say, well, he's not going to drive in 97 runs in 121 games again. Well, one thing to keep in mind is that historically high contact guys do tend to perform better in whatever you want to define at high leverage situations, runners on base. That that's a skill set that tends to perform better. And you think of someone like Jose Abrae, who at his peak, look, he had a lot more power than Josh Nailer. I don't think Josh Nailer is going to, did Jose Ramirez,

Jose O'Reilly win an MVP in 2020? Am I remembering that correctly? Yep, yep. Like, that's not going to happen. But because he's a high contact rate hitter who has some pop, you know, pretty good pop, he's going to be a good source of RBI, like Ariel said, you know, he had 79 and 122 games. That's a 100 RBI pace over 150 games.

So that's one skill where if you're looking, it's always hard to do like category. specialist in RBI because if you get a lot of RBI, you're going to get a lot of home runs and runs and all the other things generally. Naylor is a guy who specifically projects to help more an RBI than you would otherwise think given his overall value and skill set. And probably batting average too, which as you'll, for anyone who's on a draft yet, you'll learn, you know, if you don't get batting average early, it's kind of hard to find.

Josh Naylor is one of those names in the middle rounds that could provide batting average. Let's slide over to Jake Berger, who is projected as the 11th best third baseman by ATC, ahead of names like Spencer Sear and Hassan Kim. The projection for Burger, 250 batting average, 31 homers, 82 RBI. I am completely on board with this one. I have Burger in Breakouts 1.0, currently live on the site. Once he was traded to Miami, made big strides in terms of plate discipline. He hits the ball as hard as anybody in baseball. And I know we just did a mock draft, the other night, Ariel, and you wound up with Jake Berger. He is a name I am pretty interested in.

Yeah, the guy that I was debating all the time was Kyle Schwarber, who was on my cue, do I draft him? And wait a minute, I can get Jake Berger, who is pretty much going to hit 35 to 40 homers potentially, but not have that 220 batting average that Schwabber has. I mean, it's not fantastic, 250, but I'll take 35 homers with just a 250 average. I mean, Adam Dunn used to do this. Adam Dunn would walk more than Jake Berger, but I mean, Adam Dunn would have the 220 to 40 average and he did 40 homers. Jake Berger could be something like that.

And he's made improvements in terms of his contact skills. He dropped for the season below 28 percent and actually was much better in the second half. So his values, I think, will be determined based on his runs and RBIs. Will the Marlins put enough people on base for him to have the Gaudy run production totals? But otherwise, the skills are great, and he's going at a nice price. Chris, Jake Berger of your Miami Marlins, one big, beefy baseball boy. I think projecting the shape of the production might be a little tough. Like, are we going to get more of the player we saw in Miami?

Or are we going to get this player we saw with the White Sox? But either way, I feel like it's going to work out. Even if it's a little bit less power, but higher batting average or less batting average and more power, I feel pretty confident it's going to work out for Jake Berger. I think that's a good way to think about it. And it reminds me a little bit of, you know, where I was on Sandy Alcounter before the 2022 season where it's like there's a feels like a pretty safe floor because of the skill set. And if, you know, in Berger's case, if the improvements that he made as a contact hitter once he got to Miami stick, well, there's a high ceiling too. I like that combination where things probably won't go too wrong for him.

obviously we can't predict everything perfectly. The weird thing about him was just like, it's not like the improvement in the contact rate. He swung more, especially at pitches in the strike zone, and he made more contact on pitches in the strike zone. Those were the big changes that he made. His out of zone contact rate,

his chase rate, all that stuff kind of stayed the same. I don't know what to make of that, right? Like, because he didn't swing at the first pitch more often. It wasn't like he got to Miami, and they were like, you've seen a lot of fastballs on the first pitch, jump on him.

It wasn't like, you know, he wasn't getting pitched in the strike zone more often. So I struggle with how sticky those improvements are going to prove to be. But the fact that he was able to do that without sacrificing much in quality of contact, it does give us tangible proof of what the upside could look like. There's a really cool story too regarding Jake Berger. Apparently his wife noticed something in his batting stance. and brought it up to him while he was still on the White Sox, which kind of fueled the start of the adjustments

that Jake Burger wound up making. And look, if anyone wants to check it out, just Google, you know, Jake Burger adjustments and there are multiple articles about it, but it's pretty cool. You know, your wife helping you out at being a major league player. That's pretty awesome stuff.

Willie Adamas is next up here, projected as the 14th best shortstop ahead of names like Anthony Volpe and Tommy Edmund. The projection, 237 batting average, 26 homers, 85 RBI, and seven steals. Adamas had a down season last year. We might be writing him off a bit too soon.

We were excited about Adomis last year. His ADP was just inside the top 100. Now his ADP is down at 185. So we're getting a pretty big difference in cost year over year. The expected numbers still look pretty good. He's entering a contract year. Ariel, what kind of things do you like about Willie Adamas? Yeah, he's the kind of player that had a really good year in 2022.

So the price went up. down year last year and now of course the price is down well you want to be buying players who are better than their previous year

not the opposite right you don't want to pay for the previous years value so he is falls in that category and if you look deep he was unlucky last year his babbip was terribly low

but he improved his skills the strikeout rate went down his walk rate went way up so there's a lot of good things that he's improved and I still think he has that 30 home run ability right He had 31 homers in 2022.

I think it's still there. He has a base in a bunch of categories. Hopefully that batting average will come up, and that solid base of runs and RBIs is still there. People forget, runs and RBIs are two-fifths of your Roto categories. They're really important. So you've got a base everywhere. Skills are improving, and you're buying him at a discount because he's down here.

That's why I like them for this coming year. Chris, I'm not sure that I would want Willie Adamas as my starting shortstop, but at pick 185, you can probably get. him as your middle infielder and that doesn't sound too bad. Yeah, I like that a lot. You know, you look at the underlying data mostly suggests that he was a very similar hitter in 2023 to 2022, you know, the hard contact rate, the barrel rate, all that stuff. The strikeout rate actually on a three-year downward trend, which is a, you know, I don't

know how important that is that it's a trend, but it's not moving in the wrong direction. So I do think, what a 217 batting average last year? I think he probably just got a little bad luck on his ledger. And he's probably more like a 240 hitter. And 25 homers with a 240 average is a lot easier to stomach. So yeah, I'm fully on board with that one. Yeah, 217 batting average for Willie Adomas last year. 242 expected batting average according to statcast.

Ariel, I'm going to throw four outfielers your way. The way we could do this is, You can choose one of these names to highlight. You can quickly touch on each one of them if you want to. However you want to approach it, that's fine by me. Brandon Nimmo, maybe a little personal tweaking involved here. I know you're a Mets fan, so maybe you kind of boosted up Brandon Nimmo a little bit. Projected as the 30th outfielder, according to ATC.

Christopher Morel at number 31, Taylor Ward as your 37th outfielder, and Kerry Carpenter as the 41st outfielder. All four are ahead of ADP. Nimmo, Morel, Taylor Ward, Carrie Carpenter. Yeah, I'm going to go with Taylor Ward for the same type of reason that great year in 22, down year in 23, even though he made some improvements in his game. And again, a little bit of bad luck with the Babbup. He's got the skills to hit 20 to 25 homers, throws in some steals.

I think his batting average can get close to 270 once again. And I know Otani's not in the lineup anymore, but I think there's still a good base of runs and RBIs. The other guys are pretty good too, but I think Ward could be some sneaky value. And there's some upside. The ATC interprojectional skew shows that he's got some upside to the numbers that ATC already project. So I like Ward. Yeah. And, you know, most people will look at someone like Taylor Ward. He's on the Angels. They're not projected to be a particularly good team in 2024. But what that does do, it allows for playing time. So there's not much competition because there's just not that many great players.

So Taylor Ward can stay on the field. I think that those are those same reasons why projections love Brandon Drury, Luis Renhifo. I mean, these guys have multi-position eligibility, and they're going to play because they're on a bad team. So it might hurt the counting stats, but I think it does help with the playing time. Chris, we do have, you know, two names here, Nimmo and Ward.

They kind of feel like the steady Eddie types. I know Ariel just argued there is upside with Taylor Ward. Christopher Morel and Kerry Carpenter, they're younger, they're kind of have some breakout appeal. Anyone that stands out to you from this group of four that you might be targeting Nimmo, Morel, Ward, Carrie Carpenter. Carpenter's ADP is super low, right? Yeah, I can pull it up to 20 roughly.

Yeah, I got confused because I thought we were, someone mentioned Brandon Drury, and I really like Brandon Drury. I thought we were talking about him, so he was going to be my pick if he was part of it. I think Kerry Carbenter has some really nice skills. I think he's shown the ability to consistently hit the ball hard. The biggest question there is, one, can he hit lefties and then will the Tigers let him play against lefties? He only had 78 plate appearances last year against them.

The overall line, 657 OPS, wasn't particularly good, but like he didn't strike out at an outrageous amount 17 times and 78 played appearances. is these are all, that's a small sample size either way. But he is someone who I would like to see get that chance to play more against lefties. Because I do think, you know, we're always looking for the left-handed hitters who crush righties. If they can just be decent against lefties, if he can be a low 700s OPS bat against lefties and play every day, there's a ton of room for Kerry Carpenter to provide profit this season. Chris, I know you love Riley Green. I agree with you on Kerry Carpenter.

Keith just got the extension. Hopefully he's up on opening days. Tigers are a little interesting. I did on the pitchcon panel. We did grading every team's offseason moves. I think I gave them either a B or an A, just because like, forward momentum, baby. Like, this is a team that's building

and is actually adding players. So I, I like where the Tigers are at right now. Yeah, I am a fan as well. I'm just about ready to hop on the bandwagon before the Tigers become good. I'm in. No, win 76 games this year. It'll be great.

You know, I actually want to look up there over under for the season. I might hop on the over there with the Detroit Tigers. Let's talk about three pitchers that ATC is higher on. Zach Eflin at SP12. Shane Bieber at SP 31.

Nestor Cortez at SP 37. It feels like ATC values K-to-walk ratio for pitchers quite a bit, which obviously makes sense. Zach Eflin excels at K-to-Walk ratio. He is one of the best control pitchers in the game. His ADP is currently as the 25th starting pitcher off the board,

and he could wind up being a huge bargain in that same mock draft we did, Ariel. I know that Zach Eflin was a pitcher you wound up drafting. Oh yeah. I'm trying to, I'm trying to, sometimes when you look at a player and you say, why is he, you know, such a good pitcher and undervalued by the market? You try to pull coals. What's wrong with this, right? What do I get wrong? But I'm looking, nothing wrong here. That walk rate last year, 3%, that's, that's, That's like George Kirby territory. Striking out players, he had 186 strikeouts and 178 innings. The XERA seems to confirm that his ERA is legit.

All luck metrics, strand rate, Babbup, luck neutral, nothing. Now, we worry about his health. Sure, he hasn't been the healthiest in the past. Maybe that's the reason for the, for the bargain you're getting. But he did have 178 innings last year, and the rays really do need to get innings out of their pitchers. So I very much like Zach Eflin. He stands out of the guy that you're not paying the top five player price,

but he's a solid ace that you can get at a very low ace price. Ariel, talk to me a little bit about Shane Bieber because it feels like there could be a blind spot in projections. Perhaps injuries or rapid skill degradation is something that projections could struggle with. Obviously, they look at a three-year sample that's kind of like the base. And Shane Bieber has had some really good seasons. over the past three years. But things kind of feel like they're rapidly tumbling down.

That strikeout rate, swinging strike rate, took huge dips last year. He had that dreaded forearm strain as well. So ATC still has Bieber at SP31. What do you think about him and maybe the way that projections kind of react to injuries and rapid skill degradation? Yeah, I agree. This is a blind spot of projections. I very often see, more so of the playing time or the innings than of the skill.

but it could be a little bit of both that just over-project the innings. And I would bet the under on all these injuries, like Joe Musgrove, I'd bet the under on whatever, whatever innings is projected here. But Bieber at 170 innings, I don't think so. And whether I think so or not, I'm not drafting him, assuming that kind of innings projection. In terms of the skills projections say that he's going to be solidly similar to what he has before. I don't know that for sure.

Maybe I'll believe that more than the innings. But in any case, it's very hard. for me to draft the player with this much draft capital. Going to 12th round of 15 team drafts, I'm still in that range where I want to get a short thing. If I want to draft the pitcher, I want somebody who's solid or want a solid hitter to spend my draft capital on Bieber with that much uncertainty, even if the projections show a small bargain, not worth it to me. So I'm negative on Bieber. Chris, for those who have listened to the podcast the past couple of years, they know that you have, let's call it an interesting relationship with Nesser Cortez, right,

the year that he broke out, it was kind of hard to trust it. But, you know, if we look at 21 and 22, he obviously was really good those years, couldn't stay healthy last year. What's interesting about the Cortez projection, he grades out at SP 37 in only 129 innings pitch. So what that tells you is ATC expects Nestor Cortez to be really good when he's on the field,

although it might only be for like 130 innings. Yeah, I've come full circle. on Nestor Cortezer. I don't know. I don't really think that's there. I've come a half circle, right? That would be because like I was very skeptical of him based on the small sample size in 2021 and then, you know, early in 2022.

But I bought in more or less once, you know, we reached the midseason point in 2022. And I think the skill set's really solid. It's a gigantic question with the health because when you're talking about shoulder injuries, especially that that's really worrisome. But given the price, I think. it's well worth taking that risk. And I'll just thank Ariel for giving me more ammunition for my anti-George Kirby position. And by anti-George Kirby, I mean, I'm like five or six spots lower than on the consensus than him.

But yeah, I'm going to write my annual name brand versus bargain price article. And Zach Eflin's going to be the bargain brand George Kirby. Yeah, actually, when I was looking into Zach Eiff, It felt a lot like George Kirby, too. It's George Kirby, except the strikeouts are already there. Yeah, yeah. It's right. It's, yeah, it's, you might be on to something there, Chris.

Nesser Cortez, the price tag, by the way, the ADP over at NFBC 284. So it has basically been written off. No risk. He was limited to just 63 and a third innings last year due to a strained rotator cuff. So that is pretty scary stuff. But it sounds like he's healthy. We'll see where Nesser Cortez is at spring training. and heading into the season.

We're going to go a little bit longer than usual, five, ten minutes longer. I do want to talk about players that ATC is a little bit lower on as well. And we'll start with Jose Ramirez, who grades out as the 20th overall player and the third, third baseman behind Austin Riley and Raphael Devers. That might not sound like a big thing, but in the early rounds,

you know, we're splitting hairs to try and figure out who to draft, right? So Jose Ramirez is someone you have to decide, all right, do I spend my first round pick at the turn on this player or not? The projection 279, 26 homers, 89 runs, 95 RBI, 24 steals. That sounds about right for me. Maybe the counting stats are a little bit low.

Do you think they're maybe dinging Jose Ramirez a little bit too unfairly, Ariel, for down runs in RBI last year? It kind of feels like the counting stats are a little bit out of his control, maybe a little bit fluky year over year. I haven't ranked as the 17th best player right now. So I'm actually right there with him.

And in terms of drafting, especially in a roto league, when you have that big base of homers, steals, you've got that great average. He's great in every single category. My statistic for dimension of player intra-SD, such a very high five-dimensional type player with upside also. I think Jose Ramirez is a fantastic pick to start with. The fact that he maybe technically under Devers and,

the other third baseman you mentioned if it is numerically it's a dollar and it's one of the things where if you just look at the ranking and you don't look at the dollar difference the dollar difference are close we're talking like a dollar difference between the three it really is the same

in terms of value so whether they're ranked five spots lower doesn't matter Jose Ramirez is a fantastic base to start a draft with and that's what I noticed too like I was going to point out all right ATC as Bobby Witt ranked as the ninth batter right now but it's $32.6 projected versus $36 for Aaron Judge.

So it's a $3, $4 difference between the second best player and the ninth. It's really not a huge difference. Yeah, it feels like that second tier, Ronald de Cunia, in his own tier. In his own tier. It feels like that next tier might be like 15 players deep. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what Scott has argued too, is that there's really, like, I think he says 16 or 17 hitters, just hitters.

that feel like their first round caliber, that they're worthy of being first round picks and based on these projections that, that kind of supports that theory as well. All right, ATC hates young players. Let's try and figure out why. I do kid, I kid. But it feels like top prospects in particular

are very tough to project. Obviously, we don't have a track record to go based on outside of minor league data. And I think projections are getting better at this. Obviously, it's a little bit harder when we see outlier seasons, like what Corby and Carroll just did last year, right? It's 25 plus homers, 50 plus steals, just a crazy season. And obviously the projections were nowhere close to that. And it wasn't just ATC. No projection system was close to what Corby and Carol did

last year. Gunner Henderson currently projected as the seventh best third baseman behind Nolan Aeronado, L.E.D. LaCruz, who is a hot name right now. I saw Derek Hardy tweeting about how L.E. D. LaCruz is super low in the bat-X projections as well. Elie De LaCruz projected as the ninth best third baseman behind Alex Bregman. I think it's a good reminder, Ariel, that these are 50th percentile projections, and obviously

it's really tough to figure out or try and project what a young first or second year player is going to do. Yeah, I mean, Delac Cruz, we know what the upside could be. He could be a speed demon. He can steal 45 bases. But, I mean, he had a 235 batting average.

I'm projecting him for 250. There is a scenario where he just performs with a 230 batting average and loses some playing time. Let him figure it out. There's a possibility that he goes in the minor. So when you have a projection, and we're talking about the median output, the 50th percentile, you got to take into account all the ranges.

And for young players, there is serious risk of just not getting there. I mean, for every prospect that really works out well, there's going to be two prospects that don't. And that's why projections in general are down on prospects. Just to give you some little bit more context, the Marcel projections, which are the simplest form of just take three-year averages, blah, blah, blah. Their stance on players who haven't played at all, minor league players are just project players at league average. That's like the best estimate you can do.

They're just average players. It's hard to project superstardom. Yes, we get the Corbyn Carrels and get the Acunias who just break out on that. Sure, we're talking about a player here and there. But in general, there is always risk with the players. And so Ellie Della Cruz, where he's going in drafts, I think not. I think they're a much safer investments. Yeah, there are a couple things I want to say.

One, last year I kind of cheated on my bold predictions, which we always do on this show and the article. I look back on it. One of my bold predictions was one of Jordan Walker or Anthony Volpe will be sent back to the miners. That is a bold prediction because everybody was, those guys were being drafted in the top 100 over the last. last week of the season. It's not a bold prediction because that's what happens. Like the, the jump to the majors is incredibly difficult. The other thing I'll point out is like Fernando

Tatez, I remember him being an incredibly, incredibly controversial player when he made his major league debut. And he was a huge victory lap for the screw the project projections, draft the young guys at their ceiling crowd. And I will just, let's go back to 2019. I'm looking at baseball prospectus' top 100 prospects, top 101. Not going to go through all 101. We'll only do top 90. No, sorry. Top 10.

Here's what they look like. Try to remember the hype around these guys and then what they actually did as rookies. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Fine, but average. Joe Adele. Nope. Fernando Tatis.

Awesome. Awesome. Eloy Jimenez. It's fine. Solid. Victor Robles. He was a top five prospect. baseball. Kestin Hira, huge win for the draft, the high upside rookies for his rookie season.

And never again. Forrest Whitley, I think, was out of baseball like two years after this. Royce Lewis, hey, five years later, it's finally working out. Nick Senzel. Oh, he. Taylor Tremel, even like Kyle Tucker, who's a relative success story, wasn't like setting the world on fire right away. It took like, that's what, one or two hits out of the top 10 hitters? Like, that's pretty normal. And so when we talk about hit rate, right? We talk about it's very important to get hit rate, right? When we talk about Jackson Churio and Wyatt Langford and even Evan Carter, who at least, you know, like Corbyn Carroll, has proved it at some point in the major leagues.

Like, the most likely outcome for these guys is they're not going to be very useful for fantasy, at least right away. And you might have to sit with them like Jordan Walker last year, who ended up being decent once, you know, he got back from the miners. But the bus rates are going to be very, very high. And you have to determine whether the upside, you know, looking for that huge win is going to be worth it. And the problem with L.A. Dela Cruz is he's not being drafted at his ceiling because the skill set is incredible.

But he's not being drafted at his median outcome. either. He's being drafted at like an 85th percentile outcome probably. Yeah, that's exactly right. The ADP for L.A. Dela Cruz over at the NFBC, 22.6. So in a 12-team league, he is a second round pick. If we're factoring in his downside being he could potentially wind up in the minors, he probably should be somewhere around like the 50s, the 60s. I think that, you know, factors in the downside a little bit more and obviously still kind of you're thinking about that upside. I understand why people,

want these players. They're fun. Fantasy is supposed to be fun. I understand we want to root for L.A. Dela Cruz. We want to root for Jackson Turo and Wyatt Langford. I understand why. But if you think about it logically and objectively and your goal is to win in fantasy, these players don't hit as often as we like to think they do. Hassan Kim, I wanted to mention. He is projected outside the top 15 at each of his position, second base, third base, and shortstop. The ATC projection for Hassan Kim, 248, 15 homers, 73 runs, and 27 steals. It actually doesn't sound like a bad projection. It feels pretty fair, honestly.

Chris, I know Kim was in your bust 1.0, which came out earlier this week. So my guess is you are probably closer to what the ATC projection has to say about Kim. Yeah, I might be way higher. Yeah, I get it. He was really good last season, but there are real red, flags and the profile. He took this big step forward as a power hitter, 17 home runs last season.

The quality of contact data for him is very, very poor. Even for a guy who does tend to pull the ball when he hits it in the air, I have a hard time seeing him replicate that. A lot of it comes down to he's still 12 bases on 14 attempts the previous year. He's still 38 on 47 attempts last season. I don't know what to make of that. Like, he's fast, but he's not. an elite sprint speed guys, 79th percentile.

That is pretty good though. It's good, but we're not talking about Trey Turner. You know, we're talking about a good base runner, but not an elite one and not one who had shown that ability. And this might be a scenario like Ariel was saying with the with the juiced ball where some of those fringier guys benefited a little more from the rule changes. I don't, you know, I don't know if the evidence necessarily supports that. but it's just to say that if they get a little gun shy, you know, then it can start to be a little iffy. Like if he steals 25 bases,

how valuable is that if it comes with 12 homers and what will likely be pretty poor counting stats? Well, based on the projection, which is pretty close to that, it's outside the top 15, second base, third base, and shortstop. Yeah, this is a valuation problem. I think that people see the 38 steals from last year

and okay, projections are 20. 27 for ATC. I mean, what are you going to project 40 steals for Hassan Kim? As compared to what? First of all, stone bases are not as valuable as they were two years ago. That's another thing. And that goes into the projection of the valuation. So, yes, he's still going to have that 15-15 combo.

Yes, all these things are right. Like, I don't see anything wrong with the projection. It's just not as valuable as compared to other quantities as you think. All right. Let's wrap up with three pitchers that ATC is lower on. Zach Gallen at SP15, Blake Snell at SP25, who remains a free agent, and Yuri Perez at SP 33. Are there any of these three names that you are particularly worried about or lower on yourself, you know, considering the ATC projections, Gallen, Snell, and Yuri Perez? Yeah, I think it's Blake Snell.

I mean, the walks are now creeping up. The strand rate was 87% last year. He was extremely lucky. He's been volatile in terms of what he's done. Yes, last year he had 180 innings, but he really hadn't had that many innings since 2018. So I think he's still a good pitcher, but to go anywhere near ASTOM this year, I think is really foolish. So I won't be drafting Blake Snell. He is the founder of ATC projections.

You can listen to him on the Beat the Shift podcast. Again, he contributes to Fangraphs, Roto Baller, Roto Baller, and CBS. Now it sounds like it's about to be RotoWire as well. Ariel, thanks so much for hopping on today, man. We appreciate it. Oh, so much fun. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, and good luck in Tout Wars this year.

I'm no longer in the league, so I can root for you to win. Thank you very much. Maybe I can win this year, now that you're out. We'll see what happens. We're going to wrap there for Chris and Ariel. I am Frank. Thanks as always for tuning in to Fantasy Baseball today. Please make sure to follow and leave a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify.

And we'll be back again tomorrow. Bye-bye.